THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I play a mixed Yahoo league. My team had 11 hitters (including 2 bench), and 7 “starting” pitchers (plus 3 bench). I usually have only one bench hitter, but my team was poorly constructed this year. And I say “starting” pitchers because those include 2 guys designated as SP, 2 as RP, and 3 as just P.

11 hitters
10 pitchers

ESPN Standard Leagues have 10 teams and a maximum roster size of 25 players. Teams can start 13 hitters and 9 pitchers, so the bench consists of 3 additional hitters/pitchers.

Yahoo Standard Leagues have 12 teams and a maximum roster size of 21 players. Teams can start 9 hitters and 7 pitchers, so the bench consists of 5 additional hitters/pitchers.

250 players are drafted in ESPN standard leagues and 252 players are drafted in Yahoo standard leagues. I’d estimate the number of hitters to pitchers is about 145:105.

Things have changed with services like Yahoo becoming more popular, and a lot of casual players simply play under the default rules, but a lot of the higher profile leagues still go with 23 starting roster spots:
2 C
1B
2B
3B
CI
MI
5 OF
UT
9 P (of any variety, SP or RP)
Plus a bench, the size of which varies and some leagues don’t even have.

That’s sort of the ‘unofficial standard’, at least as I see it.

I should have been clearer.  I’m looking for the total number of players drafted, like in post #2.  (So, how many teams are in the leagues in post 1 and 3?)

Is 250 players drafted in single leagues (and I suppose 500 players in mixed leagues) the norm?

As for the % of players that are pitchers, the above shows 10/21, 9/22, 7/16, and 9/23, which works out to 3 pitchers per 7 players.

The norm is generally 12 teams for mixed leagues and AL-only and 13 teams for NL-only (again, in my view).

For my league it was 11 teams times 21 players for 231 total players.  As far as the actual split is concerned, it varies from player to player, but since we were playing in a 10-hitter league (catcher, 1b, 2b, SS, 3b, 3 OF, DH), and I like to keep my bench lean (one OF, anything more is a waste of a slot), I drafted 11 hitters and 10 pitchers.

Oh, and it was a mixed league, set up between friends (hence the 11 teams), but using Yahoo! roto defaults.

ESPN.com still has its fantasy baseball draft kit up. If you look through their top 250 ranks (25 players times 10 teams is ESPN standard), there’s 152 hitters and 98 pitchers, or a 60/40 split.

Mixed leagues don’t generally draft twice the players—mixed league just means you get to pick from both AL and NL players. The amount of players is (generally) the same per team, but the pool of talent is much deeper.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

Traditional Roto leagues usually have 12 teams, 14 hitters and 9 pitchers, which comes out to 276 players drafted, both mixed or AL/NL only.  Some leagues have bench sizes anywhere from 0 to 5, so put that number at 276 to 336.

vr, Xei

Kind of restating what’s already been said, but obviously things can vary a lot league-to-league.  Generally speaking though…

Shallow League
10 teams * 25 players/team (only 16 active) = 250 players drafted

Deep league (National Fantasy Baseball Championship style)
15 teams * 30 players/team (23 active) = 450 players drafted

Most leagues fall somewhere in the middle.

It should also be said that undrafted players are eligible to be picked up later in the season, so in an active league an additional 100 or so players will likely be on rosters at some point.

Please tell me that you’re embarking upon some groundbreaking work in area of fantasy player analysis!

If so, I would suggest checking out Rudy Gamble’s latest “point shares” player rating system at

http://razzball.com/the-player-rater-rater/

Nick, this is in conjunction with my project (click on my name), which I announced here a few weeks ago.

I play points based leagues, with 10 teams.  The rosters are 9 position players, 7 pitchers and then a 6 player bench (10 player in the keeper) Here are the numbers for all the drafts I still have access to.

2008 (Keeper) 121 Pitchers / 260 Total
2008 (Redraft) 109 Pitchers / 220 Total
2007 (Redraft) 92 Pitchers / 220 Total
2007 (Redraft) 95 Pitchers / 220 Total
2006 (Redraft) 98 Pitchers / 220 Total
2005 (Redraft) 97 Pitchers / 220 Total

Ah, I see.  I’ve got to start checking things out here every day and go back and troll the archives…

When you do this draft you should figure out some sort of benchmark system.  Have a randomly picked team or use rankings based on last year’s stats.  If a projection system finishes below that, then there is a problem.

The two benchmarks will indeed be solely 2008 stats and Marcel.  Everyone should finish ahead of the former, and, ideally, everyone should at least be close to the latter, or be ahead.

My primary league is a mixed 14 team league with 1 util slot and 4 OF, with 25 roster slots. We draft 350 players per season.

Typical yahoo leagues are mixed 12 team 1 util 3 OF, with 21 roster slots. 252 players are drafted.

I also played a 12 team NL-Only league, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CI, MI, OF, OF, OF, OF, Util, P, P, P, P, P, P, P, P, 25 roster slots, 300 players drafted. Pretty much anyone who plays twice a week gets drafted or added.

Tango, what’s the scoring for this forecaster thing?

Others have probably said it all, but I believe the standards are:

AL:  12 teams X 23 players = 276 drafted (168 hitters, 108 pitchers)

NL:  13 teams (actually maybe 14?  But we use 13...) - 14 hitters/9 pitchers per team

As for mixed, I think the most common format is Yahoo or some other awful bastardization of the game, and you draft something like 9 hitters, 7 pitchers, and a few reserves per team.  12 teams per league, so 228 or 240 players total (out of MLB).  So yes, if you’re playing the traditional way, there are more players drafted from a single league than there are drafted from the majors in a mixed league.