Ariel Cohen's Takeaways From The 2023 Fantasy Baseball Season

January 31, 2024

Ariel Cohen takes a look at the biggest lessons learned from the 2023 fantasy baseball season and how you can apply them to your draft strategy for 2024.

As the 2023 Major League Baseball World Series has now concluded, I would like to share several takeaways that stand out to me from the fantasy baseball season.

Some of these points will be a data-driven look at 2023 trends or anomalies. Some of these topics will help shape some fantasy draft strategy in 2024. Some of these are simply a reflection of what stood out in the most recent baseball season.

Without further ado -- and in no particular order -- here are my reflections on the 2023 season.

Stolen Bases Are Aplenty!

If you are reading this article, you are already aware of the dramatic increase in stolen bases in 2023.

During 2023, there were a whopping 3503 stolen bases, up an incredible 41% from last year’s 2486 (and up 58% over 2021). In fact, in the last 100 years of baseball, it was the second-highest total number of swipes, second only to 1987’s 3585 stolen base total.

Looking at various thresholds:

There is a stark increase in the quantities across the entire league, but primarily at the top.

Let’s take a closer look at the distribution of the top 30 stolen base artists from 2022 and 2023:

(The smoothed increase is the average of the five surrounding % increase figures.)

We can see that the distribution of the top six steals leaders dramatically outpaced the 41% average increase in stolen bases. In fact, the smallest smoothed % increase in the top 30 players is 32%. 2023 is a vastly different brand of baseball.

The Value of Stolen Bases Has Plummeted

Sure, stolen bases are booming in 2023, but what does that mean for fantasy? It is important to note the following:

• What matters for fantasy baseball players is not what happens at the very top.
• What matters for fantasy baseball players is not what happens in all of baseball.
• What matters is how the fantasy-relevant player pool is affected.

First, we need to address player valuation. I’ll do a brief overview.

There are many ways to ascertain the value of players. Standings Gain Points (SGP) and Percent Value Method (PVM) are two commonly used approaches. My preferred system is the Z-Score method, which equates each of the rotisserie categories by converting them to standard scores.

Where: Z[i] = Player i’s Z-Score;  X[i] = Player i’s Category Stat;  X-Bar = Average Stat for the category;  S = Standard Deviation for that category.

A Z-Score of exactly zero indicates that a player has exactly the average category stat of the player pool. A +1.00 indicates that a player is one standard deviation over the mean, and a -1.00 indicates that a player is one standard deviation under the mean.

For the resulting (above replacement) fantasy player pool -- below are the calculated averages and standard deviations over the past few years for offensive counting categories. For completeness, note that these figures have been calculated for 15 team / 5x5 leagues (NFBC settings).

(With only 60 games played, the 2020 COVID stub year is not on the same basis and has been excluded from this study.)

Again, it is important to understand that we are not looking here at the entirety of baseball. We are only evaluating the players who would have contributed to our own fantasy teams.

For example, in 2017, there were 6105 HRs in Major League Baseball, which rose to 6776 in 2019 (the juiced ball year). However, the fantasy-relevant average for HRs was 24 in 2017, which is higher than the 21 in 2019. That is because a large part of the rise in home runs occurred below the fantasy baseball replacement level.

Even more importantly, what the averages do not tell us explicitly -- how the value of the category relates to one another.

The Z-score standard deviation is the statistic that depicts the relative value of the scoring categories. As SD appears in the denominator of the Z-score formula, the higher the category standard deviation, the lower the value of the category. With a standard deviation of 12 in 2023, the stolen base category has been severely devalued as compared to where it was in 2022 (eight).

Plugging some figures into the equation, a mere 11 stolen bases this past season equated to a 0.0 Z-score. Back in 2021, 11 stolen bases evaluated to a +0.5 Z-score. A player would have to steal 17 bases nowadays to accumulate the same +0.5 metric. Going from 11 to 17 is a 55% increase in output! That is a lot!

In the fantasy baseball world for the past few years, we have been pushing up stolen bases in our drafts. Claiming that SBs were scarce, analysts have all advised us to make sure that we acquire stolen bases in the early rounds and to pay a premium for them throughout the draft.

Mathematically, this is no longer the case.

Does this mean you should ignore SBs?

No. Stolen bases are still a required scoring category with smaller absolute quantities than the other ones.

Instead, we should be firmly back into securing overall value with our picks, keeping an eye out not to inadvertently punt the category. You no longer need not to be overly aggressive to secure bags. Do not pass up on smarter value plays as they arise in 2024.

Minimize Risk Early On

Below are the returned fantasy values in a 15-team, 5x5 (NFBC) format since 2018 for a particular MLB player.

Can you name him?

Wow! In the past six years, he had accumulated three $39+ seasons, with 2023 being his best fantasy season to date! In the six-year span, he has averaged $36 of returned value with a minimum of $30. Essentially, this player is a perennial first-rounder, and typically he is a top-five overall player. It does not get much more consistent and guaranteed than this.

Before revealing the identity of this superstar, where should you draft such a player?

The case can be made based on experience and risk that he should be drafted as the #1 overall player. At the very least, blindly, he should be a top-three draftee. A guaranteed late first-round (valued) player should always be prioritized over a player with early first-round upside.

Oh, have you guessed who the player is?

The player above is none other than Freddie Freeman.

Where is Freeman being drafted now in early 2024 NFBC drafts?

His early ADP in NFBC Drafts is 8.25.

At #8, you are getting an almost guaranteed full return on your investment (assuming health)…or more. Last year, he was an unbelievable value as his ADP for the month of March in NFBC was 13.4. I would argue that Freeman is still a steal at #8.

Sure, Corbin Carroll and Bobby Witt Jr. are tremendously exciting. Yes, each has a sky-high upside in all five roto categories. But they have not proven themselves over a long period of time. Or take a player such as Fernando Tatis Jr. -- we all know what he can do, but he is continually injured.

Year-over-year stability is worth a risk-adjusted price increase. I’d prefer to draft Freddie Freeman or Mookie Betts over either one of the young or injury-plagued stars. In the first two rounds of drafts, be extremely risk averse.

Minimize Projection Uncertainty

From an actuary’s perspective, the key motto for statistical models is that the past is predictive of the future. In my field, we base quantitative predictions on the tenet that given the same long-term conditions, past numerical outcomes and distributions (if properly parameterized) will continue for the foreseeable future.

Fantasy baseball projections are not dissimilar. We study the true talent of players in the past, and adjust for age, park factors, etc. -- in order to predict how major leaguers will perform in the upcoming season.

It is important to note that the baseball projection process is predicated on a stable playing environment. Sure, there are trends year over year. Players can start to steal more bases, and pitchers can throw harder. Minor trends are regular and do not disrupt the normal flow of forecasts.

However, over the past few seasons, we have not had the stability that we had enjoyed for a long time. Since 2019, we’ve had major disruptions in the normal flow of baseball. Some of them include:

In the face of data that contains major predictive challenges, the question becomes -- how can we minimize projection uncertainty?

FantasyPros is one such resource that computes projection accuracy, using an absolute error methodology. Below are the resulting system scores for a few aggregation systems (ATC & Zeile), plus the average of the three best standalone projection systems for the year (a lower score is more accurate).

The Average Total Cost projections (ATC), an aggregation projection system, has been the top projection system for the past four years, per the FantasyPros study. Despite containing the convolution of the prior few years of irregularity, ATC has further set itself apart from the standalone systems in the later years (2021 & 2022). FantasyPros' own system, Zeile, has also performed above the cut in recent years.

The clear lesson here is to use -- or at the very least -- be aware of the results of aggregate projections. The high-stakes fantasy market has already adapted to this concept. A standalone projection on its own has a far greater chance of yielding inadequate results in any given season. Aggregation systems are better at avoiding "landmines."

The projections accuracy for 2023 have not yet been published, but I expect the trend to continue. Perhaps the gap in accuracy scores for 2024 will tighten slightly -- but that assumes a relatively stable baseball environment. Are you confident that baseball will remain absolutely unchanged?

Closers

First, let’s take a look at the top relief pitchers from 2023 in terms of both accumulated value* and pure saves:

2023 Top-10 RPs by Value

2023 Top-10 RPs by Saves

*Based on NFBC style 15 team / 5x5 league settings.

In the above, Average Draft Position Dollars (ADP$) is the player’s Average Draft Position (ADP) translated into a comparable earnings format. It is more helpful in comparing the accumulated final season value to the ADP$ than to the ADP alone.

In the season with the highest closer premium market of all time, the top closers in 2023 cost $20+ on average to roster. Emmanuel Clase ($24), Josh Hader ($22), Jordan Romano ($20), and Raisel Iglesias ($20) cost significant draft capital to roster in the month of March. If you recall, prior to his injury, Edwin Diaz demanded a $25 average price tag.

After the elite, the following three closers cost owners $18+. It was only just a few years ago that the TOP closer would go for a mere $18.

What a change!

There were a few reasons for the market’s hefty premium on closers this year.

• Full-time closers are no longer being utilized in baseball for a large number of teams. Closers which command 90%+ of the team’s saves are harder to find.
• Injuries or underperformance for RPs has largely increased. Closers are not guaranteed their role for the entire season. Fantasy managers are willing to pay more for the perceived higher certainty of saves.
• Edwin Diaz’s WBC injury most certainly added further pressure to the top of the saves market for much of the 2023 draft season.

Was the market justified in pushing up prices? Should we as fantasy players pay up for the elite closers?

As far as the market being justified…markets need not justify themselves. The market is the market. As a fantasy owner, it doesn’t quite matter...we just have to learn how to navigate through it.

As for whether we should pay for elite closers…I believe that there is empirical evidence to suggest that we purchase top closers, but not elite ones.

Sure, if you pick the right players, you will always succeed. But the idea is to “play” in the space of the highest returns on investment. In terms of return on investment, I made the case back in 2019 that the optimal range of closers is the second-tier closers. The price range of the most valuable saves lies just after the elite relievers.

Looking at the top-performing RPs above, the mid-teen dollar outlays were the most fruitful in 2023 once again. David Bednar ($13 ADP$), Alexis Diaz ($12 ADP$), Devin Williams ($19 ADP$), Felix Bautista ($16 ADP$), and Ryan Pressly ($18 ADP$) comprised five of the top seven RP values in 2023.

Aligning with historical results, the class of second-tier RPs exhibits the largest chance to become profit hubs. They are the optimal blend of cost and return. Other than an extraordinary strikeout reliever such as Edwin Diaz, there isn’t a need to invest in the elite closers.

Every year is different, of course, but this particular trend has presented itself for quite some time now and should continue. Alternatively, use $20+ resources on an extra hitter or the right starting pitcher.

One Dimensional Players

Luis Arraez had a phenomenal 2023 baseball season. Arraez accumulated 3.4 fWAR -- the 59th-highest total of all major league batters, and largest of all Marlins hitters this season.

From a rotisserie standpoint, the NL batting champ accumulated $19 of value -- securing him fifth-round value.

However, there is tremendous risk to Arraez’s player profile. Namely, the fact that virtually all of his value is contained in just ONE scoring category.

Below is Luis’s Z-score profile for 2023:

The batting average component (shown as zxH -- for excess hits) is a whopping 4.32 standard deviations above the average active fantasy player. That is a fantastic figure.

But what if his average suddenly plummeted? What it if dipped to say .275? It very well might happen. After securing the batting title in 2022, Jeff McNeil’s batting average lowered this season to .270.

What if Luis got injured? What would happen to your fantasy team’s aggregate batting average?

Now, we do expect Arraez to hit near the top of the league in 2024, but BA results are variable. If Arraez’s Z-score for batting average was at 0.0 this season, he would have earned only $6. This assumes that his runs and RBIs would still be lofty, which it wouldn’t either. In other words, it won’t take much for the Marlin to turn into a horrible investment -- all because his value is all in one basket.

Even if he doesn’t turn into a negative investment, with the increase in his market price year over year (his current ADP is 130), the expected return on investment is already negative and as per my argument…with downside.

To give a second example, Esteury Ruiz has a similar story.

Ruiz accumulated $13 of rotisserie value this season. Should you draft him in 2024, you will be counting on him to provide a large part of your aggregated fantasy team’s steals. He has a negative Z-score in literally every other category. Rostering him at market value will provide an overreliance scenario (assuming that you draft a balanced roster).

The term for the risk of an outsized performance affecting your fantasy team’s aggregate value is called profile risk. Profile risk is generally hard to quantify, but luckily, the ATC projections have a statistic that provides one such measure. The ATC IntraSD measures the dimension of a fantasy player’s categorical profile. You can read more about InterSD here in its introductory article.

Be careful about paying full price for players in 2024 with an extreme IntraSD value.

Prospects

There were a large number of prospects this season that ended up above replacement. In 2023, teams have promoted talent more quickly than they had in the past few seasons. There are a few reasons for this.

• There are now more Wild Card teams in baseball, which means that more teams will be “going for it.” The calculus tells teams close to a playoff spot to promote and utilize their young talent more quickly than in the past.
• As COVID canceled the 2020 minor league season, there was a general delay in the development of prospects. The major leagues are now catching up with the regular flow of talent upwards.
• The new rules of the MLB favor more stolen bases -- which correlates with the talent of the youth. The rules lend themselves to younger players going forward.

Reason #2 is a temporary disruption in baseball. Reasons #1 & #3 are here to stay. For 2024, I would expect the rate of prospect promotions to decrease slightly from 2023’s pace, but to remain higher than it has been prior.

Especially in shallow leagues, I typically have discouraged fantasy owners from paying large attention to prospects other than the elite ones. However, as the playing time of prospects is now significantly larger -- one must pay more attention.

Allocate more of your yearly waiver wire budget to larger expenditures, and limit weekly streaming bidding slightly.

Conclusion

The key to success in fantasy baseball is to practice good long-term principles. What I mean by that is to make roster decisions by employing strategies that have exhibited success over the long run.

From the takeaways above, some examples include minimizing first-round risk, selecting second-tier closers, and avoiding one-dimensional players. Design and map out your draft strategies to take advantage of pockets of players who have exhibited long-term fantasy success.

Have a wonderful baseball offseason!

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