Convincing a League to Use OBP
Now is the beautiful time of year that leagues are beginning to form. Commissioners are emailing participants to confirm interest, and discuss possible rule changes for the upcoming season. This is the process that is taking place in a league I participate in, and I am creating quite a stir.
A group of us in the league are considered to be the “active” owners who constantly check rosters, scour the waiver wire, and always show up at our online draft. The rest of the league is considered to be the “casual” owners who just want to have some fun. We “active” owners were discussing some possible changes in the rules, and I submitted a proposal to switch the league from batting average to OBP. All of the active owners thought OBP was superior to AVG, but two of them turned it down on the grounds that it would handicap the casual players even more than they already are.
Going into a full league vote sometime later in the week, the voting is set at 2-2. So, now it is down to the rest of the league to push OBP through and make me happy in the process.
Chances are, someone reading this is wondering why a league would want to complicate things and switch to OBP, or are thinking about convincing their league to do the same. Here are some simple arguments as to why a league should adopt OBP:
1. When a player reaches base, I want credit for it. It really is a simple concept. I cannot tell you how many 0-2 games it seems I had from Manny last year, where I received no credit for him reaching base in his other trips to the plate.
2. The player is helping his team by reaching first base, so why shouldn’t he help mine? Again, a very simple and straightforward idea, but some still cannot wrap their head around it.
The only argument I have heard against changing a league to OBP is that the casual players would have problems because the players rankings being used by the draft site do not change, leaving some players vastly overvalued. My argument against that idea is simple: Deal with it. Show up to the draft and do a small bit of research and there will be no issues.
Now, I want to hear from you, the reader. Have any of you recently convinced a league to switch to OBP? If so, how did it go? I believe an OBP league is utterly superior to an AVG league, but getting most to switch over will be a long struggle that will ultimately ruin some leagues due to conflict.
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Zach -
I think you’re right on merit – even luddites are coming around to OBP is superior to AVG. But as someone who plays in several leagues (and blogs about fantasy), moving from AVG to OBP is a pain in the butt. It’s a pain to plan for multiple drafts where each draft has different rules. Yahoo still has their ridiculously thin rosters (3 OF in 10 team MLB leagues!), people are playing anywhere from 8-20 team leagues, and there is the AL vs. NL vs MLB differences. Not to mention points vs. H2H vs. roto.
Standard 5×5 seems like the only constant. Give me one constant…
New league formed – 7×7 including holds and losses for pitchers and walks and Ks for hitters. A push was made by several players to sub OBP for BBs but the commish stuck with his original stats.
I’ve been in something similar as my main league. 7×7 with Ks and BBs for hitters and Ls and QS (formerly CG) for pitchers. I think it works out pretty well, though it stresses you get some points on the K/BB ratios of your hitters.
I abhor the idea of using K’s for hitters as a category, or as a penalty in points leagues – an out is an out is an out, and a K is no less productive than any other out: any chances lost in ‘moving runners over’ is generally offset by not grounding into double plays and the like.
Plus you keep your uni nice and clean, which is nice for the laundry guys.
But diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks…
Jason B(ay) doesn’t want us to count Ks. Funny, that.
I’m the commish of one of my leagues. And last year the guys made a massive push to substitute BB’s for OBP. And I did it. It calmed down all of the AVG loving ESPN watchers
My league switched to OPS (rather than OBP) a few years ago and it went over well. Either way, it devalues guys who have a “hollow” average and don’t contribute anything in any other categories. We just made it very clear what was happening before the draft – so none of the casual owners got surprised – and then it’s up to them to remember that guys who have capsule descriptions like, “won’t contribute much in the speed or power categories but is a lock to hit .300″ may not be very good. It’s not like OBP is hard to find. There was a little bit of grumbling at the first draft but overall everyone seems to like the switch.
My league just added walks and kept BA. Adding a counting stat is superior in my opinion. We also added losses to pitchers as a stat to prevent streaming.
I did that this year. Worked out well.
Not to mention that guys like Juan Pierre probably killed fantasy teams in 2008. Fantasy leagues shouldn’t be divorced in terms of quality from real life baseball.
It’s always a give and take with the different skill levels in a league. I usually play 12 team leagues or larger, and even with a good group of guys, some people just don’t devote the time they need to due to any number of reasons.
To your question though, I think putting it up for a vote is always the right thing to do.
I’m in a league that’s at least 20 years old. It was even a struggle getting people to migrate away from the Monday morning facsimiles onto the interweb. Every year I suggest a common sense rule (like NOT paying $300 for an inferior stat service when there are free ones) and every year the casual fans threaten to break up over it.
I’d love to switch to OBP. Probaby not going to happen though…
Baby steps. I’m trying to get my league to drop Losses (sigh). Maybe next year I’ll broach the subject of OBP.
In the meantime, I’m involved in a startup Scoresheet league, which is really the sort of thing that fangraphs readers should be doing, IMO. I play a free trad roto league to keep up with old friends, but sim games like Scoresheet more closely mirror the real thing. I think it takes a lot of smarts and analytical chops to succeed in a competitive fantasy league, but all that analysis is focused on stats that you ignore in real baseball (RBIs, Ws, etc.). There’s no need for it.
I don’t like simming since it disconnects you from one of the things that makes fantasy baseball fun – what happens in reality actually matters. I’m sure simming makes for better competition and a more fair game, but it loses part of the flavor that makes fantasy sports so fun.
Scoresheet uses current stats, just like trad fantasy does.
In the league I’ve run for about 10 years, we dropped batting average and home runs and added OBP and SLG as categories quite a while ago. It was blasphemy to suggest at first, but every owner now realizes that it more closely values players to actual MLB.
I joined another league a few years ago and haven’t been able to convince them to switch to OBP. In this league, they have BA and Hits as categories, so a guy who walks and puts up great OBPs is really devalued compared to the high batting average/never walk guys. It’s frustrating. I even sent in links to some great Joe Posnanski anti-batting average posts, but people like to stick with what they know.
Some examples, from Joe Posnanski’s blog:
http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/01/07/trapped-by-numbers/#more-1441
Because on-base percentage is just so much bigger than so many people seem to realize. On-base percentage is not some convoluted modern statistic. On-base percentage is not something new … it goes back to the time before Cobb. On-base percentage is not even about walks. On-base percentage is simply the core of baseball, the very heart of it since the first ball hit the first stick. It is about how many times a batter gets on — and, conversely, how many times he makes outs. It is what the game is all about.
http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/09/05/hitting-average/#more-2605
The problem with batting average is precisely that the point of the game is NOT to hit the ball. The point of the game is to score runs. And batting average does not correlate all that well to scoring runs. The Baltimore Orioles have a better batting average than the Boston Red Sox. But the Red Sox have scored 92 more runs. The Texas Rangers are hitting .260 to Seattle’s .258, but the Rangers have scored MORE THAN 100 more runs than the Mariners. The New York Mets have a MUCH better batting average than Philadelphia (.269 to .257) but the Phillies have averaged almost one run more per game. It’s always like this.
http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2008/03/09/statheads-and-true-wins/
But here’s why this whole “It’s so confusing” argument amuses me so much: People will tell you that the new stats are too convoluted or manufactured … and yet there are NO stats more convoluted and manufactured than the basic statistics that baseball has been built around for more than 100 years.
Some of this should be obvious. Batting average? It’s ridiculous. Preposterous. Imagine that no one had ever come up with batting average before … and then someone on a blog came up with with this idea:
Blogger: I have come up with a new statistic. It involves balls put in play. I call it batting average.
Establishment: Great! How’s it work?
B: See, what we’ll do is, we’ll take the number of hits that the batter has and divide it by the number of at-bats that he has in order to determine how often he gets a hit.
E: That sounds like on-base percentage. What’s the difference?
B: Well, it’s all in what you call “at-bats” For one thing, we don’t count walks.
E: What do you mean you don’t count walks?
B: They don’t count. We take plate appearances and subtract walks. They never happened.
E: How can a walk never happen?
B: It just doesn’t.
E: Aren’t walks good things? Like in Little League, we always say “Walk’s as good as a hit.”
B: I hate walks. They’re gone. So let’s say a guy comes to the plate 12 times, and he gets four hits and walks twice …
E: Right … that’s a .500 on-base percentage.
B: Exactly, but if you just subtract the walks, you will see that he has a .400 batting average.
E: Um, OK.
B: But there are other things. If you hit a fly ball, and someone tags up and scores a run, that does not count as an at-bat.
E: Why not?
B: Because you are sacrificing yourself for the betterment of the team? I call it a sacrifice fly. Get it?
E: Well, what are you sacrificing if it doesn’t even count against your stats?
B: You just are, OK?
E: What if you hit a ground ball and the runner scores.
B: How’s that?
E: Let’s say the infield’s back and a guy hits a ground ball to get the run in. How do you score that?
B: No, that’s not a sacrifice fly.
E Why not? Doesn’t that accomplish the same thing?
B: It just isn’t. Come on, pay attention. What’s it called. Sacrifice FLY? Hello! He didn’t hit a fly ball.
E: It just seems to me …
B: Sacrifice bunts also do not count as at-bats. And when you get hit by a pitch … doesn’t count.
E You don’t get any statistical notice for getting hit by a pitch?
B: Like it never happened.
E: I’m afraid to ask this: What happens if you reach on an error.
B: That’s the beauty of this system. According to my new batting average, you’re out.
E: But you’re not really out.
B: I know. Isn’t it great?
E: Why does this have to be so complicated?
B: It’s batting average! It will take over the world!
I just started a fantasy league a couple years ago with a friend, with the idea of trying to set it up in a way that would maximize rewards for individual talents and not how a player is used or what team they play on. Its a little tricky because you’re limited by stats that you’re allowed to score on a free service like ESPN, but we score? OBP, SLG, AST, FPCT, and NSB for hitters (average, power, arm, glove, speed), and IP, BBA, HRA, K, and ERA for pitchers (no situational stats). This year we’re adding RC and WHIP. And all ten players are having a blast. Yes, its harder to prep for a draft because all the rankings out there are pretty much useless…but what’s the fun in using pre-packaged rankings for a draft? In any case, I know a bunch of people are gonna tell me we’re either insane, stupid, or both for scoring these categories. But we enjoy it. And I’m kinda surprised with all of the advanced metrics available that there seem to be so few fantasy leagues experimenting with different categories. Maybe its just hard to round up enough guys who are into it enough to put in some extra effort? Anyway I’d be curious if anybody else out there is also going even farther off the beaten path.
I have found the best way to incorporate OBP is to use a scoring algorithm and do away with categories altogether. It does require use of a computer, however. I buy a Sporting News each week and enter the numbers into a Lotus spreadsheet. I find it quite interesting, as players like John Olerud are no longer undervalued. Those of you with access to a computer an good quantitative ability should really try it.
Itch
circa 1995
p.s. – sorry for the snark.
I started a league a few years back with OBP and SLG as the two rate stats for hitters. It has worked beautifully and the casual players love it. We also began using quality starts two years ago when they were first added. The serious and casual players both prefer them to wins. This year we are trying to work out a way to eliminate saves as the metric for relievers. It’s difficult given the paucity of good pitching categories, especially ones that isolate relievers.
Bottom line: while the casual fan may not seek out these stats, they can understand their use and appreciate them. The more serious fans incorporate them into the fantasy landscape, the better. It’s silly to just protect the casual fan from the challenge as if they are incapable of adjustment.
Now if only I can get the stat-heads who run my other league to start making these changes…
i have been looking for a league for quite awhile that uses these stats. are there any openings in your league? thanks
I just sent out the invites for last year’s crew, so I’m not sure of the number yet. Should know in a few days if there are any spots. Let me know how you’d like to be contacted when I know.
We’re also debating a keeper structure, not sure whether this will be the year we do it, but in the spirit of full disclosure it’s a possibility.
I would also be interested in joining my email is dash6685@yahoo.com if you have an opening
I play in four leagues and I was successful in getting changes from BA to OBP in three of them.
This occurred during the Barry Bonds years, when I was able to convince people how they were getting relatively hurt by rostering Bonds, in that he ended up with much fewer AB’s than people expected. It did the trick.
In our 5X5 leagues we were also successful in changing HR’s to TB’s, and in changing Holds to Holds+Saves, thus giving merit to rostering more middle relievers.
I’m in a 7 year old league that is now 7×7. For Hitting we use AVG, OPS, HR, R, RBI, SB, and Total Bases + BB’s. For Pitching we use W, QS, SV, Holds, ERA, WHIP, K’s. We try to tweak it every year but sometimes you’re stuck with the categories available. I’d like to get rid of AVG, and I like the idea of OBP taking it’s place. Pitching stats for relievers suck. But what’s better? Any suggestions? We use the real major league salaries with a cap, 20 person farm, and full keeper, which makes it enjoyable and truly a 365 day per year league. Our categories could probably use some tweaking though.
i think k/bb is a great stat for pitchers. Mind you, i also highly dislike using Quality Starts.
More good stuff happens! You can celebrate both hits AND walks! (Or something.)
In most of my leagues we’ve been using OPS for a long time, but I just started one going with just OBP, due to OPS “re-valuing” homers more than anything else. I’m excited to see how it goes, but luckily for me, a lot of my cohorts seem to have done away with AVG a long time ago.
I convinced the league to switch OBP last year and it worked out great. The guys who don’t pay attention still didn’t pay attention and the guys who are “serious” were still serious. I drafted Adam Dunn earlier than normal and that worked out well. Now I’d like to switch from “HR” to “SLG%”…..that would be pretty cool.
I use AVG and OPS in my league which is sort of redundant, but seems to allow a good amount of accessibility while still rewarding knowledgeable players.
I’ve successfully managed to argue 12 out of 13 leagues I’ve been in to make this switch (ok I might have commissioned 4 of them) in the last 4 years. It’s a much easier argument to make. I’d like to break it out into OBP and SLG which I might try to do this year.
Not a fan of OBP in fantasy. R/RBI/BA/ERA/W are all so situational; it adds to the element of surprise and chaos which makes competition more competitive. With OBP and OPS, we know whose going to post consistent numbers there. But BA? Its so volatile that it makes playing more fun and unpredictable
I don’t see how volatility equals fun. If you use enough stats which are highly variable, you’re taking a massive chunk of skill out of the comptetion (making it less competitive, not more). Bad fantasy mangers shouldn’t luck into league titles, IMO.
Volatility leads to unpredictability, which makes it harder to win. You need to pay even closer attention daily, can’t draft and win. You probably cant win with the luck element, but you can lose with it.
It’s all about the level of competition. It’s less competitive when you have greater knowledge of the outcomes.
I agree, BIP, volatility may make things more fun if you like unpredictability but it definitely decreases the importance of skill. If Tiger Woods and I play for skins head to head in a hurricane then I like my chances a lot better than if we’re playing on a calm day.
Agreed. BABIP is a bitch, but it makes things more interesting. Skill is still there is the background, but its less important as it would be in an OBP/OPS/wOBA league (do they even have wOBA leagues?? haha)
I dont play fantasy baseball to say “X is a better player than Y” — I play to gamble on whether X will be more productive than Y in a single season. It’s like they say in the book fantasyland. Fantasy is the utilization of sacred sabermetrics for unholy purposes; reverting to the primordials of BA, ERA and W >> projecting the unknown with the logically sound
One way of mainatining something of a luck factor is use a H2H format. Anyone can win a category in a given week, but the stronger team will win more weeks overall, so I don’t think it disadvantages the better owners.
Disagree entirely. H2H is about punting a few categories and maximizing the rest. Win 6-4 every week, make it to the playoffs, and take the cake
Re: David MVP Eck
In my H2H league, the 6-4 win would count in the standings as going 6-4, not 1-0. So two weeks of 6-4 wins aggregates to a 12-8 record. A 10-0 win is far, far better than a 6-4 win. Punting categories is generally not a good strategy (unless you really want to just finish at .500ish).
Look, its about making it to the playoffs in H2H. Once you get into the playoffs, you just need to win 6-4 each week to win it all. Or do you play H2H differently than my friends?
In their league, top 6 make it, with the the 1-2 guys getting the first week as a bye.
(12 team lg)
As dumb as batting average is, the real abomination of a fantasy stat is pitcher wins. They’re about as random and poorly-correlated to performance as you can get. The money league I’m in (H2H) uses QS instead of wins… we also use OBP instead of average and total bases instead of HRs, because there’s more to power than hitting HRs.
About 4 years ago, I got my league to drop AVG and HR in favor of OBP and SLG. It was a great move. If only I could find a good stat to replace Ws (QSs? Ugh).
I’ve attempted to make this argument over on the NFBC forums multiple times… to no avail. Although they won’t admit it straight, the main argument for keeping BA seems to be an unhealthy fear of change and an equally unhealthy love of tradition.
My league is an auction-keeper league we have been combating this problem since the Bonds era by adding walks as a category. Sure, it makes the categories 6-5 in favor of offense, but for the amount of attention paid to offense vs pitching by a vast majority of fantasy owners, this seems reasonable.
My biggest problem with OBP is that it emphasizes the players that are already good. The power hitters. Average helps guys like Ellsbury, people that are somewhat valuable for their steals and runs scored, but are bad in HR, RBI.
The power hitters get a bunch of free passes while the average guys have to earn it. I know these players have decent OBPs, but not compared to big guys, while their average is often higher. If not higher then it still counts for more as they get more at bats.
I like our league where we use the classic 5 batting categories and throgh in OBP, SLG, and hits.
We have been running a 6×6 h2h keeper league that pretty much is the best it can be IMO
avg-R- RBI-SB-HR-OBP
IP-K-QS-ERA-WHIP-S
eliminate Wins as they are the most worthless category, ever.
Actually saves are more useless :)
Why switch to OBP when you can just add it? I am in a 6×6 roto (5×5 with OBP and Holds added) league and it is great. This gives added value to guys like Dunn, but doesn’t completely kill the value of decent average/low BB% guys like Jose Lopez.
I decided to do use OBP in the league.
How? I’m the commissioner.
On easier way to approach it may just be to ask for the addition of walks (BB) instead.
OBP is far superior to AVG
some could argue that sac flies hurt OBP, but that’s a minor claim
baseballmonster.com can help those who want easy ranks
it’s harder to convince ppl to do, but SLG is better than HR too
I’m starting up a league that used a 6×6…
OBP
RUNS
2B+3B
HR
RBI
SB-CS
W
S
ERA
K/9
WHIP
(QS+CG+SO)/GS
That should say “uses” and also the W and S aren’t just Wins/Saves, they are
W = Wins X 2 – Losses
S = Saves X 2 + Holds
In standard 5×5, I thought it never made sense to use WHIP for pitchers but only AVG for hitters.
It should be either WHIP and OBP or HIP and AVG.
Switching from AVG to OBP is common sense, but I have trouble justifying switching HR to SLG.
The HR is a specific skill, a very strong, defining image of baseball. It is not just about pushing yourself and your teammates around the bases.
On the other hand I’d easily switch from RBI to SLG.
Concerning the pitching stats : I agree that W are an abomination. I’ve pushed for substituting IP instead (which is a significant stat : IP=Outs/3), without success so far. I don’t like SV either, but haven’t found a satisfying substitute.
Personally, I’ve gotten sick of the 5×5 leagues. After participating in 4 different leagues @ Y! last year, I decided that the best way was to create as close to a sabermetric league as possible (given Y! options…)
Hitting: R, H, 2B, HR, RBI, SB, K, BB, OBP, SLG
Pitching: W, SV, HLD, TB, H/9, K/9, BB/9, K/BB, ERA, WHIP
Certainly not perfect, but I’m sure it’ll be refined over the next seasons.
Really depends on what you want out of the league. I prefer a league that maximizes the number of strategies you can use and makes more of the player pool valuable.
Switching OBP to AVG just makes speed guys less valuable and big power hitters more valuable so I’ve never been a fan. Just like adding OPS as a 6th stat isn’t a very good idea imo.
In a standard 5×5 you can go with a balanced approach, you can draft for power or you can draft for SB/AVG/R and all are viable offensive approaches. With this change you pretty much just draft for power as the only viable stat since all of the other stats pretty much flow from power except SB.
I think an MLB team should look at OBP over average, but I’ve been doing average in my very first fantasy leagues and would prefer to keep that tradition alive. Maybe I’m slightly third world in this school of thought, but I enjoy going back in the record books and seeing something constant as Rudy alluded to above.
We use ops and avg. Gives a nice blend of both options. We also have a 60/40 mix or so of active(fantasy nerd active) v. Non-active(normal people).
I’m in an auction keeper league that uses AVG. Many of us would like to switch to OBP, but the league has been around for 5 years and we don’t want to penalize teams for building around the existing categories. As Admiral Ackbar said, “It’s a trap.”
I tried to make OBP the batting ratio stat in my league instead of AVG last year and everyone thought I was crazy. “OBP doesn’t mean anything, average is way more important.” Probably thought I was cheating because I had Adam Dunn and his walks.
I would have dominated the league anyways (had McCann, Pujols, Utley and Wright, among others) but I wish people would actually try to understand some simple yet useful stats.
Our league uses a 10×10 set up with
R,1B, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI, SB, BB, AVG, OPS
W, CG, SV, ER, HR, K, HLD, ERA, WHIP, K/9
I like it because it basically forces you to roster a “full” mlb team with closers and setup men to win. I’m considering changing BB to OBP but this configuration worked great last season. Besides, OBP is a component to OPS and its a fun stat to have.
I’ve been in a league for about 10 years that ses the following categories:
hitting: AB, BB, OBP, SLG
pitching: outs, Ks, ERA, WHIP
4 hitting and 4 pitching categoires, so hitting and pitching are balanced. 4 rate and 4 counting categories, so you need both quality and quantity. It’s worked quite well for us.
Nice article. Can you write one on convincing people to drop Offensive K’s? I’m in a league where we count AVG, OPS and K’s. So I feel like I’m getting dinged 4 times (avg, obp, slg, K) for each strikeout. It’s ridiculously frustrated when I know the real ‘value’ or lack thereof of strikeouts on production.
I attempted to petition the league last year and was shot down.