The Pirates (with all of their LHP’s) are also a reason he’s faced a higher percentage of LHP’s than normal…His defense is first rate and it’s a good thing because without it he’d be a utility player/platoon player. Even with his defense, he’s a little overrated in my book. He plays pretty well in fantasy terms because of his power/speed combo but his owners better hope he keeps facing a higher percentage than normal of LHP’s. Phillips is a far better bet to approach his 2008 numbers than 2007.

In our keeper league, the worse you finish the more you pay. I agree that people “give up” but as with any punting category, your goal is to make it to the playoffs. I tend to think that i’d throw things out the window in this order: SV, SB, AVG. I was simply posing a strategy that assumed you were playing people that a) had a financial incentive to not lose b) pride issues.

Back on point, i think that when a player of Phillip’s caliber is ranked people really go overboard. If you assume the average fantasy worth 2nd baseman bats .285, than Phillips is only 15pts below that. That’s no different than Player X being 2 standard deviations away from the mean/median in SB or HR, or whatever.

Whenever I evaluate players, I evaluate them in pairs. It’s screwy, but it gives you perspective. What kind of player would I need to draft with Brandon Phillips to have the equivalent of 2 players that put up 85/15/85/15/.290 ?

If i can “make” 2 players with the line posted above, with a 3rd and 5th round pick.. while in reality to draft two players with that line, I’d have to spend 2 x late third rounders.. I’m happy.

I was really having some issues wrapping my head around whether or not batting average itself, was over/under valued. My conclusion was if the other four categories are there — it’s overvalued.

On a tangent, this lead me to spend far too much time dedicated to writing an article on the idea of punting batting average — which i linked as my name if you’re interested in reading. or here (if that works)