Ranking The Best Values In 2010 Fantasy Baseball (CHONE Projections)

Feb 21, 2010

The Market Report is a weekly analysis of player valuations in the fantasy marketplace in an effort to find undervalued commodities.

By Andrew Gephardt

Over the next few weeks we’re going to take a look how various projection systems value the MLB player pool in 12-team mixed leagues. We’ll then compare these dollar values to the market values of players based on their current ADPs. First up this week will be CHONE developed by Sean Smith.

You’ll notice by our deeper look into CHONE projections that many superstars are projected as overvalued. Values don’t fit perfectly with inflation at the very top end of the player pool. Don’t overreact to seeing players like Albert Pujols and Ryan Braun marked as overvalued. On the other hand, based on relative scale, we do see that players such as Evan Longoria and Justin Upton are going too early in drafts based on CHONE projections.

One theme here will be that many pitchers are undervalued. If you truly crunch the numbers, the hitting to pitching split should be roughly 60 / 40 in terms of the distribution of auction dollars. In the fantasy marketplace, however, the split is closer to 70 / 30. There will always be plenty of value available among pitchers.

One additional note: CHONE doesn’t project saves. Accordingly, we chose to use the relatively new projected save totals from ESPN. Once again, a significant portion of a closer’s value derives from his saves total. For closers especially then, we should take these dollar values with a grain of salt.

And the ranking of the best and worst values in drafts according to CHONE projections…
Best Values according to CHONE – Hitters

Eric Young
Russell Martin
David Ortiz
Julio Borbon
Jeff Francouer
Melky Cabrera
Delmon Young
BJ Upton
Magglio Ordonez
Jose Reyes

Best Values according to CHONE – Starting Pitchers

Roy Halladay
James Shields
Cole Hamels
Joe Blanton
Aaron Harang
Javier Vazquez
Josh Beckett
Scott Baker
Paul Maholm
Dan Haren

Best Values according to CHONE – Relief Pitchers

Jonathan Broxton
Joe Nathan
Carlos Marmol
Francisco Rodriguez
Brian Wilson
Jonathan Papelbon
Frank Francisco
Heath Bell
Francisco Cordero
Mariano Rivera

Worst Values according to CHONE – $25+ Hitters

Evan Longoria
Mark Teixeira
Albert Pujols
Alex Rodriguez
Chase Utley
Justin Upton
Mark Reynolds
Matt Kemp
Troy Tulowitzki
Ryan Braun

Worst Values according to CHONE – Sub-$25 Hitters

Josh Hamilton
Pablo Sandoval
Jayson Werth
Kendry Morales
Ben Zobrist
Manny Ramirez
Nyger Morgan
Michael Bourn
Aramis Ramirez
Ichiro Suzuki

Worst Values according to CHONE – Pitchers

Brandon Webb
Chris Carpenter
Josh Johnson
Neftali Feliz
David Price
Max Scherzer
Jake Peavy
Daisuke Matsuzaka
Rick Porcello
Tim Hudson

4 Comments

3 Comments

Rob • Feb 22, 2010 @2:28 pm

One of the problems with projection systems that don’t leave any room for adjustment (like CHONE) is that if a player was injured in the prior year, it skews their value WAY down, regardless of whether or not they are recovered. I’ve noticed this with a few different ranking systems on Brandon Webb and Tim Hudson. Now, I think that either pitcher is still a risk to get injured again, but based upon their history I don’t think it’s LIKELY that either will perform nearly as bad as projected by CHONE. It would be interesting to see which players the system tags as bad values while excluding players that were injured for much of 2009.
Ender • Feb 23, 2010 @4:37 pm

I think fans tend to underestimate how risky guys recovering from an injury are and tend to overpay them. I agree with CHONE on most of those injury guys, they are just being overvalued. With later round picks I don’t mind taking a high risk, high reward approach but in that $25+ category guys coming off an injury are going to kill your team more often than lead it to victory.
Ron • Feb 25, 2010 @4:30 pm

I think Rob makes a good point moreso in what has been discussed elsewhere on the site– the idea of value variance. Some players like Adam Dunn or rock-solid consistent while these injured pitchers are very different. If they are healthy and perform at only 90% of their previous seasons, they blow their CHONE projections out of the water. Yet, if the injury plagues them and they spend 1/2 the year on the DL, they won’t come close to the counting stats of their CHONE projections. All a projection system can really do is give a mid-value of these two possibilities in order to provide a season line.

Ever player really needs a variance value to specify likely possibilities…right now that is left for each player to decide. A $15 Brandon Webb could easily make or break a season, it’s all a matter of who is willing to take the risk for the upside. But you can’t knock a projection system for picking a midpoint between two very real possibilities.