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Subject: Swirve Strategy, Part II Posted by: Madman - [146191423] Sat, Mar 03, 04:20 Cornell All-Stars started a thread on Swirve strategy. If he'll accept a piggy-back, I decided to share some additional insights. This will either take a series of posts, or a series of threads. We'll see how it goes . . . ------------------------------ First task: Find any weaknesses or issues with the initial draft day pricing mechanism. Compare to 2000 to determine possible price or programmatical differences. 2001 Swirve Draft Day Price Analysis The basis for price determinations appears to be Swirve Points per Game, hereafter denoted SVP/G. This statistic is used and adjusted in the following manner: * Position players with more than 100 SVP in 2000 were priced with the following formula (roughly): Price = 1765*SVP/G. Position players with fewer than 100 Swirve points were given a floor price somewhere around 15,000. This pricing formula is identical in structure and roughly identical in magnitude to the 2000 version. (Note: 1765 is a rough figure. It does vary a bit from individual to individual, but not significantly). * Starting Pitchers Identical formula for Price, except that Price = 1765/5 * SVP/G. This is based on the assumption that starters start every 5th game, clearly. This results in hitters being slightly more attractive to hold than pitchers. But this is a small issue, and irrelevant given the discussion we'll have later regarding strategy. Also notice that in 2000 Mehul used the number of games to determine whether a pitcher was a starter or reliever (more than 35 games is a reliever, or something like that). I think he probably did the same thing here, although I'm not sure. * Relief Pitchers They also use the 100 SVP floor (all who score less than this get a floor price of roughly 15K). All who scored more than 100 SVP use the following formula: Price = SVP * $9.92 . ----------------------------------------------- Implications: 1) Mehul is using the same pricing set-up as 2000. Although we don't know how price changes will work in 2001, this is a good indication that they will likely operate similarly. 2) Rookies and those with very few points last year will be priced in the 15K region. This means that they will have to score 8-9 SVP/G just to break even. New player additions throughout the season will also likely be priced in the 15K region. 3) The only place to find extremely undervalued hitters would be with those who got PT last year, but either PH a lot, or otherwise had absolutely horrid SVP/G figures. Like Ordonez. 4) A point from a starting pitcher costs the same as a point from a position player -- assuming that neither is undervalued. 5) Relievers may appear to be cheaper than starters, but this is because they use a different formula. Relievers don't score nearly as many points as starters with the Swirve format, thereby making relievers expensive in the sense that they take up a complete roster place and don't yield many points. Couple this with the complication that you can rotate pitchers, and relievers are not really a viable option unless they are tremendously underpriced. 6) One method to finding extremely underpriced starting pitchers would be to look at those who qualified as relievers last season. Not only will these pitchers score more points this year, but they will also be relatively underpriced because their prices are determined with a different formula. ------------------------------------ Some of these facts and observations will be critical background in the strategy posts to follow -- especially the notion that starting pitchers and hitters are (roughly) priced equivalently -- at least in terms of $$$$ per SVP/G. | ||||||
| 1 | Tim G ID: 1611393123 Sat, Mar 03, 05:42 | Madman up late, or up early, I feel like it's 1999. Thanks man, I plan to devote more time to Swirve this year and your insight is greatly appreciated. | |||||
| 2 | Madman ID: 146191423 Sat, Mar 03, 16:03 | Tim G -- my neighbors communicated to me via their sub-woofer that, in their opinion, I didn't deserve to sleep last night. Rather than fight it, I decided to play around with Swirve stuff. So, it was a late night. And I'm paying for it today . . . | |||||
| 3 | Madman ID: 146191423 Sun, Mar 04, 01:00 |
Second Task: Discussions of optimal strategy. For the record, I haven't decided what the best strategies are yet. First off, it's useful to consider a base-case: Base Strategy Buy 400K worth of players to season long contracts. This strategy would likely net you 226 points per game. Because games are played on only 88% of all days, this translates into 199 points per day. Further, players will likely miss a few games, so this should be considered an upper-bound. Just keep that in mind -- I won't calculate that factor. (400K invested at a cost of 1765 dollars per SVP/G yields the 226 point answer). Under-valued Players What if you can identify a player who, for example, is undervalued by 15K? Well, then, as long as you still fully invested your roster, you'd effectively have 415K of productive resources, yielding proportionately more points. Simple enough so far, eh? Pitcher Rotations This is the famous 1999-2000 Swirve strategy of buying a pitcher immediately before a start, and holding until the pitcher's next start. This effectively means that you hold a pitcher for 6 days and acquire two starts. Further, you can then immediately buy another pitcher, likewise accumulating 2 starts in 6 days. In this manner, over a 30 day period, you can acquire 10 starts. If you had just held a pitcher, you would have acquired just 6 starts. Therefore, this method effectively nets you a 67% increase in pitcher starts. If the quality of pitchers under both methods were equal, this would result in a 67% increase in point production. In essence, if you could invest 400K in pitching, this means that, even if you purchased pitchers at market value, you would be able to effectively field 668K of roster value. If you evenly split your capital between pitching and hitting, then the 200K you spend on pitching would effectively be worth 334K. The rules changes this year actually make this effect more dramatic. Last year, you had to hold a pitcher for 6 days, and then pay 1 day worth of salary to terminate the player. Therefore, last year, you obtained 2 starts for every 7 salary days. This year, those same 2 starts effectively only cost you 6 salary days. Notice that this makes picking expensive pitchers more attractive than they were last year (expensive pitchers gain more from this change in sell-cost). Oops. Out of time at the moment. To be continued. . . I realize most of this is review so far. Juicy stuff next time. | |||||
| 4 | Madman ID: 146191423 Sun, Mar 04, 01:03 |
One thing I should add real quick: If you pitcher rotate, off-days are no longer relevant (at least too much). Therefore, you can effectively increase the number of game-days from 162 to 180ish. This is roughly another 12% increase in productivity, meaning that altogether, this strategy can net you between a 75 and 80 increase in productivity. | |||||
| 5 | Baldwin ID: 25440222 Sun, Mar 04, 01:26 | One problem I foresee is losing the second start because a pitcher was unexpectedly held back a start. Before you just held him till he did pitch. Now the contract will expire without the second start. | |||||
| 6 | Tim G ID: 1611393123 Sun, Mar 04, 01:50 | As I understand though you can keep a player whose contract has expired, you just start paying the daily market rate. | |||||
| 7 | Madman ID: 146191423 Sun, Mar 04, 03:25 |
Tim G has it right. The 5 day limit is inconsequential. As it's set up right now, you can even sign players to 6 day contracts if you want. ------------------------------------------- Pitcher Rotations So, it would appear that we've now hit upon our first candidate for an optimal strategy. Buy reasonably expensive pitchers and rotate them. With the remaining cash, buy (and perhaps lock-in) underpriced hitters. You have 7 slots for pitchers, meaning that you can easily spend 200K on them. This means that you can get 360K worth of productivity from them. If you buy very undervalued hitters, you might be able to get players undervalued by 50 or even 100%. Let's say that you can lock in 200K worth of hitters that are worth 300K. This yields a total value for this strategy of 560K . . . Or so it would appear . . . If you didn't care about the matchups, this would work as advertised. The problem is that most of the expensive and productive pitchers tend to pitch on the same days. This means that the amount of money you'd spend on pitchers on Day 1 of the season would be greater than the amount you'd spend on Day 7. In 2000 Swirve, the total roster expenditures would fluctuate dramatically from day to day. For example, following this same strategy with similar pricing structures, roster values varied by almost $100K early in the season last year. This looked to be somewhat of the exception, with rosters varying by 40-60K starting in Mid-April (the rotations presumably got "spread" out a bit). Even in Sept. of last year with Swirve, pitcher roster values still varied on the order of 30-50K, depending on the team's situation. If you lock in a number of cheap players, therefore, you will inevitably have excess cash lying around. If you are, say, 50K under the cap during 5 out of every 10 days, then, on average, you are giving up 25K of "productive" capacity. In essence, this is the value of locking in a 25K player who is really worth 50K. Therefore, on at least some level, there is clearly room for improvement over this pitcher rotation / lock offense strategy. Thus, the Synchronized Rotation There are two main pieces of inefficiency with the pitcher rotation / lock offense strategy. The first is that you cannot field 400K worth of players at all times. The second is that your position players will be idle at least 20 out of the 180 days in the season, and probably more. Therefore, I propose a "synchronized" rotation. This entails buying a pitcher and a hitter and signing BOTH to 6 day contracts (or 5 day contracts and 1 market-rate day -- I'll just call these 6 day contracts). Whenever the 6 day period is up, you then decide on the new position player replacements and a new pitcher. You can then select from any combination of players, thereby allowing you to continually upgrade both your pitchers and hitters so that you can continually spend your full 400K. (which, BTW, will become 440K by the end of the year). What you gain with this strategy: 1) the ability to sign underpriced starting pitchers. The current swirve formula rewards IP, and has a low negative start potential. Barry Zito and D'Amico were extremely underpriced at the end of last year. With a normal pitcher rotation, this fact does you little good, since you can't spend the extra cash on hitters (which are locked in). With this method, you are rewarded for making these picks, since you can then invest in an All-Star hitter or two for a 6 day period. 2) On average, according to the analysis I previously cited, you average about 25K per day under the cap with a rotation strategy. This is equivalent to a decent-quality MLB regular. I'll round this out to about a 15% effect on hitter productivity (you hvae 7 slots, but you could buy an additional one. Another approach: 25K is about 1/8 of 200K Both methods give 12-15% figures). 3) You should be able to gain 20 - 24 eligible games from each offensive position with this strategy -- when you pick up a new hitter, you'll be more apt to avoid off-days. This represents a 12% increase from the base production levels. If, in addition to this, you can also snag some underpriced players, I think you can effectively gain 30% or so relative to the base production level. 4) You can avoid all injury risks. Since most MLBers, especially those that are tempting "locks" play 150 games or less, I'll just round this to a 10% possible gain. By adding the effects of 2,3,4, you can now see that you can effectively make your hitters undervalued by 50% or so with this strategy. In essence, this means that this strategy is likely equivalent to the "Lock-in" strategy. Finally, if you can actually snag cheap D'Amico pitchers with this method, (issue 1), then this strategy could theoretically actually BEAT a lock-in strategy! -------------------------------------- Summary: Pitcher rotations will be necessary. If you can find positions players that you think are more than 50% undervalued, you may want to consider a lock-in strategy with those players. For pitchers, the standard is to be over 70% underpriced. However, if you can't find players that are more than 50% undervalued, then you may want to consider a "Synchronized Rotation", where you rotate both offense and defense at the same time. There are a number of variants off this strategy -- pairing 1 pitcher with 2 hitters, 2 pitchers with 3 hitters, etc. The basic idea is to make sure you have hitter contracts that expire at the same time you have pitcher contracts expiring. If you synchronize contracts like this, you'll be able to buy the best possible values at any given time throughout the season. Or at least as close to that as you can come. Wow . . . Lastly, I should note that although I tried to go whereever the numbers led me, I wanted the synchronized rotation to work. Therefore, please question the validity of the analysis. I had to pick and choose values for each item. Subconscious biases can play havoc with such numbers . . . It's definitely not going to be easy to beat someone who chooses correctly and locks in a whole fleet of offensive players at 50% under market value . . . But I think the synchronized rotation might actually be able to run with them -- at least for awhile . . . And, of course, if you make a mistake, I'd rather make a mistake with the synchronized rotation . . . | |||||
| 8 | Rolodex ID: 1723021 Sun, Mar 04, 09:02 |
And obviously you can do a combination of Synchronized Rotation and the Long Lockins. I think I read one of your posts saying that chancy season long lockins could and probably would make the difference, and it is very difficult to disagree with that. For one example someone who is doing Synchronized Rotation and maybe took a chance on signing Suzuki season long lockin could have a big advantage(or disadvantage) over someone who is only doing Synchronized Rotation. What is your opinion on some of the underpriced relievers who are coming back from injury? Assuming that someone like Urbina has returned to at least most of his old form, is it worth locking in a likely 20k+ pitcher to a long term 11k contract? Or stick with the Rotation? Mike | |||||
| 9 | kev ID: 36925310 Sun, Mar 04, 13:50 |
Madman, great posting- thanks. Last year was my first at Swirve baseball, and I learned a lot over the year about rotation. The point I agree whole heartedly with is how with Sync. Rotation, if you make a mistake (a guy gets injured) it wont kill you. With normal rotation, if you lock in a guy, for over 2 weeks, and he gets injured, your in big trouble. The only think I question is having enough cap room. Yes, over the year, you will find pitchers that are way underpriced, but as the year goes on, if they keep on performing well, the price will rise- same with the all star hitters you were talking about. Is it possible to rotate those players with still staying under the daily cap? Doing the SyncRo would make it hard to pick up on the Pedro and Randy starts all the time, while still trying to nab a all star slugger or 2. Im just wondering if prices going up might really hinder this process? | |||||
| 10 | Madman ID: 146191423 Sun, Mar 04, 18:19 |
Rolodex I'd have to take the relievers one by one . . . In general, any pitcher is a real danger for a long-lock in. With that said, very cheap pitchers may justify a short-term lock of some sort -- but they've got to be at least 80% more productive than their price indicates. And that's just the beginning. In the case of Urbina, he costs 11K. Let's say he produces like Rivera this season. Rivera scored just under 2200 points. 2200 points for a starter is going to cost you about 25-26K (actually some starters only cost 23K in this region. I'm being conservative here.). This means that Urbina would be worth almost 130% more than you'd pay for him -- easily clearing the 80% hurdle I talked about before. But you must weigh two additional factors before making this a no-brainer. 1) to really benefit from this, there's a serious injury risk -- you won't be able to sell him if he starts to blow up or hits the DL. 2) You must be able to spend the remainder of your cap very efficiently. Buying 25K starters will score you 4200+ points with that roster slot (roughly a 43K pitcher -- note that 43K is 72% higher than 25K -- this is where my figure of being roughly 80% undervalued comes from). Urbina will score you 2200. I MIGHT rather have 25K spent at an 80% mark-down rather than 11K spent at a 130% mark-down. It all depends on how effectively I can spend that additional 14K. By buying Urbina, you don't have to spend that additional 14K as wisely as if you did pitcher rotations. But you still have to spend it wisely (in this case, that 14K must get you 2000 points. The market rate for hitters has 2000 points costing about 19K. Therefore, you must find UNDERVALUED offensive hitters to "afford" an Urbina). Clear as mud, I'm afraid. My point here is that the 80% hurdle is a pre-requisite. But in practice, I'd demand that relievers and even cheap starters be much, much more underpriced than that. ------------------------------ kev This is an extremely important question -- will cheap pitchers continue to exist? If not, will cheap hitters continue to pop up? I dunno. In essence, this is the whole game. If you think that they will not, then it's clear you must lock in the deals right away. If you think that they will, then a synchronized rotation will keep your flexibility (afterall, when the new bargains pop up, you could always choose to lock them). And I haven't played around yet with real numbers to determine the practicality of the synched rotation. But I would point out that I thought of it explicity to ensure the ability to pick up RJ or Pedro all the time. This will require TREMENDOUS skill and planning. This is why I'm developing some spreadsheet tools to help plan rotations. But here's what I'm thinking. With 15 rosters slots, you can lock 1 super cheapie down (or not play a catcher or something). This leaves 14 spots. For simplicity, let's say you do 7 pairs. Let's make it so that you have 3 65K pairs and 4 47.5K pairs. If you plan ahead, there's a very good chance that you can always field a 65K pair when Pedro comes up to pitch . . . At any rate, if you split them up like this, you'll likely have 1 All-Star hitter (with a 65K pair), and perhaps several adequate hitters (20-30K range) with the 47.5K pairs. . . Early in the season, you will likely be able to find several 15-20K hitters, meaning that your pitchers will be of better quality. Later in the year, I would anticipate the reverse. . . If you get fancy, you might be able to pair 3 pitchers with 3 hitters in such a way as to get 2 cheap hitters and 1 All-Star, or whatever. The combinations are almost endless. Also note that Pedro is costly in the sense that he often pitches on a 6 day cycle. This means that you lost 20% of a start from someone else, and you have to down-grade your hitters an extra day, just to get a Pedro start . . . This game is tricky . . . In general, I'm not too worried about overall price inflation. Afterall, pitchers who have great first halves are generally poor bets for the second half, and vice versa. In many ways, a budget constraint will force you to be "counter-cyclical" in a positive fashion with pitchers. At the very least, I think synchronized rotations will be necessary to carry you through "dead periods" where no obvious lock-in candidates exist. . . Good comments. Bear in mind that I don't have definitive answers. This is all "thinking out loud". I wouldn't be surprised if an alternative strategy jumps out at some point . . . | |||||
| 11 | Rolodex ID: 1723021 Mon, Mar 05, 05:43 |
Great points on cases like Urbina, Madman. I think cases like this would be ideal for people who would like to have one less Synchronized pitcher to worry about every week, but as you said it is a big chance to take. A lot of the strategy will rely on the questions you asked, obviously, if cheap hitters and pitchers will continue to pop up during the season. If they do, then season long lockins are definitely not the way to go, although semi-long lockins would still be viable if the cheap hitters and pitchers don't come in bunches. If the cheap hitters and pitchers do not pop up very often, then longer lockins for hitters(and maybe cases of pitchers like Urbina) can and probably will make or break a team. I think I just repeated a lot of already said strategy. Sorry for rambling. peace yo, Rolodex | |||||
| 12 | Madman ID: 146191423 Mon, Mar 05, 13:23 |
You are apologizing to me for rambling?!? LOL!! If the Guru put a $0.00001 fee on every word I've written in this forum, he could retire early . . . wait, he is retired :) . . . -- Madman, the Rambler | |||||
| 13 | Rolodex ID: 1723021 Mon, Mar 05, 15:21 |
I believe this is the strategy that I will utilise at the beginning of the season. Several semi-long term contracts on position players who are cheap and just gained their starting jobs during spring training. Possible examples might be Rollins, Ortiz, Suzuki, and others. I haven't yet decided on exact length of the contracts, but I will probably stagger them between 20 and 90 days depending on how well they played during spring training. Add a few pitchers whom are either coming back from injuries or changing from a relieving role to starting. Possible examples might be Urbina and Morris. These will take up the bulk of my lineup, BUT I will still have room to Synchronise 5 stud starting pitchers with around the same amount of stud position players, and have the cap room to do it since the players who aren't Synchronized will only be between the costs of 3k and 20k. And hopefully by the time my staggered long lockin contracts are running out there will be new cheap position players to replace them at around the same price. Thus, I am hoping to get the best of both worlds, of long lockins and synchronized changes, with minimized chances of being hurt by the long lockins by staggering the lengths with regards to skill and endurance. I have never played fantasy baseball before, but this sounds like it would work to me. Maybe someone with a bit more experience, like Madman, can give some better insight on this. Mike | |||||
| 14 | biliruben ID: 3502218 Thu, Mar 08, 12:45 |
butt | |||||
| 15 | kentucky indians ID: 291101719 Thu, Mar 15, 20:11 |
I was a rookie last year and loved the Swirve game. I finished around 250th for the year and used the "sync-rotation." It will definitely work again this year. The two wildcard spots will be a 6th and 7th starter. Don't even think about putting hitters there. I have been stuggling, however, with what to do with my hitters -- specifically what length of contract to use. Pitchers it is obvious, you sign them to 5 day contracts and pay whatever the market rate is for the sixth day and then rotate to another starter. My intuition tells me that with the hitters I want 30,60 and maybe a 90 day contract to lock in the cheap prices and free my money for the "stud" pitchers. Full-season contracts are way too risky (injuries) but I want to keep the bulk of my money for pitching. Then I also noticed that Toronto is the only team to play 9 games in the first ten days so I start considering a Carlos Delgado for a 10 day contract to start the season and use the stars to take advantage of schedules with my hitters. Any thoughs??? | |||||
| 17 | j o s h ID: 502211516 Fri, Mar 16, 07:49 |
the "sync-rotation" is 100% imho! With no concern over getting this years edition of Shoney. I have to remind myself that I'm not worried about efficiency. Get all the studs you can and worry about hitting later. Sign them to shorter term contracts so you can rotate hitters in coors....etc......I think this game will be played almost exactly as it was prior to the efficiency format... with a few minor tweaks. If there is a bargain basement hitter- I may want to lock him in to a longer term contract..Gonzo comes to mind playing in Clevland where he loves to hit. BUTT- if he breaks a bone and you have him signed to a long term deal. (ouch) | |||||
| 18 | Madman ID: 29246911 Fri, Mar 16, 14:49 |
kentucky indians You'll definitely want to play the schedules for hitters. I'm very close to finishing up a "compact" version of my Excel Swirve training program. It has a function that is exceptionally handy -- it calculates your "committed" cap reserves for the upcoming 14 days, as well as listing the upcoming schedules for everyone on your roster. Right now, I'm probably going to use that feature a ton. . . Hopefully, I'll release the program this weekend (you can also extend/buy contracts for any length greater than 5, so you can get around the 6 day rotation issue). j o s h No way I'm signing someone like Gonzo long-term! Serious OUCH. | |||||
| 19 | j o s h ID: 462391614 Fri, Mar 16, 18:25 | and neither will I......I will probably just rotate hitters based on schedule who's hot and not and gut- | |||||
| 20 | kev ID: 36925310 Sun, Mar 18, 23:06 |
I am trying 2 strats- one, with long term contracts on bargain hitters, the other with short term, mega rotation. As the season goes on, its going to be hard to get all the big hitters you want- and if you are rotating pitchers, wanting all the studs, you wont get studs at your hitter positions too- that is why they have a cap. | |||||
| 21 | beastiemiked ID: 430122212 Thu, Mar 29, 21:39 |
BUTT Great info guys. | |||||
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