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2013 Fantasy Baseball: Shortstop Projections and Introducing “Roto Rating”

Source: Rob Carr/Getty Images North America
Source: Rob Carr/Getty Images North America

This is a sneak preview of our projections series. We will be posting a series of articles in which we project the roto stats for all players who could be useful in mixed leagues. These articles will be available to those who subscribe to our premium content via our “Front Office” package. You can subscribe to the “Front Office” package here.

Big thanks to my buddy Brian Sager (@TheRealSAG) for helping me develop this idea and for talking through the whole thought process with me.

When analyzing a player’s Fangraphs page, you sort of automatically project the stats that you think the player will have in the upcoming season. But because you can’t memorize loose projections for 300+ players, you have to repeatedly go back to a player’s page and go through the mental process of projecting them again. But as a service to our premium content subscribers, I have decided to do the projections myself and make them available on the site.

The first step in the process is simply to project a range of possible outcomes for each player while assuming he plays a full season. To project those possible outcomes I use a variety of stats. To project batting average I factor in plate discipline skills (K%, BB%, Contact%, Swing%, Z-swing%, O-Swing%) and batted ball profiles (LD%, GB%, FB%).  To predict home runs I again use the batted ball profiles as well as HR/FB rate from past years. To predict runs, RBI and steals I consider past performance in those categories, stolen base success rate, and where a player will be hitting in the lineup. I also used 155 games as my standard “full season” to account for regular days off and the occasional day-to-day injury. For example, here is my projection for Troy Tulowitzki assuming he plays 155 games:

Name

G

PA

AVG

HR

SB

R

RBI

Troy Tulowitzki

155

661

.292-.298

26-30

7.0-10

83-89

92-98

 

But you can’t assume all players are going to play 155 games, especially Tulo. So the next step is to approximate how many games you think the player will miss and then fill in those games missed with the stats of the type of guy you might find on the waiver wire. To find that replacement level, I made the assumption that in a 12-team mixed league there would be about 18 shortstops owned at any given time (12 in SS slots, 6 in MI slots). I then took the stats from the shortstops that finished 17-21 on ESPN’s player rater last year and averaged their stats. I used 17-21 since the median is 19. And I used a sample of five players to give me a balanced stat line. A replacement level guy at shortstop will give you the following stat line over 155 games:

Category

AVG

HR

SB

R

RBI

Stats

0.250

13

7

66

54

 

The next step is to take the stats you think you’ll get from a player for the amount of games you project him to play once you factor in injury risk. For example, I projected Tulo for 135 games, so I multiplied all my projections for him by 0.87 (135 games is 87% of 155 games). Then I took my replacement level stat line and multiplied all those numbers by the remaining 0.13. Then you add those two numbers together to get the final stat line you’d expect to get from 135 games from Tulo and 20 games from a replacement level player. Tulo’s projections after accounting for injury risk and a replacement player look like this:

Name

G

PA

AVG

HR

SB

R

RBI

Troy Tulowitzki

155

661

.292-.298

26-30

7.0-10

83-89

92-98

Tulo + Replacement

135

576

0.289

26

8

83

89

 

After I got my final stat line, I decided to come up with a formula to use the projections to do rankings. This system I came up with is admittedly crude, but I think it does a pretty decent job of ranking the players.

I plan on ranking 200 hitters, so I took the 200 hitters with the most plate appearances last season and created tiers for each roto category. For example, 20 guys hit above .307 last year. The next 20 guys hit between .293 and .306. So if I projected a guy to hit .308, I assigned him 10 points for average. If I projected him to hit between .293 and .306, I assigned him nine points, etc, etc. Because I projected ranges, I used the midpoint to see which tier someone fit into. I projected Starlin Castro to hit between .288 and .302. The midpoint there was .295. That fell within the second tier so I assigned Castro nine points for average. Below are the tiers I used:

 

AVG HR SB R RBI
10 >.307 >31 >29 >93 >97
9 .293-.306 25-30 20-28 86-92 86-96
8 .286-.292 23-24 14-19 81-85 78-85
7 .275-.285 19-22 11.0-13.0 74-80 72-77
6 .270-.274 16-18 7.0-10.0 69-73 65-71
5 .260-.269 14-15 5.0-6.0 65-68 59-64
4 .250-.259 12.0-13.0 3.0-4.0 59-64 55-58
3 .241-.249 9.0-11.0 2 54-58 49-54
2 .229-.240 6.0-8.0 1 47-53 40-48
1 <.229 <6 0 <46 <39

 

After I assigned a player a point total for each individual category I added them all up and gave each player a score which I am calling their “Roto Rating.” For the record, the replacement level stat line for shortstops in 12-team mixed leagues had a Roto Rating of 24. Below are the projections and Roto Ratings for my top 25 shortstops. Enjoy!

Name

G

PA

AVG

HR

SB

R

RBI

Roto Rating

Troy Tulowitzki

155

661

.292-.298

26-30

7.0-10

83-89

92-98

Tulo + Replacement

135

576

0.289

26

8

83

89

Roto Rating

8

9

6

8

9

40

Jose Reyes

155

712

.291-.296

9.0-12.0

31-38

94-102

58-64

Reyes + Replacement

135

620

0.287

11

31

94

61

Roto Rating

8

4

10

10

5

37

Starlin Castro

155

660

.288-.302

12.0-14.0

22-26

73-77

78-86

Roto Rating

9

4

9

7

8

37

Hanley Ramirez

155

660

.255-.270

20-23

19-23

74-82

84-90

Hanley + Replacement

148

639

0.261

21

20

77

84

Roto Rating

5

7

9

7

8

36

Ian Desmond

155

625

.268-.276

15-18

19-23

68-72

74-79

Roto Rating

6

6

9

6

7

34

Jimmy Rollins

155

712

.252-.258

14-18

24-28

80-86

58-62

Rollins + Replacement

148

680

0.254

15

25

82

59

Roto Rating

4

5

9

8

5

31

Elvis Andrus

155

668

.275-.281

3.0-5.0

24-32

86-92

58-62

Roto Rating

7

1

9

9

5

31

Asdrubal Cabrera

155

676

.276-.284

14-16

8.0-12.0

70-76

72-78

Cabrera + Replacement

148

646

0.266

14

9

72

74

Roto Rating

5

5

6

6

7

29

Alcides Escobar

155

635

.273-.279

4.0-5.0

30-34

72-78

54-58

Roto Rating

7

1

10

7

4

29

Erick Aybar

155

647

.274-.282

8.0-10.0

18-24

72-78

48-54

Aybar + Replacement

142

593

0.275

9

20

74

52

Roto Rating

7

3

9

7

3

29

Josh Rutledge

155

632

.255-.261

14-16

15-18

70-75

62-68

Rutledge + Replacement

142

579

0.257

15

16

72

64

Roto Rating

4

5

8

6

5

28

Derek Jeter

155

682

.286-.294

7.0-10

7.0-10

78-86

58-66

Jeter + Replacement

135

594

0.284

9

8

80

61

Roto Rating

7

3

6

7

5

28

Andrelton Simmons

155

660

.278-.292

3.0-5.0

10.0-16.0

70-84

52-56

Roto Rating

7

1

7

7

3

25

J.J. Hardy

155

651

.254-.262

20-23

0

70-76

65-69

Hardy + replacement

135

567

0.256

20

0

72

65

Roto Rating

4

7

1

6

6

24

Zack Cozart

155

575

.254-.262

14-16

7.0-11.0

56-62

60-64

Cozart + Replacment

142

525

0.257

14

8

63

61

Roto Rating

4

5

6

4

5

24

Stephen Drew

155

625

.248-.256

14-17

4.0-6

60-64

72-78

Drew + Replacement

120

480

0.251

15

5

63

70

Roto Rating

4

5

5

4

6

24

Rafael Furcal

155

695

.258-.264

5.0-8

11.0-15

72-80

48-54

Furcal + Replacement

105

471

0.256

9

11

79

52

Roto Rating

4

3

7

7

3

24

Everth Cabrera

155

641

.248-.256

2.0-3.0

44-50

62-68

38-46

Cabrera + replacement

135

559

0.251

4

42

65

44

Roto Rating

4

1

10

6

2

23

Jurickson Profar

155

610

.264-.276

10.0-14

10.0-15

60-66

62-68

Profar + Replacement

120

475

0.265

12

11

64

62

Roto Rating

5

4

7

4

5

23

Hiroyuki Nakajima

155

626

.265-.271

6.0-9.0

8.0-14

60-66

58-64

Roto Rating

5

2

7

4

5

23

Jean Segura

155

589

.268-.274

3.0-6

24-28

60-66

50-54

Segura + Replacement

142

540

0.269

5

24

63

52

Roto Rating

5

1

9

4

3

22

Alexei Ramirez

155

615

.262-.268

10.0-12.0

11.0-14.0

58-64

66-70

Roto Rating

5

3

5

4

5

22

Yunel Escobar

155

650

.261-.268

6.0-8

3.0-6

66-74

50-56

Escobar + Replacement

142

595

0.263

7

5

69

53

Roto Rating

5

2

5

6

3

21

Jhonny Peralta

155

585

.256-.264

13-15

0

60-65

64-68

Peralta + Replacement

148

558

0.259

14

0

62

65

Roto Rating

4

5

1

4

6

20

Adeiny Hechavarria

155

590

.246-.258

6.0-7

7.0-11

46-54

48-52

Hech + Replacement

135

514

0.251

7

9

52

51

Roto Rating

4

2

6

2

3

17

Jed Lowrie

155

590

.250-.256

11.0-15.0

1

52-58

50-54

Lowrie + replacement

120

457

0.252

13

1

57

52

Roto Rating

4

4

2

3

3

16

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2013 Fantasy Baseball Shortstop Rankings: Low End SS Options

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