Fantasy Baseball and the Theory of the Arbitrary (Part 2)

You might ask to look at projections for the forthcoming 2011 season. Here are those, from two different reputable sources:

    * Player A, Projection #1: 23 HR, 82 RBI, 86 R, 18 SB, ..287 AVG

    * Player A, Projection #2: 22 HR, 75 RBI, 76 R, 16 SB, .280 AVG

    * Player B, Projection #1: 18 HR, 77 RBI, 81 R, 25 SB, .280 AVG

    * Player B, Projection #2: 20 HR, 82 RBI, 82 R, 28 SB, .275 AVG

What to make of these lines? Well, they are pretty close. On a value calculator, Player B’s edge in speed probably outweighs Player A’s slight edge in power. Regardless, is there anything in the projections that scream that one player should be tabbed with the 39th pick and the other with the 64th pick? No, of course not.

We still don’t have enough information to form a reasonable assessment or to understand what’s driving these valuations by others. Perhaps one player is on the heels of his career while the other is on the upswing. Maybe one team is surrounded by lots of talented teammates and the other shoulders the burden of winning himself. So here’s a qualitative assessment of the context for each of these players:

    * Player A is young and plays for a team that had fewer wins last year than the Kansas City Royals. The team is in the midst of rebuilding and this player has been mentioned as a trade candidate.

    * Player B isn’t young, but isn’t yet 30 yet, and plays for a team that had about as many wins last season as the Boston Red Sox. The team is competitive and has signed free agent superstars this off-season. This player has also made the All Star team twice in his career.

Click Here For The Identities Of These 2 Players.

 ...let’s start out this year by questioning our assumptions and realizing the degree to which arbitrariness gets factored into price. There are things we can and can’t control in fantasy sports competitions. Nobody has an oracle that predict with 100 percent accuracy what’s going to happen in the following year. But on the other hand, if you embrace the Theory of the Arbitrary, you can at times come upon instances where the crowd has reached its pricing point thanks to some elusive, intangible factor.