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Rotoman Ask Rotoman A Question! 2024 Fantasy Guide Corrections and Updates Page Patton And Co. Baseball Ask Rotoman Answers to fantasy baseball questions (and much more) since 1996 Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2024 Softcover and Kindle versions are out now! February 18, 2024 February 18, 2024 by peter They’re available at Amazon, follow this link . The softcover is $19.99. The Kindle edition is $9.99. Categories Ask Rotoman , Bid prices , data , Guide , Prices , Projections , Prospects , Rotoman $ Values , Rotoman's Guide , Statistics , The Guide Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2024 January 23, 2024 January 23, 2024 by peter It’s here! It’s a lot of player profiles, all written by moi, with projections and bid prices for AL and NL Only leagues, plus price lists by position and a major league multi-eligibility chart. It’s available now! Categories Ask Rotoman , Bid prices , MLB , Prices , Projections , Prospects , Rotoman $ Values , Rotoman's Guide , Statistics 2 Comments There Is No Fantasy Baseball Guide 2023. January 11, 2023 January 11, 2023 by peter Try Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2023 instead. Supply chain, paper costs, inflation, whatever, the magazine’s publisher couldn’t see a way to break even on The Fantasy Baseball Guide 2023 and cancelled it. So welcome to Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2023 , where you’ll find player prices, projections, Rotoman’s Picks and Pans (hundreds of player profiles), a Rookie preview, and position by position cheat sheets. Online. Free subscribers get the newsletters most days. Paid subscribers get the newsletter, special newsletters, and access to the pricing and projections files on Google Sheets. Paid subscribers also get priority attention to their questions and suggestions for profiles. They also get extended access to back issues. Paid annual subscribers also get free member access to PattonandCo.com , our favorite fantasy baseball discussion board. That’s a $36 value. Have a question? Ask Rotoman ! Check out Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2023 . Categories Alex Patton , Ask Rotoman , Bid prices , Guide , Mock Drafts , pattonandco.com , Picks and Pans , Projections , Prospects , Rewriting the Guide How Many Starters? July 21, 2022 July 20, 2022 by peter Dear Rotoman: Currently 2nd place in my NFC league. Punting in Saves, but have been acquiring players for a run at stolen bases, thinking RBIs and HRs will improve in the second half. My question, I am about to embark on a strategy of employing seven starters, and only two relievers, believing my strikeouts will rise, at the risk of jeopardizing my ratios. Is this a reasonable strategy? Starter Heaven Hey SH, The rules of fantasy baseball dictate some things. One important one is that the team with the most at bats will score well in runs and RBIs. Volume matters. Home runs too, in a lot of cases. Pitching is odder. Consider wins random. Ratios are better for relievers than starters overall, but the best starters dominate the ratios. So finding a balance matters. Your question asks where does that balance happen and my answer is there is no answer. I’ve had success in recent years finding cheap pitchers who did well, leading my leagues in innings and the ratio categories. But it can go the other way. The one thing you can count on is that the more innings you post the more strikeouts you’ll put up. Will the ERA and Ratio go up too? Probably, but that isn’t certain. Part of fantasy baseball success is hitting the lucky pockets. Going for quantity and angling for quality is a pretty good strategy, even if it isn’t fool proof. In other words, go for it. But no guarantees. Sincerely, Rotoman Categories Ask Rotoman , Strategy Ask Rotoman: How Do I Value Keepers? March 25, 2022 March 25, 2022 by peter I’m new to an AL-only keeper league.This is the first year we’re keeping players (was a full redraft last year). How does one calculate inflation? In general, when the delta between salary and projection is about the same, should one keep the higher-priced player since the player pool will have fewer five-star players available and their prices will be that much higher? Delta Dawn Dear DD: There is a formula for calculating the inflation rate going into an auction with keepers. I’ve screwed it up enough in the past that I’m going to be careful here, but let’s try this: Take the your total league budget ($3120, traditionally) minus the expected cost of the frozen players, that is their par value, and divide it by the actual cost of the keepers subtracted from $3120. The result is your inflation rate. For instance, let’s say you had $624 worth of talent frozen that was going to cost $312. That gives you $312 of talent that isn’t being paid for. Using the formula above you will have $2808 dollars chasing $2496 worth of players, inflating the price of the remaining available players by 11 percent. That’s in a traditional roto league, with 12 teams on a $260 budget. But simply increasing the bid price of all players by 10 percent isn’t going to reflect how your league spends those inflated dollars. A savvy league will spend the extra money buying the most attractive available players, generally starting pitchers and five-category hitters or the most productive sluggers. When deciding who to keep the question for you is what each player will go for in the auction. If Bo Bichette can be kept at $31 this year and you judge his straight value to be $38 (he earned $40 last year, and he cost $37 and $39 in LABR and Tout Wars respectively) you would have an inflated value of $7. That’s the number that would go into your inflation rate calculation. But on auction day how much will he really go for? A 10 percent bump gets him to $42, but should he stop there? For the best players in a league that understands inflation I think not. Better to spend an extra dollar and get the league’s premiere shortstop than spend an extra dollar to pick up Cavan Biggio at 10 percent over his draft prices of $10. Right? This doesn’t mean you should always keep the more expensive player as your own keep, if both have the same discount this year. Given your team configuration, the quality of your keeps in relation to the quality of other teams, and your strategic approach to this year’s auction, it might make sense to have more money than more tied-up talent, but all other things being equal keeping the rarer talent does make the most sense. One other point. What happens when a league doesn’t understand inflation is that teams marshall their money, don’t spend up for the best players, and end up competing for the middlin’ players when they realize all the choice talent is gone. Or they leave money on the table, unspent and immediately worthless in the usual leagues. (Some leagues have a formula for converting unspent draft dollars into FAAB, which can be a strategic aim but also rewards auction day incompetence.) The fact is, understanding inflation and tracking how it shows up during your auction will give you a terrific edge. It’s well worth figuring out how many inflated dollars there are in your league and then apportioning them to the players you value most in your pre-draft list. Then, during the auction, keep a rough count of how much prices are running ahead or behind your budget. If they’re running ahead you know that bargains are coming, and if they’re running behind it’s time to get shopping. Good luck! Categories Ask Rotoman , Keepers , Strategy Ask Rotoman: Where are you? March 11, 2022 March 11, 2022 by peter Rotoman! Where can I buy the Guide? I can’t find it anywhere in New Jersey. Thanks. Thanks for asking. This is a problem. Something like 125K Guides are printed and shipped to outlets across the country. But moving this amount of physical paper around is inefficient. And given the size of our country and the many retail outlets not all the issues end up where someone wants to buy them. Yes, we like having a physical magazine in our...