UPL Baseball Keepers: Forget Everything You Knew (Or Not)

2010 UPL Baseball taught us something. Everything that you thought you knew may have been wrong. Sure, last year, my predictions had the O.N. Thugs and Phatsnapper being good. The Phatsnapper call was only a minor reach (7th place in 2009, but suffered from lack of managerial interest). But where in the world did Hats for Bats and JimmyDix come from? They were tied for 10th in 2009, and were projected to be 7th or 8th place teams in 2010. And what happened to the '90 Reds, IamJabrone, and Westy's Sluggers (the podium from 2009)? They finished 6th, 5th, and 9th, respectively.

It turns out that in the new UPL, there's a lot of variance in the 2nd year of a keeper league. And if I had to guess, we'll see some more movement across the next couple seasons, before things settle a little bit. But what we're finding is that even in a keeper league with deep keeper rosters, things can be shaken up a lot.

Part of it was the influx of impact rookies and 2nd year players, which seemed to play a much larger role than in previous years. And it just so happened that the 3 teams that made big leaps upward were all a big part of the youth movement. And it seems that sticking with a team full of middling veterans is instantaneous death. So questions that emerge are 1) at what stage do you play the prospect game, and 2) how do you play the prospect game.

The first stage is where conventional wisdom may need to be reconsidered. The standard thought process is that if you're playing to win a championship, you want a solid veteran keeper base, and then you draft to round out your stats. Given that the average performance is going to be high, the goal is to minimize variance in your keeper performance. This is the O.N. Thugs' continual modus operandi. And this was probably the basic strategy we saw from a number of teams in 2010.

However, if there are game changing prospects, the level of fantasy impact can be remarkably high. For example, look at a stat category like HR. In the UPL, the number of HR a team will hit ranges from about 150 to about 250. This is across 1620 games played (10 starters). Now, compare this to basketball, where the category with the lowest rate is either 3PM or STL, which range from like 400 to 800 or so, across 820 games played. Relatively speaking, this means that there's roughly about 6 times more variance in HR (and even more so in SB and much more so in W, L, and SV). The conventional wisdom used to be that stats even out over 162 games. But the amount of variance in some stat categories can change the landscape. So the "certainty" that veteran-oriented teams bank on can be turned upside-down with one player. For example, last year Jose Bautista shows up on the scene and swings HR by about 40 or so (and RBI, R, and SLG to a lesser degree), and from out of nowhere, swings about 10 fantasy points for Hats for Bats, the eventual runner up, and changes how the teams at the top competed, tactically. Now Bautista wasn't a "prospect" at 30 years old, but the impact of those players that come from "nowhere" can't be overstated. When I say "nowhere" what I mean is without major league performance pedigree. And the major source of these players is the minors, i.e., prospects.

I think that the story is that more teams should be looking at "rebuilding" with prospects (or other players coming out of nowhere). But when does a team look to minimize variance, and when does a team look to roll the dice? Oddly enough, my take on this used to be that if you look at your team, and you see that your average expected performance would be a top-half team, then you'd try to minimize variance, and then try to make the moves in free agency that rounds out the team. Now, I'm not sure that top-half is good enough. I'd almost say that if you're going to try to minimize variance, you should have the look of a top-3 team. If your keeper base doesn't have a clear look of a podium team, then you're in "rebuilding" mode. But rebuilding doesn't mean that you're necessarily punting on the season, as the amount of variance involved in a number of categories (HR, SB, W, L, SV) can really swing a season. And the impact of draft picks, which was originally assumed to be marginal, is actually big. In some sense, the first round of the draft is the 19th round. But it's only the 19th round, if you take an established veteran. It also gives you the chance to get a 14th round caliber veteran off of a good team (which has some value), but it also gives you the chance for a future top-4 round caliber player, as well. So I think that more teams should be playing the prospect game to a greater extent.

With regard to how to play the prospect game, a big part of it seems to be via the trade. Going full on with prospects, and figuring out how to move them, seems to be one play here. This lets you improve your keeper base when you get a little lucky with some prospects. And gives you a better shot of getting really lucky and finding a franchise cornerstone with the next Pujols (who was an "out of nowhere" guy as a 21-year old back in 2001). And this makes sense for the teams that are in the lower tier of the league. In some sense, this is what Phatsnapper did in the initial UPL Baseball keeper draft, going young over and over.

But even playing from the top of the league in a more traditional sense, the prospect game matters. But it's less of a massive movement to youth, but more of a selective game. Trying to get younger, even by a couple years is an important aspect of this game, but so is picking up some very young players, and letting them become trade chips or potential back-end keepers. Even the O.N. Thugs, who have traditionally been associated with veteran players, have been active in building youth into the roster in a systematic way.

In doing this, of course, drafting matters. But so does moving players with trades. But that does lead to some uncertainty. The trading of prospects seems to be something that the league hasn't quite settled on, as evidenced by the Wieters for Cano trade that didn't draw any comments and the Smoak/Scutaro for Weaver/Stanton trade that was vetoed (and subsequently led to a revamping of the league's protest rules).* But the teams that did well last year all were involved in prospect-oriented trades, as buyers or sellers. The upshot is that standing pat, and trying to do thing completely internally probably isn't as likely to work as it has in the past. And gone are the days where completely veteran teams steamroll the rest of the league. Of course, all this could change if there are two or three seasons that are full of rookie duds...

-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)

*Sort of an aside: One common theme of the UPL, which has been railed against by some owners, was the prevention of rip-off trades via veto. The intent was to keep some balance in the league, and to maintain an atmosphere of fair play across the board. The major protest against this came from folks like Phatsnapper, who maintained that part of the fun of fantasy was ripping off other owners in trades. In my mind, this created a more conservative, but consistent playing field. The commish watched over the field, and the field watched over the commish (with protests able to overturn any of the commish's trades). The major concern with the new protest system (requiring more protests than approvals, with a minimum of 4 protests needed to overturn) is that this no longer becomes a level playing field.

From a selfish perspective, this becomes messy for the O.N. Thugs, as it seems that this system will drive up the cost of trades for the O.N. Thugs more than other teams. This was evidenced by the Cabrera for Chapman/Nathan/Bard/Posey trade. In short, it took 4 likely keepers to get the Miggy trade done, and it was still officially protested by at least one owner and concerns voiced by others. On the other hand, there were no voices at all for the Smoak/Weaver trade, largely because of the teams involved (who were perceived as bottom-tier teams). It will be short jump to seeing how this setup could handcuff trades involving teams that are successful. Given the poor ability of evaluating teams (and the amount of variance that we saw last year), it's a bit of a concern on my end. We'll see if this ends up being a symmetrical landscape, or if this will lead to some permanent biases. But this ends up being a potential game changer for bottom-tier teams, as the trade waters are loaded for them, and playing the prospect game (where valuations can swing wildly) can be good.