The MVP way

There's the old way of making player decisions--the way things have always been done. And now there's the MVP way.

The Expert's Way

Yesterday, Eric Samulski posted an article on NBC Sports titled, "Fantasy baseball hitter add/drops: Time to move on from Yainer Diaz, add Moises Ballesteros?". This article is, in my opinion, a pretty good example of The Expert's Way.

Here's what it does:

• Start with advanced stats - The article uses a list of advanced metric criteria (hard-hit rate, chase rate, etc.) to identify a list of players who are swinging the bat well and a list of those who aren't.
• Use intuition to evaluate players - Eric takes those lists, and gives some off-the-cuff evaluations for which struggling players should be dropped, shopped, or kept. (There must be another word that ends with -opped, but I'm blanking on it.)

I'm not really criticizing this method. If you're a knowledgeable fantasy player with good intuition (and Eric is), it will lead to good results.

However, I'd argue that its usefulness is mostly limited to the fantasy one percenters--those with a strong intuition around the current player pool. The rest of us would benefit from a bit more systematic process.

The MVP Way

The alternative to The Expert's Way is The MVP Way.

MVP gives you three key metrics:

1. A preseason dollar value
2. A year-to-date dollar value
3. A rest-of-season dollar value

Those three values provide a clear path to making in-season decisions.

The MVP Way gives us a bright line in each metric: $0. If a player's preseason value is negative, they probably shouldn't be on your roster. If a player's rest-of-season value drops below that and into the red, he's a likely drop candidate.

This bright line takes our league depth into account. In a deeper league,

Let's take the players who showed up on Eric's list for poor batting metrics. Here are their values in a standard ESPN 5x6 league:

Player | Preseason $ | YTD $ | ROS $

Yainer Diaz | $3 | -$21 | $2
Jose Cabellero | -$31 | $7 | -$48
Colson Montgomery | -$15 | -$11 | -$15
Willi Castro | -$6 | -$10 | -$14
Heliot Ramos | $1 | -$21 | -$12
Salvador Perez | $17 | -$22 | $16
Jarren Duran | $11 | -$5 | -$3
Samuel Basallo | -$12 | -$21 | $1
Ezequiel Tovar | $6 | -$12 | $2
Rafael Devers | $18 | -$16 | $15

A couple of very basic observations:

• Except for Cabellero, no one has (so far) lived up to their preseason expectation. That tracks with our understanding that these are players struggling at the plate.
• Except for Basallo and Montgomery, each of the hitters has lost some value going from their preseason projection to their rest-of-season projection. That also makes sense if they are struggling and Steamer has noticed. Many of the drops in value are in the $1-4 range.

Projections never liked Cabellero, but his 8 SB have him as a positive contributor even in a shallow league like this one. A useful lesson: Don't rely on advanced metrics to determine fantasy value.

What does The MVP Way say about these players?

• Devers, Perez, Diaz, and Tovar are holds even in the shallowest of leagues. They've seen their value slip only slightly based on their poor starts. However, Diaz and Tovar have sunk into single digits and it's very possible that MVP would identify a superior waiver wire option in a league like this one.
• Castro and Montgomery should never have been on your radar in shallow leagues, but their value has been mostly steady in the formats they were relevant in. My AL/NL-only leagues are a little weirder in their scoring, but MVP has Montgomery at ($8/$1/$7) in my AL-only and Castro at ($11/-$1/$7) in my NL-only. So, same story: Hold in applicable leagues, but with possible replacements available.
• Duran and Ramos have lost a considerable amount of value, slipping into negative territory. In a shallow league like this, they are drops. (In my only-leagues, they've still got a long ways before they reach $0.)
• Cabellero shouldn't be rostered in any league unless you are desparate for SB and willing to lose value elsewhere.

Since our $0 bright line shifts based on league size, The MVP Way gives league-tailored decisions. In Eric's article, he suggests dropping Montgomery and Castro. MVP provides a more precise answer: You should never have drafted them in a shallow league, while they are still worth holding in leagues where they were worth drafting.

The MVP Way isn't going to give guaranteed results, of course. When we get to the end of the season, we'll very likely discover that some of those holds having a bad start were actually on their way to a bad season. But it does give us non-experts a framework for better evaluating players.