Fantasy Inflation for Dummies

I am going to submit the following essay to the committee evaluating candidates for the Nobel Prize in Economics. This begins our analysis of the 2006 BABI auction results. This will be Long.

To remind you all of how we approach player valuation before the draft, 180 hitters and 120 pitchers are assigned 2 values: a “PECK” value, representing our evaluation of what the player is worth, and an “INF” value. The total of both values of 300 players is 3,360, with our allocation of 2,280 to the 180 hitters and 1,080 to the 120 pitchers.

Every keeper’s INF value is his contract price. We then allocate the rest of the money to the remaining players in a sort of pro-rata basis, but with a little more allocated to the top guys and a little less to the bottom guys. The purpose of the INF value is to get an idea of how much players will probably go for in the draft, factoring in inflation.

For the unkept players, the INF value is higher than the PECK value. Always. For the keepers, for the most part the PECK value exceeds the INF value. For these players, there is the great Pickled Equation:

PECK – INF = Keeper Profit

The 2006 formula was:

1,756-1,108=648

Simple so far.

Conclusions:

1) There was 3,360 in value purchased (we don’t believe in negative numbers).
2) There was 1,604 (3,360-1,756) value purchased for the remaining 2,252 (3,360-1,108) to be spent.
3) The average purchase price was 40.4% overpriced (2,252/1,604).

Ouch.

This was way more than last year, and more than any inflation in memory, though I’ve only been keeping this information since 2005.

The result? Albert Pujols, $59. Another result? Cory Lidle, $11.

The pre-draft profit was higher for hitters than pitchers. Traditionally, there isn’t that much inflation in pitchers, but we had so many cheap closers kept (Turnbow, Gonzalez, Fuentes, Reitsma, Valverde, Hoffman), that there was much more pitcher profit than in the past.

DISCLAIMER: These are OUR values. We get that. We can be wrong. And the result of our analysis is that our team will look better than it really is, and everyone else will look worse than they really are. We get it. We get it. We get it. Don’t Eddie Kuhl us on this.

But we’ve got to start somewhere.
The pre-draft profit by team was as follows:

Falkuhns – 87
Cappers – 84
Old Rips – 78 (would have been higher without the pitching deals)
Cartel – 77
Bums – 76
Hobo – 58
Pounders – 52 (mostly Zambrano and Turnbow)
Bats - 51
Busch – 46 (not bad after a dozen consecutive championships)
Pecklers – 28 (left it on the field last year)
Lickers – 8 (I never understood that deal with Hobo)
Any 9 – Minus 3. (Sorry. We don’t think much of Vargas.)

Here are the post-auction results, and I guess, our evaluation of the standings on April 1. Keep in mind this doesn’t take into account that Klesko had surgery or that Barry appears to stink, or any of the myriad of stuff we’ve learned since April 1.

Bums – 36
Cartel – 25
Falkuhns – 24 (before Gagne went down)
Old Rips – 22
Cappers – 18
Bats – 8
Hobo – EVEN STEVEN (minus 14 on Pujols)

And the minus teams:

Busch – minus 2 (minus 10 on Lidle)
Pecklers – minus 9 (probably really minus $39)
Pounders – minus 17
Lickers – minus 26 (remarkably small movement, only 34)
Any 9 – minus…get ready for this…minus 67

I’m not picking on Kenny 9 because his team really stinks and we know that now. I sent him an email after the draft that said we rated him last by a mile.

Looking at that bottom group, the Lickers are 4th today. The other 4 teams comprise 4 of the bottom 5 teams along with the Falkuhns, who wasted $30 on Gagne.

Some individual team thoughts:

So we picked the Bums to win? Well, they still have to manage their team, but we thought they did a fine job on draft day. We liked Hudson at 26 (PECK 23, INF 30) and we were big fans of Odalis Perez at 16 (PECK 10, INF 19, but we wanted him). The only players they seemed to go too high on were Hairston at 12 (4,6, but that may have been because things weren’t clear about the Cubs at 2nd base on April 1) and Corey Hart at 9 (we like him, and they may have been flush with cash at the time, but that was a bit much). I wish we had bought Sweeney as our corner instead of Jose Hernandez.

Cartel only overspent a lot on Arthur Rhodes (we only considered him worth a buck), but with the big investment in Flash Gordon, he can be forgiven. Jack Wilson at 7 was a nice buy (8,12) and we thought at the time Sledge at 1 was a great pickup (2,7). For the most part the Cartel was buying right on our INF numbers. We still don’t get him keeping Tony Armas.

Larry’s a lot worse off than we thought. We had Gagne at PECK 25, INF 29, but we really didn’t believe it. We wanted Baez (we made the penultimate bid.) There was no way we were going to buy Gagne. He’s looking like $30 down the drain. And the Falkuhns just had to have Ryan Madson (7,10) after throwing him back at $8, so he spent 14 on a highly hyped guy. He might work out, but that Bullinger he won last week was pretty ugly. He’s got a lot of young guys with good stuff on his staff, but he spent a lot on that staff. We show him with a big loss on pitching and an even bigger gain in hitting. But that pitching loss is before Gagne went down…it’s a lot bigger than we originally thought.

Dan Wheeler was the only player that went well beyond our numbers for the Rips, though that may be because we wanted Finley so much. Boof paid 9 for Wheeler (2,5) but he can be forgiven for fishing for protection for Lidge. That said, we don’t see a single player purchased at a real profit at the auction. Not one. Usually you get somebody at a profit.

George needs to read this inflation piece. The Cappers are unwilling to overspend, until he’s got nothing but money for no value at all. Sorry George, but we were all talking about it at the breaks. That said, you chased Adrian Gonzalez and Jeff Davanon, and those are looking like pretty good picks right now. You should trade for Klesko to protect Gonzalez. That said, I can’t forgive purchasing Sidney Ponson at any price.

The Old Bat chased Willingham and Rowand $3 beyond our INFL numbers, but they were the kind of players you could expect overspending on. The Doc liked Zach Duke more than I did, but he went about where we projected. Actually, Barry’s numbers are pretty much right on ours.

We had Pujols at 45, 55, (we jumped the bidding right to 50) so 59 Hobo’s bid is not looking outrageous. They way he’s playing, it’s looking damn cheap. We didn’t get the Freddy Sanchez purchase at 6, or Matt Diaz at $4 (maybe they just had to get rid of their money). Noel only overspent our INF numbers on Suppan (by 2), but we gave him a $1 real profit and $6 INFL profit on Jorge Sosa, which isn’t looking so good right now. Craig Wilson for $9 was their best pick.

Mr. Leaguer knows more about pitching than we do. He also knows more about hitting and baseball in general. We admit this. But we had Cory Lidle at PECK 1, INFL 3. The spirited bidding ending with his $11 bid is just off our charts. We could be wrong, but we’ve got him down for a minus 10 on the deal. For a closer, Borowski was cheap, but he stinks and he doesn’t look much like a closer for long. He’s the guy who outbid us for Ryan Sheely (Helton went down, and they didn’t bring him up today, heh, heh, heh), but as much as we wanted Sheely (we bid the 7), we only had him at PECK 2, INFL 2.

I love the Lickers’ cheap staff. Actually, I don’t like it at all, but I like the attempt. There were no major mistakes (Saenz was high, but they probably had the money at the end for him, and he WAS better than Jose Hernandez). Vizquel and Burnitz are old, but they were nice purchases (well below INFL, only 2 above PECK), as was Guillen. We didn’t like 39 on Helton, but that’s just a matter of opinion, I guess. On the other hand, he just went on the DL…

Finally, Any 9. Ken purchased 9 pitchers at the auction. Every one was purchased for more than our INFL price. He spent 81 on his 10 pitchers (including Izzy), and we think he bought $40 of value. That said, Worrell is looking like a bargain. Johnson might actually be something (although that might be a starter, not a closer), and the rest, well who knows? Ken knows pitching, and he watches a lot of baseball, so he’s seen most of these guys a lot more than I have. So what I say may not count.

But I say his staff stinks. And I say it on April 1. It’s looking like I might be right.