Broad Assessment Balance Sheet – March 27 Update
I’m a few days early, but here are the BABS spreadsheets updated for Mixed leagues, with data as of March 26. This will be the final update before Opening Day.
The updated files (both Excel and html online) include the new indicators for on base average. The ADPs and converted dollar values remain those from the NFBC mixed leagues. I have also provided a separate set of balance sheets sorted by position.
Current BABS Spreadsheets
MIXED OVERALL(Mar 27): EXCEL file | View Online
MIXED BY POSITION(Mar 27): EXCEL file | View Online
AL-ONLY (Mar 16): EXCEL file | View Online
NL-ONLY (Mar 16): EXCEL file | View Online
Ron, Thanks for this great tool. Prepared for my draft in less time and walked away feeling that I had a pretty solid draft. In the meantime, thought I’d give you my “user’s” feedback (fwiw):
1. Sometimes I’d get confused as to whether I was looking at an overall player “ranking” or whether BABS was best used to find specific talent (i.e. PW, SB, ER, etc.) since the players were found in their appropriate skills pocket, Of course, players with multiple skills were higher ranked as expected. Also, I wasn’t sure how you slotted pitchers in among the hitters to arrive at an overall ranking (probably missed something in Chapter 2).
2. However, knowing how/where to find the skills I needed made it easier and much quicker for me to draft the players I needed to complement the skills on my roster. I did study BABS and compared it to our leagues’ player rankings (Yahoo in our case) so I knew where I might want to draft a particular player.
3. Creating a cheat-sheet for the players I was targeting with their BABS assets/liabilities for each position proved immensely valuable. I put this right next to the Team Roster section of my spreadsheet which made it easy to refer to. This way I could scan the list for the player with the skills I might be looking for, all the while avoiding the liability side (I highlighted those in red).
4. End Results (starters only):
Hitters: 5-P+, 2-PW, 3-p; 1-S+, 3-SB, 2-s; 5-AV, 7-a | 1-inj-; 1-EX, 2-e
Pitchers: 1-E+, 3-ER, 5-e; 2-K+, 1-KK, 6-k | 1-inj-, 1-EX
i noticed esp that you have moved kemp and cargo up quite a bit….it would help to know why? thx
Martin
It seems like a bigger jump than it is. Both improved from P+,a to P+,AV. They were both on that cusp between the two AV ratings and I decided they belonged in the better group.
Thanks for getting this out a bit early Ron! Will help me with my home league draft tonight. I had merged the AL and NL upgrades from last week, but this will be even better. I am looking to bounce a pitching approach off of you.
This is a 10-team ESPN league with 13 hitters, 9 pitchers, and 8 bench spots. Overall, 300 players will be drafted and owned. Do you see any merit to loading up on Hitting and SP while waiting to draft RP with my last five picks? I essentially would be punting saves at the draft. Historically, saves have been very overvalued during the draft in past seasons and chasing them may cause me to exploit some overvalued bats and arms. The plan would be to stash players who rate favorably on BABS but may be just an injury or poor start away from earning saves. If a few of these guys get the closer gig, I could be at a massive advantage.
Given the shallow format, do you think this is a sound approach, or is it worth maybe overpaying for a closer or two during the draft to have a better foundation while taking a flier on a few guys at the end to round out my bench?
While it may be safer to draft one anchor closer, if you get that wrong (and there’s a 40% chance you do), then you would have missed out on a better player. In your shallow format, I think your idea is very workable. Saves come into the league during the season as well. For instance, Glen Perkins is the de facto Twins closer right now, despite being an injury risk. Odds are nobody is going to roster Kevin Jepsen at the draft, but he could well be their closer by Memorial Day.
Yeah that is exactly my thought process as well. I will take a closer or two if I feel they are undervalued during the draft, but if they are going way too quickly I am likely going to with this approach and lock up a few of the set-up men who may fall into saves sooner than later. This will also save me FAAB dollars should a closer change happen. Thanks for your feedback.
Hi Ron
I am in a keeper league – and this year my list pretty much ranks as last. I will need to take on more risk this year if I hope to be competitive… as such, do you recommend targeting injury risk players, rookies, guys that have switched leagues? Basically, I am asking what is your philosophy on how much risk to take on, and if 1 type of risk is better than another?
Thanks, Phil
If I had to rank risk, from least to most, I’d rank them League Switch, Experience, Health. But if you have a bad keeper list, should you be chasing a ghost? Sometimes you have to bite the bullet on a season in order to position yourself to contend. If you punt 2016 with the solitary goal of building the best keeper list for 2017, wouldn’t you stand a better chance than spinning your wheels, potentially for a longer period? If it was me (and I was in that position in 2014), I’d keep the best players with 2017 potential, draft mega-stars to trade off for the future, and make all decisions with 2017 in mind. In that case you definitely would take on as much risk as you want in 2016 – because 2016 doesn’t matter – and hopefully uncover a few keepable chips for 2017.
Thanks for the quick response.
I’m split on this type of thinking. The old line about “that’s why they play the games” comes to mind. And of course, it can be tough to stomach walking into the 2016 draft knowing that youre aiming for a championship 18 months later.
I understand. FWIW, some of the most fun seasons I’ve had are those when I was rebuilding. No pressure to contend and the exercise of building towards future strength was exciting. I agree about “that’s why they play the games” and in fact, in last year’s rebuild, I traded high priced Tulo, Adrian Gonzalez and Werth for low priced Machado and Bogaerts. Suddenly found myself in the upper half of the standings. Had no chance to catch the front-runner but 6th place was wholly satisfying. http://www.fantasyxperts.com/
Is there some place where you discuss the OBA indicators and how to use them? I take it they aren’t a separate asset of their own but should be treated as a nudge for BA up or down?
https://babsbaseball.com/babs-in-leagues-with-alternative-rules/
Ron,
Are you going to release an AL only by position BABS & when? This approach has really simplified my preparation efforts & time! Great stuff! THANKS
No plans to do that. Sorry.
Ron, I’m confused. Based upon your original catcher article, I drafted Realmuto last Saturday. Should I have considered/drafted the other catchers on your updated (3/27) list by position who are ranked higher than him? Example, Gomes. Thanks for your reply and keep up the great work!
As the off-season progresses, playing time allocations start getting more firm. Realmuto lost a few plate appearances in the process which knocked from a full-timer to a mid-timer even though the adjustment was minor. I’d suggest you sit tight.
Ron,
When’s your next AL update coming?
Updates are done.
Do you mean the March 16 updates?
The March 16 updates were the only AL/NL-only updates. The March 27 mixed update is the final update, but you can still use that for AL/NL-only leagues.
Thanks.
Will you be doing one final AL update prior to opening day?
Ron, great job. Always a fun read.
I think it’s clear (for me at least 🙂 that there will not be any more updates for -only leagues but is there a way to know quickly what has changed since the March 16 update? I’ve put in a lot of info on the previous Excel sheet and, being lazy, am looking for a way not avoid comparing line by line.
Thanks
ron a question.
in my league Sano rates 3b….about where would you put him with this infor?
btw…love babs
tx
Martin
All updates are complete.
Unfortunately, when I do an update, I pull in a brand new data feed and crunch through the rankings. It is not an update of a previous iteration but a brand new file. So I don’t keep track of the changes. Sorry.
BABS makes no nearly no positional adjustments. She is position-blind, except for subterranean catchers. She gives a bunch of them an artificial boost because, if she didn’t, there would only be about 7 catchers who are roster-worthy.
Love the BABS worksheet. I will add one more column on the left side for my bid limit for each player for that particular League. Will be using it in a start-up deep auction tomorrow and again a week from Sunday. Great stuff. Many, many sincere thanks.
I very much enjoyed using the BABS approach for my 10-team mixed keeper league this year. I didn’t use the native BABS-spreadsheet, but instead, I believe I was able to successfully marry BABS and Rotolab. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but I’m hoping Merv makes a few additions to Rotolab 2017 that will make the match more seamless.
I’m definitely interested in hearing any suggestions or ideas for how others have tried to marry BABS with Rotolab.
-Chris
My BABS-ish use of Rotolab included:
1. I put together information from BABS – including identifying players that had comparable BABS profiles – into the User notes. I used the Rotolab export notes function, added BABS information to the exported spreadsheet, and then used the import notes to get that information into the “User Notes” field. I kept that information on the draft screen immediately below the BHQ forecaster information.
2. With that information, I was able to use the Editor view to quickly mark players with the BABS-oriented flags PWR/K, SPD/SV, AVG/ER, and PT. Using those flags, I could mark players identified as making contributions to each are per BABS. It was somewhat limiting in that there’s not enough flags to mark players at the different levels of each contribution that BABS uses, e.g. P+, PW, p. However, at different points in the auction, if I needed to look for Power or Speed, these flags made it relatively easy.
3. I also added the BABS tiers using the dollar range flags $20+, $10+, $1+ to make it easier to see the BABS tiers. Ideally there would be a way to customize the tiers that Rotolab uses — how the players are placed in tiers, but since that’s not currently possible; using the flags was the next best way to incorporate the BABS valuation into the cheat sheet/draft screen.
4. The TARGET/avoid and Preferred/End Game flags are paired flags; target and avoid are mutually exclusive as are preferred/end game. I used these flags to mark the players I wanted; the first several of those were also added to the list of players for each position in the budget window. The combination of those flags created a visible heirarchy that allowed me to see at a glance the availability of players I wanted or did not mind at a given position:
TARGET+PREFERRED
TARGET
Preferred
TARGET+ENDGAME
End Game
No Preference
avoid
Throughout most of the auction, I left the avoid flag turned off; so only players in which I had interest were highlighted; all others were in plain text.
So… while I couldn’t see the exact BABS flags adding up throughout the auction, I feel like I was able to do fairly well. I only took on one player with AV liability, but I was aware that I was doing that in an effort to find SB in my MI spot (Villar). I also managed to only take on two -inj liabilities. I did take on far more experience risk than I would have liked, but this is a keeper league, so that influenced that to some extent.
HITTERS
M p s a e
F PW
F P+ AV+
F P+ + EX
F P+ a+
F S+ AV
M SB AV e Nw
F s e
F P+ s a+
F p SB AV
F PW AV –
F P+ a
F P+
F P+ a inj- Nw Pk
RESERVE
F PW AV Nw Pk
F p a EX
F p a – e
PITCHERS
F ER K+
F ER KK
F e
F e KK inj- EX
F e k e
F e k e
– ER k SV
– ER K+ SV e Nw
– ER K+ SV
– ER KK sv- EX
RESERVE
M e k EX
M ER k EX
M e k EX