Column: Has baseball reached its endgame? A hypothetical look back at the demise of our national pastime. ... does this qualify as "shill for the owners"?

I see your point Gene. I dumped Wins and Ks the first two rounds, but didn't quite get the ball across the line, but in the first one (1982) I made sure to buy enough innings to make the case I was playing it straight (I wasn't sure what the rule was and didn't want to ask while we were playing), and did the same in 1990, knowing there was no rule, though a little less enthusiastically. Jeff W took 2 pitchers in the first 13 rounds, which is the right way to do it. He might be right when he says, it may not work if two teams do it, but making teams buy a certain number of innings in some ways creates more strategies within the limitation, rather than the brute force of buying 500 super innings with saves.

I'm not sure there should be an innings limit -  I'm not flat opposed, but since dumping something seems to be a requirement for winning my default position is to leave all options open. What works in 1999 is no sure thing to work in another year. I propose leaving the rules as they are for another round and see what happens.

Howard - I know, but the Runs just weren't there that I could see, and I was fighting for every last one. I needed one OF and an MI. Warren Morris was a no-brainer at that point and the only OF alternative to Tony Phillips was Erstad, and I was worried that the RBI issue wasn't settled yet. Turns out Erstad would have left me a few Runs short anyway.

Howard: before I started.

This is a very tough game that requires many skills, quite a few of which I lack. 

There's no official clock but there definitely is one. From the middle of the draft on, finding just the right player requires jumping around in your spreadsheet and making seat of the pants calculations. I'm bad at both.

But at least in this, my third try, I bought some hitters! For the first two rounds I followed my plan to buy the best players available -- who happened to be pitchers -- and then I pushed hard for a four-category offense (no steals).

I think I was in last place after six rounds. Then the offense reached the rest of the pack and I started to climb.

Lo and behold, in round 16, I was in first!

Was I fooled?

Maybe a little. But not really. I had packed in a lot of offense at the corners and in the outfield and had yet to buy a catcher or middle infielder.

I kept meaning to give a nod to position scarcity, but just before I picked Ed Taubensee, for instance, somebody else picked him. I bought another outfielder. I even filled my DH spot (with Mike Sweeney).

It was just a matter of time, in the last third of the draft, before teams I had passed in the hitting categories, would pass me back. Where the weak middle infield and catching corp really hurt me was in the runs category.

I didn't think you could compete in RBIs and batting average without being at least okay in runs. Turns out you can.

We play this game to learn something. I'm not sure it will help me in a real-life draft but it might.

Sees Tom Glavine quoted in article saying to be careful because players "could be blamed even if they were right."

Immediately, the Phil Collins' line jumps into my head "If I saw you were drowning, I would not lend a hand."

Yeah, I'm still not over 94/95 yet.

Agree there should be a minimum innings total. Not sure that dumping Wins and Strikeouts is a total winner. But dumping something is important, whether you quit from the git go or give it a round or two to decide.

Alex - at what point in the draft did you know that you would not win?

Pshaw. He might be underrated. I mean, just add the factor to his numbers if he took steroids like everyone else in his era.  Paging A-Rod and Nomar, who was the best SS of the three?  Hard to know since you boys weren't legit.

"Jeter's always been overrated.

I say that half-seriously. If we want to talk about real baseball, we could talk endlessly about that."

Amen to that - just this morning (well, yesterday afternoon when we pre-recorded the show) we were talking about how so many were outraged that a voter left Jeter off his HOF ballot, that said voter didn't publish their ballot, there needs to be an investigation, etc... when so many objectively better players also didn't get in unanimously. Willie Mays! Johnny Bench! Hank Aaron! So many others! But no, it was Jeter's lack of perfect ballot was the call to arms!

Jeff is taking us in a completely different direction (I see after making my post).

A very good point about what an extreme year 1999 was. And even so, I predict the only way the Rotoman Regimen loses in future retros is if two or more teams pursue it.

Or we add an IP minimum.

You're right. In a retro draft, as in any self-respecting Roto league, there should be an IP minimum.

For me, the big discovery was that concentrating on ribbies and BA didn't get me even a decent amount of runs. I didn't ignore position scarcity, in the sense that I was thinking about it each round, but just before I was about to act on it with a specific pick, somebody else made that pick. Not counting the last outfield slot, which I deliberately left open to take Ryan Klesko (the kingmaker in the earlier 1999 retro), my last five hitters were catchers and middle infielders. I was starved for runs, dropping farther in that category each round, but the cupboard was bare.

Gene and I both punted saves and steals. He nipped ahead of me in steals with his last pick. I retaliated by nipping ahead of him in wins.

Jeter's always been overrated.

I say that half-seriously. If we want to talk about real baseball, we could talk endlessly about that.

I think I'd be wary of drawing too many general conclusions from such an extreme season. One thing I noticed very early last week was how many teams were chasing the ratios, with pitchers that I had valued at negative values going, as early as the mid-teen rounds. That's because it was such a horrific year to be a pitcher. There were not enough of those pitchers to go around, so that's why I thought it was worth my while to steer into punting the ratios, and chasing wins/strikeouts/saves. And there were plenty of those to go around. To wit, Aaron Sele had a 4.79 ERA and 1.53 WHIP - horrible, right? But the MLB averages were 4.71 and 1.463 respectively, so if he brings something else to the table, he should still be playable. And he did - 18 wins and 186 K's. I still had him as a $9 player, well above a bunch of pitchers taken before him (17.08) because of the ratios. I think our strategies/conclusions have to shift with a given year, and often the strategy evolves during the draft. 

And this proves ... if you take Jeter in the 1st round, you won't finish well ... or ... if you take a SS in 1st 2 rounds (as *5* owners did!), you won't finish in Top 3 (ie. maybe position scarcity isn't as much of a factor for SS as many feel?) ...

I assume no minimum IP rule?  Why play the game?  JeffW wins the "find the biggest loop hole" game.

If Gene figures out a way to give up just a few HRs (20) and RsBI (50) for 10 more Rs, he wins ...

Does Kramer still get credit towards his pension if he doesn't play at all this year?

Kevin Kramer (OF) PIT - May. 20

https://www.rotowire.com/baseball/player.php?id=740983

Kramer underwent surgery last week to repair the labrum of his right hip, Stephen J. Nesbitt of The Athletic reports. He'll be sidelined for 4-to-6 months before resuming full baseball activities.

ROTOWIRE RECOMMENDS: Even if MLB resumes at some point later in June or July with an abbreviated season, Kramer's recovery timeline from the surgery essentially rules him out from playing with the Pirates in 2020. Before MLB went on hiatus, the 26-year-old utility man was enjoying a productive spring training but was widely expected to open the campaign at Triple-A Indianapolis. 

Kenley Jansen (P) LA - May. 20

https://www.rotowire.com/baseball/player.php?id=740984

Jansen has been working out "every day" and throwing occasional bullpens in anticipation of a resumption of play, he stated in an interview with John Hartung of Spectrum SportsNet LA.

ROTOWIRE RECOMMENDS: Jansen's bullpen sessions have been far from traditional -- he explained that they have taken place on the street in front of his home -- but he has nonetheless been able to maintain a consistent workout schedule despite a lack of access to team facilities. If a 2020 season is able to be played, Jansen will once again function as the Dodgers' closer and will look to bounce back from a mildly disappointing 2019 campaign in which he suffered a career-worst eight blown saves. 

After four contests, it's now official: the way to go is the Rotoman Regimen. Punt wins and Ks. Here are the results last night.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-SM1p4zw9A1p7fSiztFNP21it9so81pvEjPQLX4WTSo/edit#gid=0

The year was again 1999 with mostly new participants.

Here's what happened a week ago.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qKKORTfmXmmx6AEwTUJ6Kn9yZ1G6xBWATq65oSx8_E0/edit?ts=5eb8a24c#gid=0

Even if you have no interest in these retro drafts, you shoulld explore Todd Zola's ingenious Google doc. I can see where it would be very powerful in a real draft -- or auction -- using projections.

There have been positional problems. The simple answer, he did not.

Chuck Knoblauch played OF in 1999? 

Doug led in ERA and was second in WHIP. I was second in ERA and third in WHIP. Dean was third in ERA and first in WHIP. Fred was first in strikeouts and fifth in ERA and WHIP. And the three of us are way ahead of the other nine teams, with Fred finishing just ahead of them. 

I think this shows not a problem with my pricing, but a problem with pricing in general. The dollar values work, but they then have to be applied to the right stats when you're constructing your team. In other words, it's not the meat it's the motion.

But one issue to be aware of is that pitcher value very much depends on which 108 pitchers you value. The math will tell you one group, but as we can see, for a team in a particular position, a player like David Cone or Pedro Astacio will have real value and supplant one of the 70 inning relievers with a low ERA and Ratio that usually reside in the $1-$5 range.

So, if you go and reprice the actual pool, so that the worst pitcher is worth $1 and the 108 add up to $1092, the value of Pedro Martinez drops from $55 to $25. 

In the prospective leagues we usually price for, this phenomenon drives up the value of the best pitchers, but when we know what the stats are we're going to add up to it seems to do the opposite. Here's how the Retro earnings looks with the pitching pool repriced. 

This doesn't really make sense to me logically but eyeballing the Dollar totals in this chart makes more sense to me than the earlier one.

UPDATE: About 20 minutes after the original post I realized that the hitters need to be adjusted too, for the same reason. Here we see the much tighter results we'd expect from a tight race. I will post updated net numbers if get a chance, and I'm definitely going to repeat this analysis on tonight's results.