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FANALYTICS: Waiting
Ron Shandler
At this time of year, we preach patience. Excruciating patience, if necessary. Those who wait are rewarded far more often than those who act too hastily. But are there times when waiting is not the best approach? And when waiting is warranted, how long are we supposed to sit in agony?
Clearly, for daily leagues that rely on roster churn for success, waiting is not a good thing. For rebuilding teams that need to take risks, waiting may not be a good thing either. Still, even in these cases, there are good percentage plays and bad percentage plays. Riding streaks and slumps is a dangerous activity, but identifying players whose BPIs are not reflected in their outward stats can always reduce your risk.
But for those in it for the long haul, particularly if your team is currently struggling, how long do you wait to start making moves? Should we all be jumping ship on players like Doug Davis right now?
The question of "how long" has come up in the past, but we've never been able to adequately address it. There is a different, more basic question though. That question is, "how can we tell if this performance is real?" When we wonder how long to wait before cutting a struggling player, for instance, what we're really wondering is whether his poor performance is a short-term aberration or an indication of longer-term issues. If we absolutely knew the answer to that, then the "wait" decision becomes a no-brainer.
For us, here at the end of April, the problem is in the size of the data sets. If we had the luxury of waiting for 300 ABs to see if a batter is going to turn his season around, then we'd have better information with which to make a decision. But today's fantasy games don't afford that much patience. So how many AB or IP are enough? The simple answer is: more is always better. The not-so-simple answer: it depends. I could toss out numbers like 150 AB or 50 IP, but these have little value in a vacuum. It's best to approach this issue from a slightly higher level perspective.
Here are some general rules of thumb about minimizing the "wait" time on decisions...
1. Move quicker with batters. By the end of this month, most full-time batters will have between 75-100 AB. Regular starting pitchers might have 5 starts, perhaps 30 IP; relievers will have a fraction of that. Just by virtue of the larger sample sizes, better decisions can be made with offensive numbers. Right now, I have to believe that Chris Shelton's surprise power display is more likely for real than Brian Bannister's surprise 2.50 ERA.
As a point of perspective, if we are willing to make a decision right now based on 100 AB for a hitter, we'd have to wait until June or July to have a comparable amount of information for a pitcher.
2. Cut bait on struggling pitchers. I didn't think I would be writing that line until I did a bit of research this week. I isolated all 2005 players who earned at least $10 more or $10 less than we had projected in March. Then I looked at the April performances of these players to see if we could have picked out the $10 outliers after just one month. The results are interesting:
Identifiable
No. in April Pct.
==== ============ ====
Earned $10+ more than projected
BATTERS 41 16 39%
PITCHERS 32 14 44%
Earned -$10 less than projected
BATTERS 43 24 56%
PITCHERS 54 40 74%
Nearly three out of every four pitchers who earned at least $10 less than projected also struggled in April. For all the other 2005 surprises -- batters or pitchers -- April was not a strong leading indicator. Another look:
April 2005 Pct.
===== ===== =====
Batters who finished +$25 44 20 45%
Pitchers who finished +$20 34 15 44%
Batters who finished under $0 42 25 60%
Pitchers who finished under -$5 60 47 78%
Essentially, April surgers are less than a 50/50 proposition to maintain that level all season. Those who finished April at the bottom of the roto rankings were more likely to continue struggling, especially pitchers. In fact, if we selected only those pitchers who finished April with a roto value under -$10, an overwhelming 21 of 23 (91%) finished the season in the red. Holes are tough to dig out of.
However, before we all go cutting Doug Davis and Jon Lieber, let's take a look at those players in the other 22%. They included names like Tom Glavine, Chris Capuano, Tomo Ohka and even Daniel Cabrera. The two players in last April's -$10 group who finished in the black were Scott Elarton and Vicente Padilla. So experience and track record still count for something. Which leads us to...
3. Hang tight with veterans. This is standard advice as players with a long-term track record will almost always revert to form at some point. Teams rarely even consider sitting a struggling veteran. There will always be those occasional Mike Lowells, but the percentage play is to always wait it out as long as you possibly can.
4. Use "second tour of league" for rookies and crossover players. Until opposing players get a second look, we often can't get a true sense of how a league's newcomers are really doing. For those off to a hot start, watch how they fare against return opponents and sell off at the first sign of danger. For those off to poor starts, you can probably cut bait quickly. Good teams typically won't allow a struggling rookie to accumulate too many bad numbers. Bad teams often have no choice, so you have to make the decision first.
5. Have confidence in your draft. Particularly early in the season, use your draft results as a rough guide as to how long to hang onto a struggling player. This ties into the planning and confidence you had in your draft, which should count for something at this early stage of the season. Simply, higher draft picks should be given more rope.
There is an old roto nugget that can be used as a rough guide to determine some timing parameters. It states that the number of weeks you should wait to cut a player should be equal to 23 minus the draft round number in which you acquired the player. In other words, if you drafted a player in the 20th round, you'd wait three weeks (23-20) before dropping him from your roster. If you drafted a player in the 5th round, you'd wait 18 weeks (23-5) before finally giving up on him. Needless to say, this is a very rough guide.
6. The cost of making a mistake is less than you think. In many cases, we should just do it and not look back. At this time of year, with so much still in flux, it doesn't make sense to try to over-analyze the situation.
For one thing, baseball reality is going to change tomorrow no matter what we decide today. Waiting may provide more information to make a decision with, but it could open up more risks as well. The sooner we make a decision, the more time we provide ourselves to recover in case of a mistake.
And there will be mistakes, no matter how much information we have.
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