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Setting goals for the season ahead is a time-honored tradition of major league baseball spring training camps. Even before they begin stretching exercises and soft-toss, players are invariably bunched onto a back diamond to hear their manager invoke the professional's mantra: play hard, be competitive, aim to win it all this year.
Most fantasy baseball poolsters follow those same precepts. The successful ones take team goal-setting one step further, exchanging vague exhortations 'to win' for specific performance criteria applied to each of their league's scoring categories.
Winning fantasy baseball owners understand that championship teams and seasons are built by blueprint, not by swinging for the fences on Draft Day. Their success is founded on hard numbers for clearly-defined targets, not the nebulous goals of 'good' pitching or 'better' hitting that causes too many owners to simply spend money for whatever talent is available and hope the numbers add up in the end.
What does it take to win, in hard numbers? The answer varies, of course, based on the sources of talent, number of teams and competitive balance in any given fantasy league.
Start with sources of talent. Scoring is more rampant and pitching less effective in the American League, which means owners looking to win an AL-only fantasy pool must budget for different levels of performance than their counterparts in an NL-only circuit. At the same time, the NL has two more teams than the AL, so while the rate of offense is marginally higher in the AL, there are more actual numbers to be had in the NL. For example, AL teams scored an average of 857 runs apiece in 2000, compared to 811 for NL teams, but in total the senior circuit outscored the AL by about 1000 runs: 12,976 to 11,995.
The second key point to consider is the number of teams in your fantasy baseball league. A limited number of teams dividing a lot of talent means everyone has a superstar lineup, complete with performance levels in the stratosphere. Fantasy leagues with more teams will use more, generally lesser, players and tend to flatten performances across the entire league. For example, an eight-team league mixing AL and NL players will draft 184 of the 750 players who hold down roster spots in the major leagues, or 24.5 per cent of the available talent. A 12-team AL-only circuit, by comparison, will draft 278 of the 350 players with jobs in the junior circuit, or 79.4 per cent of the talent pool. Knowing that, I'm sure you'll agree that a level of performance good enough to win the AL-only pool probably wouldn't even get you a sniff of the first division in the creme-de-la-creme mixed circuit.
Finally, you must consider the makeup and balance of your fantasy pool itself. Success in leagues that are well-balanced and closely-contested generally requires a lesser level of performance than in circuits featuring a handful of aggressive, ultra-competitive owners who bully or cajole their way to control of all the best talent.
If all of this is too confusing or convoluted for something you've decided should be a leisurely after-hours undertaking, there are two simpler approaches to setting targets. The first is to examine the history of your league, look at what it took to lead the field in each of the scoring categories over each of the last three years, and use averages as your guide. The second is to add 25 per cent to the per-team averages from last year's major league totals.
My targets are for a 12-team, NL-only 5X5 league with a 16-year history of close, keen competition. It takes close to 100 points to win it all, equivalent to a top-three finish across the board.
This season's targets are 250 homes runs, 1000 RBIs, 1000 runs, 150 stolen bases and a .285 batting average on the hitting side, and 95 wins, 65 saves, 4.00 ERA, 1.35 WHIP and 1500 innings on the pitching side.
I recommend bumping the targets for each cumulative category by 10 per cent for a 12-team AL-only league or a 10-team NL-only league, by 10 per cent again for a 10-team AL-only circuit, and by a further 10 per cent if you play in a lopsided league, with two exceptions: stolen bases and saves, which are much less numerous in the AL and require expectations to be scaled back accordingly in AL-only leagues. For the percentage categories like BA, ERA and WHIP, focus on being incrementally better than the league average no matter which ML circuit you draw from, the number of teams your fantasy league fields, or the competitive nature of your pool.
Once those numbers sink in, one thing should be readily apparent: namely, that accumulating all those counters is not going to be possible without a lot of full-time, high-achieving performers. For example, I expect to require 6600 at bats from relatively productive hitters to reach my offensive targets -- the equivalent of 12 full-time and two part-time players, if we define full time as someone accumulating 500 at bats. That's a difficult team to assemble in any league.
Here's a sobering thought: my hitters must average about 18 taters, 71 RBIs, 71 runs and 11 stolen bases, or roughly what Brian Jordan averaged each season from 1997 through 2000.
Two of my nine pitching slots must be dedicated to closers if I'm to have any hope of approaching the saves title. The rest of the staff must be composed of thoroughbred hurlers if I'm going to collect enough wins, innings pitched and generally good performances to approach the lead in the other four categories.
Here's a scary thought: my starting pitchers will have to average roughly 200 innings, post 12 or so wins each, and have ERAs and WHIPs well below the league average. Just to put that into perspective, only about a dozen pitchers met those criteria in the NL last year, with maybe another 10 coming close.
If it's going to be hard for me -- as I expect it will -- it will be even tougher for those who have to bump the numbers one or more times. If you're intimidated by that, you should be. Winning isn't easy, nor should it be. Climbing to the top requires a full measure of hard work, not to mention lots of skill and a little bit of luck. Setting targets is only your first step on the road to glory, but it's the most important thing you'll do all season. Having something to aim for puts substance to your destination; it also poses challenges that should cause you to consider ways to reach those targets.
Next week, we'll look at how performance targets can be used to set Draft Day budgets and spending priorities. If you have questions or comments in the meantime, please send me an e-mail, and I'll try to respond between rounds of number-crunching.
Fantasy Baseball Index, March 30, 2001
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