Rotohog

[AaronBrown]

This doesn't really belong in Probability, but we don't have a fantasy baseball forum. Anyway, my interest is primarily mathematical, so I'll post it here.

Another 2+2'er called my attention to a new site called rotohog.com. I have no connection to them, but they have an interesting idea. You play fantasy baseball for free on their site, and they have a trading market for all players. In normal leagues it's very hard to persuade other owners to trade, with liquid markets all sorts of interesting new strategies open up.

The reason you might want to go there, aside from general interest in the topic, is it's free to play and they're offering $100,000 first prize, with other prizes as well. They've set up the game in such a way that there's an easy strategy to get a big advantage. No doubt several thousand people will spot this, so you'll need luck as well as this strategy, but you might find it worth your while to try.

I'm going to assume you know the basics of fantasy baseball, if not you can look them up. In traditional leagues, the constraint is slots. For example, you have one shortstop slot. The best you can do in that slot is the have it filled with the best fantasy shortstop in baseball. You might do a little better by getting the best one for the first half of the season and trading for the best one in the second half of the season; but you can't count on many trades, and you can't count on trading up each time.

With liquid markets, it's an entirely different situation. You can play one guy in the afternoon, sell him and buy a guy who's playing at night, then sell him and buy a guy whose playing in the late night west coast game. There are approximately 400 "game windows" during the major league season, compared to 162 games.

Now, rotohog figured this out and limits you to 162 games per slot. But you don't have to keep all 9 batting slots filled, you're allowed to leave them empty (if you weren't it wouldn't matter, you would just fill unwanted slots with cheap scrubs who don't have games at that time). If you play four batters at a time, but swap them in and out so you only hold batters while they have games, you can get 162 games for each slot. But since you only own four batters at a time, you can afford to buy the best ones in the majors at their positions. When people catch on, the value of stars will soar and average major leaguers will become close to worthless. So if you draft stars, you should be able to sell them for large (play money) profits, and the extra play money makes it easier to win the real money $100,000.

But the real opportunity is relief pitching. You have 2 starting pitcher slots, 2 relief and 2 optional. You have a cap on 1,300 total pitching innings, but it doesn't matter how they are divided among slots. The point system awards 20 points for a win, 15 for a save, -6 for a loss with no penalty for a blown save. These are the main source of pitching points.

These assignments make top starting pitchers about as valuable as top closers in a traditional fantasy league. But starting pitchers use more innings getting their points, about three times as many. Since the constraint is total innings, you're much better off playing only closers. The difference is dramatic. If you held the four best closers playing at any given time in 2006, until you got 1,300 total innings, you would have earned 17,756 points in 2006. That's just from relief pitching. A traditional owner with an unlimited budget and perfect foresight, that is one who had the best player in the majors at every slot but didn't platoon, would have had 18,057 for his entire team.

If you draft the top four closers you can (2 relief pitcher slots and 2 optional pitcher slots), then fill your three reserve slots with top closers as soon as the trading market opens (also trading up in quality on your drafted closers if possible), and spend any remaining money on star hitters; you will be in far better shape than average owners.

Early in the season you platoon your closers, always keeping four playing at any time. You can swap in the trading maket when necessary to keep this up. You don't have to worry about hitting, it's easy to fill up hitting games later in the season, but you might as well pick up what you can with leftover money, being sure only to play the best fantasy hitter in the majors in any slot. You don't want to waste one of your 162 games on less than the best.

When prices soar for closers and stars, you will have a lot of options for closing out the season. Unless rotohog changes the rules, it's hard to see how anyone who doesn't spot the closer loophole can catch up.

[PairTheBoard]

I know even less about fantasy baseball than I do continued fractions.

PairTheBoard