In a recent article I wrote that is currently available on the Premium portion of fantasypros911.com, I took an in-depth look at the five offensive point-getting categories for Roto 5x5 leagues to determine which had the most value. Specifically, I addressed the different performance-level tiers at each category to see where each carried the greatest relative value when compared to the others at that tier. All of these findings were of a theoretical nature, though, and they do not do us much good in the realm of fantasy baseball without the context of practical application. By looking at actual players and their stats from last year with this new strategy in mind, we can get a sense of how one might go about applying this concept of relative value for your fantasy leagues.  

There are essentially two different kinds of players that are targeted most frequently in the early-to-mid rounds of such drafts: “specialists” that excel in one or two categories but give you insignificant value in the others, and multi-tool players that give you quality totals in most, if not all, categories. For the purposes of comparing the relative values of players’ various category totals, I will give added significance to players that fit more in the latter group, since this group will give us a better basis of comparison for the middle-tier groups to which I’m referring.
 

Since the 80^th percentile group of players I established as my baseline for each category included around the top 30 players for a given year, I recorded who ranked in the top 30 for all five categories in 2008 and then grouped everyone by how many categories in which they ranked in the top 30. Basically, I’m trying to establish the most well-rounded players. Within each group of multi-tool players, I ranked them based on the total of their ranks in each of the categories in which they ranked in the top 30, with lower totals being more valuable. For example, someone in the 4-tool group who was fifth in all four categories would rank higher than someone else in this group who finished first in two but 10^th in two others. Admittedly, it is not a perfect ranking system, but it will more than suffice for the purposes of this article.
 

Here are the lists of players for each category:
 

Manny Ramirez

Albert Pujols

David Wright

Mark Teixeira

Hanley Ramirez

Lance Berkman

Alex Rodriguez

Josh Hamilton
 

Ryan Howard

Ryan Ludwick

Carlos Beltran

Adrian Gonzalez

Matt Holliday

Dustin Pedroia

Ichiro Suzuki

Chase Utley

Ian Kinsler

Grady Sizemore

Kevin Youkilis

Aubrey Huff

Jason Bay

Bobby Abreu
 

Miguel Cabrera

Jose Reyes

Carlos Delgado

Brian Roberts

Ryan Braun

Adam Dunn

Nate McLouth

Magglio Ordonez

Shane Victorino

Jacoby Ellsbury

Nick Markakis

Joe Mauer

Prince Fielder

Carlos Quentin

Randy Winn

Johnny Damon

Ryan Theriot

Carlos Pena

Alfonso Soriano
 

As you can see, no one was a 5-tool player last year, although Wright, Berkman, A-Rod, and Utley all came close. All of the 4-tool players are currently projected in the top 15 over at Mock Draft Central with the exception of Manny (somewhat interesting, as he has the best combined ranks of this group). I think the 3- and 2-tool lists are interesting because they present a mixture of guys who are specialists and guys who, in addition to the categories where they already rank in the top 30, are very close to being 4-tool caliber players. These include guys like the aforementioned Utley, Beltran, and McLouth.
 

Again, these lists are far from perfect, and they are certainly not how I would rank players heading into the draft. We can use these lists, however, to help us assess how the relative value of all five categories affects the value of all these players. I deduced in my previous article that stolen bases and average have the greatest relative value at the 95^th percentile, runs and RBI at the 90^th, and home runs at the 85^th (with everyone above the 95^th percentile having relatively outstanding value regardless). With this in mind, I took the former list and filtered it to only include categories in which players ranked within the range for each category that gives them the greatest relative value. These ranges, which included players closest to a given percentile, ended up being ranks 1-5 as the outstanding value group, 6-11 for the 95^th percentile group (SB/AVG), 12-18 for the 90^th (R/RBI) and 19-27 for the 85^th (HR). This is how this new grouping looks, which includes the categories in which they ranked top-30, their exact rankings in these and the categories with the greatest relative values highlighted in bold:
 

Lance Berkman (HR29, R5, RBI17, AVG11)

Ryan Howard (HR1, R14, RBI1)

Ryan Ludwick (HR4, R15, RBI12)
 

Manny Ramirez (HR4, R21,RBI6, AVG3)

Albert Pujols (HR4, R27, RBI9, AVG2)

David Wright (HR15, R4, RBI5, AVG27)

Hanley Ramirez (SB11, HR15, R1, AVG30)

Josh Hamilton (HR22, R29, RBI2, AVG23)

Carlos Beltran (SB19, R3, RBI13)

Dustin Pedroia (SB28, R2, AVG5)

Ichiro Suzuki (SB6, R18, AVG13)

Aubrey Huff (HR22, RBI16, AVG23)

Miguel Cabrera (HR4, RBI4)

Ryan Braun (HR4, RBI17)
 

This is not necessarily a list of who has the greatest overall value, just who has the greatest relative value. So while Berkman, Howard, and Ludwick may not have been the best overall fantasy players from last year, it appears that they at least got the most bang-for-their-buck in their strong suits. Remember: I am not comparing a given category to itself, but, rather, different categories at equal achievements. Therefore, Berkman’s 17^th-best RBI total is not more valuable than the eighth-best RBI total, but it would be more valuable than the 17^th-best stolen base total. Assuming, of course, that everything else is equal.
 

If you will indulge me, I would like to offer one brief example of how one might interpret these findings. If you will recall from the first list, Ichiro and Utley were both 3-tool players with virtually identical rankings in their respective top-30 categories. But Ichiro had strong relative value in two of his three categories, while Utley had this with none of his three. Comparing them strength-to-strength, Utley was sixth in runs/Ichiro sixth in steals; Utley was 15^th in homers/Ichiro 13^th in average; and Utley was 19^th in RBI/Ichiro 18^th in runs. Even though their strengths lie in different categories, you can see how evenly they stack up. Using this theory of relative value, you can hopefully see how Ichiro stacks up more favorably here. His ranks in steals and runs carry particularly strong relative value, while Utley’s categories for those comparable ranks (runs and RBI) do not.
 

To reiterate, it is important to not interpret these results to the extreme. In the previous example Utley still probably is more valuable than Ichiro in the end because, he is very close to being a 5-tool player. It is simply a way of comparing players’ strengths with everything else being equal.
 

Next up, I’ll see how this theory applies to the projected values of players for the 2009 season.