How to Build a Baseball Dynasty

This is from the fine people at Dynasty League Baseball. I'll add my own comments.

The question is: how do you construct a team that is capable of being a "dynasty" team? One that is capable of winning championship after championship after championship? Dynasty Baseball has concluded the following are the keys to victory.

Rule #1: Overall top to bottom talent is more important than a star player or two. A single baseball player does not make that much difference to any team.

I absolutely agree. In the years I've run my dynasty ("Even the Braves"), I've seen poor teams pick up a Mickey Mantle or a Hank Aaron and try to gain ground on the league leaders, but one player isn't going to make much difference on a team of 25 players. Yes, The Mick can hit them out but who hits around him. Let the teams with cash to spend spend it on the superstars.

In general, I only buy superstars when their prices come down to my level. Building a dynasty is all about "exploiting inefficiency" -- trading overvalued players and picking up undervalued players. Sometimes, in contract negotiations, the players themselves aren't even the best judge of their own value!

Rule #2: Evaluate players keeping in mind the most important situations in baseball.

As a "slobbermetrician", I don't have much faith in the situations named in this page. Clutch hitting might not be as big a factor as they make it to be, although sabermetricians are re-evaluating whether "clutchiness" exists. Not walking the leadoff man or not giving up homers with runners on base? Well, that depends on how good your pitcher is in general. You don't want pitchers who give up a lot of HR or walks, and a stat like Clay Dreslough's DICE should clue you in.

Rule #3: The most efficient offenses win more games.

I've always built my offenses around OBP -- perhaps too blindly about OBP, although I will look at the batter's age, health, and fielding ratings before making a final decision. However, there's no absolute metric. In general, given a choice between either OBP or fielding at a primary position -- infield or catcher -- I'll choose OBP but I won't put anyone with iron hands in those spots no matter what kind of bat power they wield.

The author writes about the fleet footed offenses of the 1980s Cardinals. Vince Coleman and the "Smith Brothers" (Lonnie and Ozzie). In general, I set my steal ratings to damn low, as you need to be stealing at about an 80 percent rate to add runs to your team. There are very few base runners that good, and definitely not in the era of the 1950s-1960s which is the time period I'm simming.

Rule #4: The best indicator of overall offensive value is OBP plus SLG.

Bill James suggested that OBP and SLG should be multiplied together instead of added for a more accurate rating. OBP should have a higher value than SLG. A team with a team OBP of 1.000 will score infinitely many runs; a team with a team SLG of 1.000 will score a hell of a lot of runs...but not infinitely many. Some people believe that OBP is somewhere between 1.1 to 3 times as valuable as SLG.

Rule #5: Understand what it takes to win at home and on the road.

In short, understand your ballpark...if it makes a difference. There are some true "pitcher's parks" and "hitter's parks" out there and the advantage you've convinced yourself you have might lie in the park and not the player. If you're simming a late 1990s-present dynasty and are looking for high SLG players, watch out for those ex-Rockies: much of their power value undoubtedly comes from playing in a hitter-friendly park.

Rule #6: Understand the value of scarcity.

That's what building a dynasty is all about. I'd put that at Rule #1 if I had written this article. Building a good ballclub is about exploiting not just inefficiency, but scarcity. If you have to pay extra to get a shortstop with a .350 OPS when no other shortstop available has an OPS above .320, then pay the piper if you can afford it -- you'll be glad having those extra 30 points of OBP.

However, if you can't do that, you can do something called "building in aggregate", discussed in Moneyball. If the difference between the shortstop you lost because he signed a $20 million dollar contract with the Yankees and a suitable replacement shortstop is 50 points of OBP, you can simply replace five of your players for five other similar players that have an OBP that's 10 points higher. You've essentially replaced your shortstop "in aggregate": splitting his skills into pieces, and then finding new players with those pieces.

Rule #7: Don't create a platoon weakness. Exploit your opponents platoon weakness.

I generally ignore this, at least in batting order. I don't think there's that much hitting difference in the lefty vs. righty matchups people make such a big deal about. However, I can see the value in having at least one good lefthander, and I might have to incorporate that into my future dynasties.