I think it has made a big difference...

I mentioned J.T. Snow in the earlier thread... but I think lots of players with "good stats" will be "remembered" as better than they necessarily were... by "remembered" I mean popular impression rather than by baseball historians..

Catchers especially are WAY more valuable to a team and to winning than their hitting production... also middle relievers, Mike Stanton, Jeff Nelson really had no value at all in Roto, the list goes on....

Also, I think that Roto creates an ARTIFICIAL demand for closers... there is less than 1 full time closer per team, and yet a roto team would be trying to have at least 3. at the end of the day Bob Wickman or Curtis Leskanic are often worth more than the above mentioned 7th and 8th inning guys

I guess I'm just making the "Fantasy Stats don't reflect winning baseball" argument...

but I think that it makes a difference how people in those pools, which is a growing number feel about these guys...

Guys that I'm not certain aren't as good as their fantasy rankings include:
Bret Boone, Jose Valentin, Travis Hafner, Carlos Guillen, Vinny Castilla, Tony Batista, Luis Castillo, Jose Guillen, Jose Cruz, Dave Roberts, Oliver Perez, Jaret Wright, Freddy Garcia, Doug Davis, Rodrigo Lopez, John Thompson, Latryo Hawkins, Jose Lima, John Lackey, Paul Wilson, Shawn Chacon

These guys are all valued at all due to the offensive weakness in their position, their unusual strength in rare category, or they manage to get "numbers" even though (IMHO) they aren't as good as their rankings...

Come-on Oliver Perez the 9th most valuable pitcher in baseball?
Was Piazza really a great catcher?? In the league of Pudge??
How good is Andruw Jones really??? Better than he's rated I suggest...

hmmm.. rambling...
well that was my 4 cents.

http://baseballguru.blogspot.com
The popularity of fantasy baseball has changed people's perspectives on baseball players in a few ways... People now tend to underestimate the value of a good bench player or reliable middle reliever. Those who don't necessarily exhibit the skills that are considered important to collecting fantasy points (leadership, defense, game calling, range, etc) are usually in the major leagues for a good reason.
For example, the Jays pickup of McDonald was a very good move do to his non-fantasy baseball skills (defence, mainly). But the first thing most people probably did, who did not know McDonald, was to compare his averge, slugging and onbase percentage to last year's backup shortstop Chris Gomez.

Defence is undervalued because of a lack of good measures of defence. The casual fan and the fan judging players by stats can't properly assign a value to defence because it isn't properly quantified. Fantasy baseball is the ultimate "judging a player by his stats".

But then you have extremes in the other direction, like so:

the Jays pickup of McDonald was a very good move [due] to his non-fantasy baseball skills (defence, mainly)

If Johnny has such incredible non-fantasy baseball skills, if it was such a good move to pick him up, why was the cost so low? He wasn't auctioned off in a fantasy baseball draft, he was traded amongst Major League general managers. Did JP snag an incredible bargain? Of course not. The cost was so low because the useful role that the John McDonalds of the world can fill is a very small role. If John McDonald gets more than a couple hundred at-bats, he will be a net negative to his team.

If it wasn't for fantasy baseball, I wouldn't have an abiding distaste for Tom Gordon, who I have not forgiven for his one-inning, 10-run fiasco on the last day of the regular season some years ago -- an inning that cost me a title.

Other than that, for me, I still enjoy the game and value its players' accomplishments in the same ways I always have, though it bugs me that somebody like Roger Cedeno, a terrible baseball player, could be somewhat valuable to anything outside the Cedeno family.

I think you are certainly right that a guy like Tony Batista might be overrated based on his value on a fantasy team, but some of the other guys you mentioned, I'm not so sure about. Sometimes fantasy teaches us the opposite, that players are undervalued merely due to their lack of notoriety. For instance, while Oliver Perez might not be the 9th most "valuable" pitcher in baseball, he was very impressive last year. True, he was not on a team with much of anything at stake, but he was at times dominant. Fantasy baseball causes more people to take note of a player like Perez, one languishing on a team that attracts little attention like the pitiful Pittsburgh platoon (squad makes more sense, but I figured I could cheat with 'platoon' and have some fun with alliteration)did last season.

Why the distaste for Oliver Perez? 2.98 ERA, 239 K/196IP , only 30 games, and he did this while only 22. Sure he may have been a little hit lucky if you believe in DIPS, but if you have to list the top 10 pitchers that you would want to have over the next 5 years, you would have to include him in your list.

Piazza is (was) a great catcher.

Just to clarify, I agree with groove about Perez. He is a very exciting young player, and I expect we will see big things from him in the future. However, if by "value" Daryn meant in the sense we consider people for MVP, then there are certainly arguments for (and against) penalizing players on bad teams. Thus, Perez might not have been the 9th most "valuable" pitcher in the majors last season.

If Johnny has such incredible non-fantasy baseball skills, if it was such a good move to pick him up, why was the cost so low? ...Did JP snag an incredible bargain? Of course not

McDonald was a great pick up for the Jays. Maybe not so much for some other teams. Just because a player is a good fit with one team does not necessarily make him valuable to another. But the Jays can really use an above-average defensive shortstop as A) a mentor for Adams and B) insurance. Would it be a great pick up for Baltimore, with Tejado who plays 160 games? Not so much.

To add to the point, value is intrinsicly personal, well, not always, and baseball guys love arguing it..

I would listen to (and enjoy) those opinions that would argue one player or another really WAS more value than I might state... but on the whole, I believe the list supports the argument...

Maybe I'll have a closer look at Perez...

but IMHO, Piazza was a lot of "great things".. a great 62nd round pick, a great hitter, especially considering his positional demands... but when it comes to catching skills, Past Balls, Stolen Bases against etc... the best I'd rank him is "not so bad that I wouldn't want his extrodinary bat in the line-up"

'If Johnny has such incredible non-fantasy baseball skills, if it was such a good move to pick him up, why was the cost so low? He wasn't auctioned off in a fantasy baseball draft, he was traded amongst Major League general managers. Did JP snag an incredible bargain? Of course not. The cost was so low because the useful role that the John McDonalds of the world can fill is a very small role. If John McDonald gets more than a couple hundred at-bats, he will be a net negative to his team.'

The cost was low because Cleveland has a deep system and they would rather lose McDonald for a player they can keep off the 40 man roster then one of their true prospects. I've followed McDonald pretty closely because he's from the town I spend my summers in, he's not a great pickup, but he was available for so little right now because of the Rule 5 draft.

Piazza is always funny when people talk about his defense. With him as catcher his teams in the 90's always had good pitching.

Dodgers
Year - ERA Rank
1993 - 3
1994 - 9
1995 - 2
1996 - 1
1997 - 2

Traded to Florida then Mets early in season

Mets
1998 - 4 (Dodgers dropped to 5th)
1999 - 5
2000 - 3
2001 - 5
2002 - 5
2003 - 10 (only played 68 games)
2004 - 7 (only played 50 games as catcher)

So, every team he has played 100+ games for as catcher had an ERA among the top 5 in the league.

The two seasons he played under 1/2 the teams games in NY the team dropped from 5th to 10th and 7th in ERA.

Does this prove he is a good defensive catcher? Perhaps not, but it has to be viewed as an argument in favour of Piazza's defense.

To contract, I-Rod...
Year - ERA Rank
1991 - 11 (just 88 games)
1992 - 10
1993 - 6
1994 - 13
1995 - 8
1996 - 6
1997 - 7
1998 - 12
1999 - 11
2000 - 14 (91 games)
2001 - 14
2002 - 12
Free agent to Florida
2003 - 7 (Texas back to 14th, Florida up from 13th)
Free agent to Detroit
2004 - 13th (Florida down to 8th, Detroit stable at 13th)

So not once has an I-Rod team been among the top 5 in ERA, vs no Piazza team (when Piazza catches regularly) being below the top 5. Florida seems to have been helped by I-Rod in his one year there, but Detroit didn't budge in the rankings.

Is I-Rod really the better defensive catcher? He has more runners thrown out but game calling, handling pitchers, all the little things he just might be lacking in vs Piazza. I know this goes against popular viewpoints but looking at the basic data (other than runners thrown out) I-Rod does not appear as good as Piazza. I don't have ERA+ numbers (Texas was a hitters park vs Dodgers and Mets both being pitchers parks) but still, it is hard to see how I-Rod could be shown to be better outside of his amazing ability to throw out runners.

Before someone corrects me, Piazza's second season the team was poor in the ERA department. One bad year out of 10 vs I-Rod being above average (barely) 4 times out of 14 seasons playing a majority of his teams games.

John, that's nice work on Piazza's behalf, but I gotta tell you, I think C-ERA is one of the most bogus stats out there. If you flip Puge and Piazza in those years, I'm guessing the pitcher results are nearly identical. And the park factor is probably more in play than you suggest -- I know I'm only going N=1 here, but if you take a pitcher in LA during Piazza's time there and put him in Texas -- I don't know, let's call Pitcher X "Chan Ho Smith" ... you see where I'm going.

Oh, I'd agree that catchers ERA is not a perfect tool, or necessary a top quality one due to the many factors that mess it up (who they catch, quality of team management, etc.) However, it is one that should be looked at along with runners thrown out and passed balls and errors. If someone is consistantly at an extreme of a stat, one should try to understand why.

As for Chan Ho Park...
With Piazza catching... (over 100 IP)
Year - ERA+
1996 - 105
1997 - 115

With I-Rod catching... (again over 100 IP)
2002 - 86

With others catching...
1998 - 105
1999 - 85
2000 - 132
2001 - 115
...
2004 - 93 (95 2/3 IP)

So his second worst full year was with I-Rod catching (worst in raw ERA). 2 of his 5 years as an above average pitcher were with Piazza catching.

Is it solid proof? No. Is it another point in Piazza's favour? Yup. Even more so for Chad Kreuter who caught him in 2000 (Dodgers 2nd in team ERA that season) but not in 1999.

Yeah, Piazza had the benefit of playing in two of the best pitching parks in the NL (LA played around 10% better than average for pitchers, NY plays 5% better), while Pudge was in Texas (5% better for hitters), with all the wonderful pitching rotations of the Texas Rangers. Put Piazza in Colorado for the same period, and there'd be even more mocking of his catching skills.

Whoa, whoa.

In 2002, Chan Ho Park was injured during spring training. He got a hamstring injury, which affected his balance, hurting his performance, and leading to his back injury. He also apparently felt a lot of pressure because of his performance, and only got over that in 2004 while pitching in stress-free Oklahoma. Even without those issues, he would've had problems moving from flyball-pitcher friendly LA to homer-happy Texas. You can't blame Pudge for Park's problems, or praise Piazza for his pre-injury performance.

I don't see anything there but park effects.

As to Piazza,
I think its natural to look at the team payrolls and realize that he caught some very good pitchers...

when you look at his Stolen Bases given up and passed balls, (which admittedly are also measures of the complete "battery") not so good...

but like I said... you want to argue a couple individuals, and this isn't that sort of debate....

I still contend that lots of guys are considered to be better "ball players" than they really are, due to Fantasy stats, and lots of really good guys, are lost in the wash...

I sort of agree with Daryn.. but would like to add that Fantasy Sports are very results oriented, and therefore they do represent a good measure of a players impact over the course of a season. But because most of the hitting stats are context dependent (R,RBI) they are not very predictive of future success.

To succeed in Fantasy Sports, you have to have a good idea of the predictive nature of the stats - so you would prefer to draft guys hitting in favourable parks, lineups, and positions. Guys like Piazza and IRod are often picked very early in the draft just because of the lack of other catching options.

I think the only way that players are overrated is if
1) they qualify at a "tougher" defensive position and no longer play there (like Josh Phelps qualifying at catcher his rookie year, or Pujols qualifying at 3B)
2) they dominate in only one category (SB,saves)
3) they hit in Colorado
4) I guess you could add a low OPS guy who hits for a good average and gets lots of R/RBI

Only 1) and 2) are Fantasy dependent overating. 3) and 4) are just normal overrating of players.

I certainly agree that Piazza has been a TOP fantasy contributer...

I also have found that if you take entire rosters, and plug their stats in to a "fantasy formula", as though each were a complete fantasy team, the Yankees usually win... but I think the last 4 years have taught the Yankees that they aren't actually PLAYING Fantasy ball...