Top Fantasy Point Scorers 2007-19
I know deep down that fantasy points are a far-from perfect method to determining the usefulness of MLB players. They give inordinate weight to counting stats that are either outdated (RBI’s, stolen bases) or completely incidental (win/loss record, saves). They don’t take defense into account at all. Heck, they’re not even the preferred method for fantasy baseball leagues, many of which use a head-to-head category system to determine matchup winners.
But despite all the shortcomings of fantasy points, there is something appealing about boiling down a player’s performance into one clean number. And before you come at me with Wins Above Replacement, it’s just a lot more fun when that number regularly ranges into the two thousands, rather than rarely ever cracking double digits. But just for the sake of argument, I compared the top fantasy point scores in the league with the bWAR scores of those same players to see if there is a connection between the two.
One thing I should say right off the bat (literally): for batters, I’m using Baseball Reference’s oWAR, or offensive wins above replacement. I know it’s not a complete picture, but it didn’t seem fair to compare a system that looks at defense to one that doesn’t. I’m honestly not really even sure if it’s fair to compare oWAR with WAR for pitchers, but this seems like the best compromise to me. With that caveat in place, of the last 13 years, the fantasy point leader matched up with the WAR leader just four times. In case you don’t want to scroll up and look at the bold names in the above list, those four are Alex Rodriguez in 2007, Albert Pujols in 2008, Roy Halladay in 2010, and Corey Kluber in 2017.
Of the nine years when the leaders didn’t match up, Leo centerfielder Mike Trout led the league in oWAR five of those times. I guess there was just something about the offensive production of the consensus best player in baseball that defied the traditional statistical categories that make up fantasy points. Out of those five Trout-led years (2012-14, 2016, and 2019), 2013 was the only time he eclipsed 10 oWAR (10.1, to be exact). Including Trout’s 2013, only three players reached the 10 WAR milestone in this time period, the others being Libra ace Zack Greinke in 2009 (10.4) and Gemini starter Aaron Nola (10.2) – he doesn’t get the “ace” designation because of the presence of Jacob deGrom, who never led the league in WAR despite two NL Cy Young Awards.
But more exciting to me than 10-WAR seasons are 3,000 point fantasy seasons. The FABL league has had 16 of them between 2006 and 2020, with 12 coming from pitchers. Of those 12, a third of those came from Pisces ace Clayton Kershaw. But we’ve already seen my take on Kershaw in a Fish jersey, so I’m showing an image of Zack Greinke’s 2009 baseball card, a year where he had the the highest WAR* score of any player in this time period. The asterisk is because that’s overall WAR for pitchers, versus only offensive WAR for batters, so there might be a higher WAR-scoring hitter in the bunch.
With previews done for all divisions and collages done for all 12 signs, next time I want to take a break to talk about the Tarot/Astrology connection of the current sign, Aries.