Mound Talk

Baseball is all about runs. Whoever scores the most runs, wins the game. Fantasy baseball isn’t quite the same, but runs are important. Continuing our series profiling the average league, we turn to runs.

Rank Runs
1   888
2   811
3   800
4   799
5   797
6   792
7   789
8   785
9   784
10  768
11  764
12  717

There is a large gap between first place and second place just like we saw in stolen bases and just like we’ll see in each counting metric. This comes from the tendancy for some owners to overload on a statistic and blow everyone out of the water in that cateogory at the expense of others.

What’s interesting about this analysis is that a mere 16 runs separates 9th place from 2nd place. Over nine roster spots that’s less than two runs per player to gain seven points in the standings. The close grouping here indicates that every run scored is vital over the course of the season. However, with 35 players scoring over 100 runs last season, there are a plethora of available sources of runs. These 35 men all scored between 100 and 134 runs. There are no players that run away in the category like Jose Reyes in stolen bases or Ryan Howard in rbi. It becomes increasingly improtant to find players that contribute in multiple categories, therefore, in order to maintain their viability.

The target per offensive player is 90 runs scored. That would give a team 810 runs. If your projection is accurate, that ought to put you in position to take 10-12 points. If it is possible to snag a few runs from odd sources, you’ll be ready to take your points to the bank. What’s more is that with so many of these players as major contributors elsewhere (the top 10 run scorers were Sizemore, Utley, Beltran, Rollins, Reyes, Soriano, Pujols, Holliday, Hanley Ramirez and Jeter) so they are even more valuable to your team.

When considering your draft strategy, drafting for runs is not something to look at in the early stages of the draft but rather as a secondary consideration. Matt Holliday is a good player for his average and power. It is his runs that would push him above Carlos Lee. Later in the draft there are players you can target if you need to fill in some runs. Kevin Youklis and Nick Johnson each scored 100 runs last year and could have been had later in the draft. Melvin Mora, Chad Tracey and Curtis Granderson could have been had very late in the draft but provided over 90 runs.

Runs are what drives the game of baseball and it is where your fantasy league can be won or lost selecting Grady Sizemore over Carl Crawford. Draft runs secondary but always being mindful of how significant they can be. Empty runs, like Tad Iguchi or Gary Matthews Jr. are ok if you have much more substantial players, but the guys you should be looking at as your primary sources of runs are the talented power producers as well.