Week 6 Power Rankings and the debut of the Luck Index

As I was watching my offense pile up an insurmountable lead in the counting stats early in the week against Ben, I thought to myself and those around me; Damn, Ben is pretty unlucky.

Later, after looking at my teams performance compared to its record, my thought process changed to; Fuck Ben, I've been so unlucky.

Shortly after that, I started clicking around the other matchups to see what else was going on. I didn't want to be Complains about Matchups Guy, even if for a short while, but I knew that the two time defending champion needs to hold himself to higher standards than your average fantasy baseballer.

The truth is, it is better to be lucky than good. However, usually when you are good you get lucky. That didn't seem to be the case this year for me, or maybe I just wasn't as good as I thought I was. Maybe spot-starting is a better idea than being patient with your pitchers. But it just didn't seem right to drop Patrick Corbin and his 1.75 ERA, or Jeremy Guthrie and his 2.28 ERA for the likes of Nick Tepesch, Felix Doubront, Ryan Vogelsong and Bud Norris. (these are all players that James has spot-started that posted ERAs above 10. Sorry to pick on you Mams, but I went with the person that made the most moves.)

However you slice it, its not about bulk, its not about quality, it is all about timing. Owning players when they are at their peak, and playing cold teams at the right time. So, rather than complain about it, I decided to delve into the issue in a new segment I call The Luck Index.

Here's how it works. I took the power rankings in each category then took the power rankings based on W-L record for each category, then found the difference. Negative numbers symbolize bad luck. Or negative luck. Here is an example for RBIs:

RBI
Manager	PR	Standing	Diff
Alex	10	8	-2
Adrian	2	10	8
Ben	7	1.5	-5.5
Colin	3	6	3
Drew	1	4	3
James	9	6	-3
Jarrett	8	9	1
Kurt	5	3	-2
TJ	4	6	2
Richie	6	1.5	-4.5

 

I picked this one because this was the most extreme example that didn’t involve me. (League leader in R, HR, AVG and W, yet only 1 game over .500 in those 4 categories.)

As you can see, Adrian is terrible at driving in runs.  He has the second fewest in the league.  Yet, he has the best record in RBI.  That is 8 points on the luck index, because he is 8 spots ahead in the standings of where he should be.

On the other end of the spectrum, Ben is getting screwed.  It didn’t help that Longoria dropped an 11 spot on him, but it sure was hilarious to everyone else.

Either way, I now present to you the Week 6 Luck Index:

1. Colin (+13.5)
Colin gets a boost in WHIP, where he is 4 spots ahead of where he should be. Meanwhile, he is only below his score in two of ten categories, and no more than 1.5 spots below his performance.

2. Adrian (+11.5)
Adrian gets a huge boost in RBI (see example.)  Aside from that Adrian is correctly placed in the standings in three of 10 categories, with a luck score of 0. (not many 0s across the board.)

3. James (+7)
James' pitching staff is terrible.  He has the worst ERA and the worst WHIP in the league, yet is 6-6 in those categories.  Proobably because, as we saw with Alex, he pressures other managers in to spot-starting...  Sorry to blow up your spot

4. Jarrett (+3.5)
Jarrett got some mild luck here, nothing big across the board.  Spoiler Alert:  you will find out that he is power ranked 2nd.  So to see that the first place team has gotten a small amount of good fortune is not too surprising, but does not take away from his performance.

5. Drew (+1.5)
Drew should actually be in 11th place.  Not much more to say about this one.

6. Ben (+.5) 
Ben has had remarkable fortune.  He got a luck score of 0 in 4 categories, meaning that you're getting exactly what you see out of him.  Way to not game the system, Ben. We're happy to have you.

7. TJ (-3.5)
TJ has had some bad beats on R's and K's, but it hasn't hurt him too bad.

8. Alex (-5)
Alex has had some hard luck on SB. But, it looks like I found the first flaw in this system as he had way more SBs to start the season than he has the past few weeks in losses.  Shit.  Either way, he could be a bit higher given his performances.

9. Richie (-8)
Richie has had some bad luck, but his performances haven't been that great either.  On offense, his best record in a category is the second worst record in the league.  However, he only ranks in the top 8 in one category.  The worse get worser.

10. Kurt (-21)
Very, very unlucky.  And rather than write about it, here are the power rankings.  Keep in mind that Kurt is in 8th Place.

1	Kurt	72.5
2	Jarrett	67.5
3	TJ	63
4	Alex	63
5	Ben	60
6	Colin	53.5
7	James	50
8	Adrian	46.5
9	Richie	45.5
10	Drew	28.5