Every MLB season is different, and we’ve had to get used to some pretty drastic changes over the past few seasons. From fluctuations in the manufacturing process of the baseball causing often dramatic changes in offense production from one year to the next to last season’s midseason crackdown on the use of sticky substances by pitchers, it seems like we don’t really know what to expect from one year to the next when drafting our Fantasy teams.
Well, that’s not entirely true. We might not know exactly what the offensive environment in baseball will look like from one year to the next, but the previous year generally serves as a pretty effective baseline. There might be a change in home run totals of 5-10% in one direction from one year to the next, and we’ve seen changes in league-wide batting averages of up to .007 year over year, but because we can’t really know what direction things might swing or by how much, you pretty much have to use the previous season as your baseline when setting expectations.
So, what should those expectations look like? Well, in leagues played on CBSSports.com in traditional 5×5 Roto scoring, here’s what the average finish in each category looked like:
| AVG | HR | R | RBI | SB | W | S | K | ERA | WHIP | |
| 1 | 0.272 | 345 | 1117 | 1077 | 149 | 99 | 92 | 1546 | 3.28 | 1.10 |
| 2 | 0.268 | 328 | 1080 | 1037 | 132 | 93 | 83 | 1480 | 3.43 | 1.13 |
| 3 | 0.265 | 316 | 1059 | 1016 | 122 | 90 | 77 | 1442 | 3.54 | 1.14 |
| 4 | 0.264 | 307 | 1039 | 996 | 114 | 87 | 70 | 1401 | 3.62 | 1.16 |
| 5 | 0.262 | 299 | 1020 | 978 | 108 | 84 | 66 | 1373 | 3.70 | 1.17 |
| 6 | 0.260 | 290 | 1003 | 959 | 102 | 82 | 61 | 1335 | 3.77 | 1.18 |
| 7 | 0.259 | 283 | 986 | 945 | 96 | 79 | 55 | 1303 | 3.84 | 1.20 |
| 8 | 0.257 | 275 | 965 | 925 | 91 | 76 | 49 | 1263 | 3.91 | 1.21 |
| 9 | 0.255 | 266 | 945 | 906 | 85 | 74 | 43 | 1223 | 3.99 | 1.22 |
| 10 | 0.253 | 256 | 919 | 881 | 79 | 70 | 36 | 1175 | 4.07 | 1.24 |
| 11 | 0.251 | 242 | 889 | 846 | 72 | 66 | 27 | 1110 | 4.18 | 1.25 |
| 12 | 0.247 | 220 | 823 | 789 | 60 | 59 | 16 | 1001 | 4.35 | 1.28 |
That comes out to a .272 average, 25 homers, 80 runs, 77 RBI, and 11 steals per lineup spot in your typical Roto league from the first-place teams, which actually doesn’t sound like a lot. But there were actually only nine hitters last season who reached those marks in each category: Fernando Tatis, Bryce Harper, Tyler O’Neill, Teoscar Hernandez, Paul Goldschmidt, Kyle Tucker, Bo Bichette, Manny Machado, and Trea Turner. Getting true five-category production from a hitter is rare.
On the pitching side, it’s a bit harder to do that same exercise, because you need both starters and closers to compete in all five categories, however, even if you just take wins, strikeouts, ERA, and WHIP from the first-place teams, you needed an average of 11 wins and 172 strikeouts to go along with a 3.28 ERA and 1.10 WHIP per pitcher spot. Even with those numbers somewhat deflated, only 12 pitchers hit each benchmark in 2021: Robbie Ray, Zack Wheeler, Gerrit Cole, Max Scherzer, Corbin Burnes, Kevin Gausman, Walker Buehler, Joe Musgrove, Julio Urias, Carlos Rodon, Lance Lynn, and Adam Wainwright.
And, if you assume three reliever spots, your average first-place team in saves averaged better than 30 per spot – and only Liam Hendriks, Raisel Iglesias, Josh Hader, Aroldis Chapman, Edwin Diaz, Will Smith, Kenley Jansen, Mark Melancon, and Jake McGee got to 30 saves last season — in case you’re wondering why Liam Hendriks and Josh Hader are third-round picks on average in NFC drafts right now.
Of course, you don’t actually need to finish in first place in every category to win your league. In looking at every league-winning team in 2021, here’s their average standings points for each category:
- AVG: 8.8
- HR: 10.1
- R: 10.9
- RBI: 10.6
- SB: 9.1
- W: 10.1
- S: 9.1
- K: 10.3
- ERA: 9.9
- WHIP: 9.9
Two key takeaways: One, is that you don’t need to win every category, or every any category to win your league. What you need is fairly evenly distributed excellence. A top-three finish in every category probably pretty much guarantees you’ll win your league, and every spot you fall in one category is something you need to make up elsewhere.
The other is that league-winning production was not evenly distributed, and that’s not particularly surprising. Some of the categories just don’t have the same impact on your chances of winning, largely because they stand alone. Stolen bases and saves are the obvious ones, because they really do stand alone – a steal doesn’t directly lead to any other statistic, while closers pitch so few innings that even the elite ones don’t impact your rate stats or strikeouts very much.
However, batting average being the category that league-winners did the worst in collectively is pretty interesting. Batting average doesn’t directly contribute to any other category either, but hits do increase your chances of scoring and driving in runs. However, I think part of why average may not be as correlated with winning is because so many of the best hitters in the game – the best contributors in HR, R, and RBI, in particular – either don’t have especially good batting averages or walk so much that their impact on your average isn’t as great as you would expect. Juan Soto was third in the majors in batting average among qualifiers and was 25th in the majors in plate appearances, but was just 84th in at-bats. He walks so much that he doesn’t have as many opportunities to help your average. Similarly, someone like Brandon Lowe makes a much bigger positive impact on your HR, R, and RBI numbers than his .247 average hurts you because he doesn’t have a ton of at-bats.
In future posts, I’ll be looking into targets and strategies for each category for your drafts, but now you’ve got your baseline expectations. That’s the start.
