Identifying League Characteristics (1 Viewer)

[JoeMoney]

Hello all. I'm pretty rare around these forums and was looking for feedback on a strategy I developed for looking deeper into your league setup, and turning it into a useful tool to develop a draft strategy. I presented it in an article on a site run by Greg Kellogg, the fantasy sports writer hall-of-famer, where he allows aspiring fantasy football writers a place to hone their craft. I did NOT receive compensation for this and am just looking for feedback on the strategy. I think it could be very useful to folks with odd league rules and set ups, or league mates that do unconventional things with success. Please take a few minutes if you're interested and if there's any questions on the article, please post here and I'll do my best to answer them. Thanks in advance.

http://kelloggskomments.com/content/2014/05/24/identifying-league-characteristics/

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

Seems fascinating but there's no way I could do this on my own or find the time to do so. Now if you could import the data into software that would spit out the results that would be something else.

 

[FunkyTeaParty]

Where is the the fantasy sports writing Hall of Fame?

 

[JoeMoney]

You can find info on the hall of fame at this link, which is part of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association.

http://fswa.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3401:fswa-hall-of-fame

The hardest part was getting the spreadsheet set up and working properly. Once that was accomplished, all I did was enter the data needed each Tuesday after the games were over. Took me about 30 mins on my lunch break to do it.

I initially was trying to determine if a weird draft strategy I had for that league that year was effective, then realized I could develop more information than I initially thought.

Full disclosure is that my team wasn't very good that year (2012), however the guy that won the league ended up with a team that was similar to my draft target. Basically came down to who we picked and I picked bad players.

I did use the information the following year (2013) to help create my draft strategy and had a much better team that lost in the playoffs.

 

[themitch]

I like this idea a lot. Player bias is really hard to overcome, and I still see it as an issue for drafting, but at least this will give you a hyper specific tool for your league. Unfortunately I can't go back to look at my scores from the past two years to build this for my league.

 

[JoeMoney]

Yea going back a few years for data isn't kept for most leagues on their respective websites unfortunately. One of those things where it's better to start from scratch beginning of the year.

Referring to player bias however is an interesting thought. I didn't highlight in the article but CBS, which we use to run the league, allows us to export weekly stats by positions into a .csv file for each player. I was able to cross reference that info to see how often a player was a RB1, RB2, or less based on our league averages at those respective positions.

For example, I was able to see that Drew Brees performed at or above a QB1 or QB2 level 15 out of 16 weeks in a league where we can start 2 QBs if we choose. Not that we wouldn't start him anyways, but that illustrates how you could find positional targets, cross reference them with next season's ADP and find potential sleepers.

Or maybe even choose between two players you're considering at a draft slot. Do you want a consistent player or a boom/bust type for example.

Could be a way to evaluate close calls.