Using Standard Deviation for Drafting (1 Viewer)

[rayson00]

After years of fantasy football, seems like the more stable players you have, the better chance you have at gettting into playoffs.

The more stable the player, the more likey you dont end up with weekly low scores gives you more chances to win each week.

I wonder if Standard Deviation would be a good statistic to keep track with players from year to year? The smaller the deviation, the less times your weekly scores low. If an avg score in the leagues is 100 each week, id much rather hover around 100 than to be 80's one week and 120 another week. Total points is useless if you dont get the Win!

Anybody seeing this statistic being used? Could help when deciding between a couple people to pick each round

 

[Psychopav]

FFToday has something called "Crank Scores" that do this.

I tried to do it myself for a few years, but it takes more discipline than I have to get the data and keep it year after year. But I do try to look at some form of SD every year in assessing players for the draft.

 

[rayson00]

I can see this statistic being more important that the usual ones out there like SOS or '3rd year WR'

 

[stickboy]

After years of fantasy football, seems like the more stable players you have, the better chance you have at gettting into playoffs.

The more stable the player, the more likey you dont end up with weekly low scores gives you more chances to win each week.

I wonder if Standard Deviation would be a good statistic to keep track with players from year to year? The smaller the deviation, the less times your weekly scores low. If an avg score in the leagues is 100 each week, id much rather hover around 100 than to be 80's one week and 120 another week. Total points is useless if you dont get the Win!

Anybody seeing this statistic being used? Could help when deciding between a couple people to pick each round

What you want is a player that always scores his average or better http://forumimages.footballguys.com/style_...t/confused1.gifSeriously, SD is good on the upside, and many players are skewed that way, they bump along at a regular clip then have a small number of very large games. And this is good in the playoffs when it is single elimination, you don't want consistently average players going against a hot team. So you need a mix -- a set of players that are somewhat consistent and provide a base score you can count on, and then a set of players that provide more upside.

Yes, I look at volatility of performance when deciding who to pick. I try to benchmark it against the average scoring of the top N players at the position -- how many weeks during the year would they have outscored this average?

 

[Biabreakable]

Drinen did a study on this several years back that led me to conclude that having a steady performer is not neccessarily better than a player who scores go up and down. Depending of course on the whole composition of your team.

 

[Biabreakable]

After years of fantasy football, seems like the more stable players you have, the better chance you have at gettting into playoffs.

The more stable the player, the more likey you dont end up with weekly low scores gives you more chances to win each week.

I wonder if Standard Deviation would be a good statistic to keep track with players from year to year? The smaller the deviation, the less times your weekly scores low. If an avg score in the leagues is 100 each week, id much rather hover around 100 than to be 80's one week and 120 another week. Total points is useless if you dont get the Win!

Anybody seeing this statistic being used? Could help when deciding between a couple people to pick each round

What you want is a player that always scores his average or better http://forumimages.footballguys.com/style_...t/confused1.gifSeriously, SD is good on the upside, and many players are skewed that way, they bump along at a regular clip then have a small number of very large games. And this is good in the playoffs when it is single elimination, you don't want consistently average players going against a hot team. So you need a mix -- a set of players that are somewhat consistent and provide a base score you can count on, and then a set of players that provide more upside.

Yes, I look at volatility of performance when deciding who to pick. I try to benchmark it against the average scoring of the top N players at the position -- how many weeks during the year would they have outscored this average?

Agreed.

 

[ookook]

If all of your players had low SDs across weeks, you would never be able to beat a team better than yours.

In some ways, I like having a corps of high SD players.

Problem is that psychologically we remember the below the mean performances better, so we tend to think high SD is bad. But as Drinen showed, this is not necessarily the case.

 

[pollardsvision]

i think weekly consistency for fantasy players is a bit overrated. there are very few players that are great week in and week out. even those players have plenty of stinkers.

i just want guys who will always be involved in the offense (high targets and carries) and score a bunch of fantasy points. week to week consistency is mostly a pipe dream. outside of the top, top guys, i'm not sure previous week to week consistency is much has much influence on future consistency anyway.

the only time i take consistency into account is to downgrade certain deep threat WRs who are notorious for being average outside of a few games each year.

 

[sterjs]

After years of fantasy football, seems like the more stable players you have, the better chance you have at gettting into playoffs.The more stable the player, the more likey you dont end up with weekly low scores gives you more chances to win each week.I wonder if Standard Deviation would be a good statistic to keep track with players from year to year? The smaller the deviation, the less times your weekly scores low. If an avg score in the leagues is 100 each week, id much rather hover around 100 than to be 80's one week and 120 another week. Total points is useless if you dont get the Win!Anybody seeing this statistic being used? Could help when deciding between a couple people to pick each round

Thoughts on SD in Fantasy Football:Is it a meaningful statistic? Is it something that is constant from year to year? What is the standard deviation of the standard deviation?!To some extent, we can guess at SD. Quarterbacks generally have lower SD than RB/WR/TE. TDs are much higher variance than Yards or Catches. Players who score points in multiple categories have a lower SD than those who rely on one category. Part time players are higher variance than full time players.Remember that players on different teams are essentially assets with 0 correlation. Variance is not as painful when your assets are diversifed like that.

 

[Bl Deep]

there a many types of standard deviation...

There is the consistency of weekly point scoring... but also the variability of seasonal production... When drafting a team, you need to look at your team as a portfolio that blends stability with explosive upside, and just as you wouldn't load up your stock portfolio in a way that produces huge exposure, you want to look at your FF team in the same light....

You aren't going to win your league with T-Bills.

 

[JAK Straw]

IIRC Drinen's conclusion was that it depends on the scoring average of your team vs. your opponent. If your average is higher, you should play low SD guys, and you rate to win. If your opponent's scoring average is higher, you should play high SD guys, since you'll need some better performances in order to beat your generally higher scoring foe.

 

[inca911]

I wrote an article on stdev and it's application to auctions that might be useful.

http://subscribers.footballguys.com/2008/0...e_johnson02.php

 

[rayson00]

So if your league is a Head to Head league, and the avg per week score is 100. It seems that you would regularly want to hover around 100 than to be in the 70's one week and 130s another week. With a team with a low SD, seems more likely to reach that goal. I guess why this stat is so important to me is many times in the past i have either killed teams by over 30 points or been in situations where I lost to teams with low weekly score and I had a bad week. How would SD not affect your weekly head to head scoring?

After years of fantasy football, seems like the more stable players you have, the better chance you have at gettting into playoffs.The more stable the player, the more likey you dont end up with weekly low scores gives you more chances to win each week.I wonder if Standard Deviation would be a good statistic to keep track with players from year to year? The smaller the deviation, the less times your weekly scores low. If an avg score in the leagues is 100 each week, id much rather hover around 100 than to be 80's one week and 120 another week. Total points is useless if you dont get the Win!Anybody seeing this statistic being used? Could help when deciding between a couple people to pick each round

Thoughts on SD in Fantasy Football:Is it a meaningful statistic? Is it something that is constant from year to year? What is the standard deviation of the standard deviation?!To some extent, we can guess at SD. Quarterbacks generally have lower SD than RB/WR/TE. TDs are much higher variance than Yards or Catches. Players who score points in multiple categories have a lower SD than those who rely on one category. Part time players are higher variance than full time players.Remember that players on different teams are essentially assets with 0 correlation. Variance is not as painful when your assets are diversifed like that.

 

[rayson00]

So if your league is a Head to Head league, and the avg per week score is 100. It seems that you would regularly want to hover around 100 than to be in the 70's one week and 130s another week. With a team with a low SD, seems more likely to reach that goal.

I guess why this stat is so important to me is many times in the past i have either killed teams by over 30 points or been in situations where I lost to teams with low weekly score and I had a bad week. How would SD not affect your weekly head to head scoring?

 

[bucsbaby]

I've thought about this myself. Another stat I'd like to see used more often is Median pts per week instead of Average. If a guy blows up one week, he'll have a high average score, but very low median score. I think the more descriptive stats we could access, the more informed we could have to make decisions. Range, SD, mean, median would all be helpful when evaluating players imo. At the very least it would help you be able to decide whether a player is a home-run hitter with a high strike-out rate vs. a consistent on-base percentage guy that can give you steady production each week.

I also lean more toward wanting steady production guys on my team for the reasons outlined by the OP.