Rate my program: ESPN Fantasy Football Analyzer

[sirsean]

Sometimes you want to know whose fantasy team is better, right? Well, now you can calculate your "optimum" points scored and record, which is a more accurate way to measure how good your team is.

This is a pretty diverse crowd, so I figure there are some people who enjoy a little fantasy football and wouldn't mind an extra tool to settle disputes about whose team is better and who's better/worse at playing fantasy football.

[jaxn]

I will check it out.

I won my ESPN fantasy football league this year. It is a tough league where we keep 7 players each year and draft new one. The league is now 6 or 7 years old and all of the owners are getting pretty good.

This year I created a spreadsheet to help me draft the most consistent players. It is similar to what you are doing in that it should help me ensure an "optimum" score each week. Since I won the league I think my method works.

So, here is my initial feedback from reading your description.

What counts in fantasy football is the number of wins and losses. Changing the goal to one of winning based on "optimum" points matters none to me. I want it to help me win (without redefining what a win is).

So instead of historical analysis, how about focusing on prediction? An ESPN fantasy football tool that helps with the draft and helps pick starters for a week is useful. You are close, but it doesn't sound like it is there yet.

I think your idea of optimum points can be useful for making those predictions.

[sirsean]

Maybe something like this could be altered to make predictions, but that wasn't really my goal.

In my league this year, there was a team that started 11-0. He thought that proved he was the best fantasy football player and had the best team. Everyone else pointed out that he simply had the fewest points against. This was a way to calculate what his record should have been if the other players had set their roster optimally. (It turns out he should have finished 11-2 instead of 12-1, and was like 4th in total optimum points for.)

Optimum points is better for recognizing which players you should have started, not for who you should pick up or draft. If anyone has any input on what it should do to be better at prediction, I'm all ears -- I just don't know if that could really work reliably.

[jaxn]

Sounds like you are "moving the goal posts" to me.

[sirsean]

Heh. It probably looks like that. But determining who has "the best team" doesn't change who won the league championship. It's just an interesting footnote. (Does anyone think the Phillies were actually the "best" team in the MLB, or that the Giants were actually the "best" team in the NFL? The "best" team doesn't always win the championship.)

And, honestly, the primary reason I wrote it was to determine how much I suck at fantasy football -- it always seemed to me that players would score really well when they were on my bench, and suck if I started them. Optimum points, and the difference between optimum and actual, are a way to measure that.

(It turns out my gap between optimum and actual wasn't as big as I thought it'd be, and other teams had a much larger gap. Just because you have a feeling about something doesn't make you right.)