Evaluating Fantasy Overachievers and Underachievers

Today we are introducing a new feature to see which fantasy players are overachieving and underachieving.  Below you’ll see why this matters, how it works, and how you can use this data to manage your team moving forward.  (At the time of this writing, fantasy baseball examples are shown but the same features are available for fantasy football, fantasy basketball, and fantasy hockey.)

Why it Matters

Understanding which players are overachieving and underachieving is extremely important when it comes to managing your team for future success.  If your team consists of too many overachieving players, then you’ll quickly realize that the fast start your team had is bound to come to an abrupt end.

On the flip-side, if your team consists of too many underachieving players, then you may have to dig yourself out of a hole as you wait for these player’s to return to form.  Consistently starting a player who has not performed well, but has high expectations may ensure your team continues its slow start.

A fantasy team will inevitably have both types of players and it is important to start players during their hot streaks and bench players who are failing to live up to expectations.   Managing your team requires daily effort to stay on top of such trends.

How to Detect Overachievers and Underachievers

When analyzing your team’s roster, it’s absolutely critical to put personal feelings aside.  Sure you had high hopes for Billy Hamilton during the baseball draft, but your team needs players who are performing well right now.

The Fantasy Assistant makes this easy by using colors to determine who is performing better, worse, or on par with their expectations.

Notice the green and red colors?
Notice the green and red colors?

The picture above shows a small portion of my starting lineup.  Player ratings in red are currently underachieving and player’s in green are currently overachieving.  Players who have no color next to their rating indicates that they are performing close to their expectations.  If you mouse over each rating, a more detailed explanation is revealed.

In addition to a revised lineup, we are also introducing a brand new section which is called “Over Under” so you can research the best and worst players by position.  The EXPR number indicates how much worse or better the player is performing based on expectations.

Third Base Underachievers
Third Base Overachievers
Third Base Underachievers

How to use this Knowledge

As mentioned earlier, the most obvious way to use this knowledge is to bench underachievers and start overachievers when its in your favor.  However, you should also use this data to pick-up players on the waiver wire who can give your team an immediate boost.

A perfect example of this has been Yangervis Solarte for the early start of the 2014 baseball season.  Lately, he’s already come back down to earth so it’s probably best if you go ahead and drop him since he has already cooled off.

Another possible way to utilize this data is to help develop trades based on this information.  An irrational or impatient fantasy player often makes mistakes when a player on their team is performing poorly.  There may be an opportunity to snag Adrian Beltre or Manny Machado for a discount if their owner wants to get rid of them before they start to perform closer to expectations and fully come back from their injuries.

Author: Brant Tedeschi

I'm Brant Tedeschi, a web developer and entrepreneur, from New Jersey with a degree in history from Monmouth University. I've been developing start-ups for the past 6 years and am the founder and lead developer of FantasySP. Follow me on Twitter or Google+

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