Author: Brant Tedeschi

Keeping track of fantasy baseball closer news can be tough.  One day you are racking up the saves, while the next day you’re on the outside looking in after a sudden stint on the DL.  Luckily I have the solutions to this closer problem.

One of the best sites I have come across is called Closer Monkey.  They offer you free email alerts whenever a new closer takes over, plus daily digests so you are informed about the latest happenings.  As if that isn’t enough, they have a Twitter account for real-time tweets.  I personally subscribe to these guys myself and think they do an incredible job.

Another source for closer news comes from another Twitter account aptly called “Closer news“.  These guys tend to give you more up to the minute stats and results from closing situations.  For example, if you closer has pitched in three straight games, they’ll provide a heads up on Twitter that he may not be available today.

Then, of course, there is always reddit’s fantasybaseball subreddit for those who want to get involved in the latest news and be surrounded by fellow fantasy geeks.  This has way more to offer than just closer news.

Finally the most obvious solution to keeping track of closer news is right here at FantasySP.  Once you have a league synced, FantasySP will send you player alerts any time one of your player’s has significant news.    Furthermore, if FantasySP detects a significant waiver trend in your league, the site will automatically send you a Waiver Alert so you can beast others to the waiver wire.  This works incredibly well when it comes to keeping tabs on closers, but it also works for all players in all four major sports.

A major update hit the Fantasy Assistant today involving team projections, matchup analysis, and category analysis.  The first sport to receive this update is baseball, but expect them to show up for basketball, football, and hockey in the coming days.

Projected Stats & Rankings

Previously, we had projected stats, but now they also show you where you are projected to rank against other teams in your league.  Each category and ranking is accompanied by our standard color system of red, orange, and green.  Each color gives you an easy overview of strengths and weaknesses.

By default, we are showing 8 hitting categories and 7 pitching categories for baseball.   These projections are based on your current starting lineup. The final categories are called “PTS”, which estimates where you will rank based on standard h2h scoring in both pitching and hitting.

For those of you playing other sports, you will see different stats relevant to your sport but it will all work exactly the same.  The goal is to give you a well rounded overview of your team whether you are playing category based h2h, rotisserie leagues, or standard h2h.

Matchup Analysis

A completely new section has been added which allows you to compare stats projections against your entire league.  Again, these projections are based on your starting lineup moving forward.   By default we are showing you all teams in your league based on the entire season, but you can also break things down to seven days or the past 30 days.

There are plenty of different ways you might want to use this data for setting your lineup.  For example, if I am playing Tiny Webb next week , then I can set my lineup accordingly based on their team’s recent performance.

To do that, I can select that team from the dropdown to easily compare the two.  If I know I have no shot to win in saves, then I may want to skip that category all together and try to get points in the remaining categories.

As I mentioned earlier, each sport will have different categories, but the matchup analysis will remain the same.  This update is already live on FantasySP. and our CBSSports apps.

During fantasy drafts  many of us base our picks on average draft position, sometimes referred to as ADP.   Today is the official announcement of our  average draft position tool, which is available for the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA.  The key difference with our tool is that it’s completely free, offers historical ADP numbers, and is customizable to closely match your league.

One of the biggest drawbacks to some of the Average Draft Position tools is that it is impossible to see how a specific player’s ADP changes throughout the course of draft season.  We wanted to change that and show historical charts for the top 250+ players.

Here is what Jean Segura’s ADP chart looks like so far:

Thus far Segura is very up and down with his highest ADP to be at around 23.  Knowing where a guy is trending could very well change your draft day strategy.

Our ADP tool can be particularly useful when customizing it for auction drafts and looking how prices change for each player.  Yahoo’s ADP tool shows average cost for Trout and Cabrera to be at around $60 and doesn’t offer any customization.  As it turns out, the average cost changes drastically depending on how many teams are involved.  When comparing auction leagues with 12 teams vs 10 teams, the average cost of the most expensive player increases by around $15.00 – $20.00.

Full list of customizations include Draft Type: (snake or auction), League Type: (h2h or roto), and Number of Teams: (6 – 20).  The NFL ADP tool will have slightly different options than those listed here, with the support of PPR leagues.  Our ADP tool is also optimized for mobile phones or desktop users.

The data that populates our ADP tool comes from fellow FantasySP users who synced their leagues.  Because this tool was created during draft season, you’ll notice that some stats are a bit light at the moment.  As draft season continues, it should populate with hundreds more leagues by the time draft season ends.

Go ahead and give it a try.