Author: Brant Tedeschi

Our suite of fantasy sports tools have been extremely popular over the last several years.  Many of you have been asking us if a mobile version of the trade analyzer or start sit tool would ever be available.  Well, we have great news for you!  As of today our optimized mobile versions are live on the mobile site.    They offer the same great content and functionality, but in a smaller package.  What better way to celebrate the fantasy football start or sit tool‘s first birthday!

Want to skip the details and go straight to our mobile NFL start or sit tool and mobile NFL trade analyzer? We are fine with that too.

For the rest of you, let’s quickly go over a few details so you guys can learn about what they look like, how to access them, and tips.

Just by looking at the picture to the right, you’ll notice that the tools have been completely redesigned from the ground up for your mobile phones.  I wanted to make sure that the experience would be as fluid as possible and a lot of time and effort went into making sure they fit and look good on a variety of mobile phones and load fast.  Things will work as expected and look great whether you have an Android, iPhone, Blackberry, or Windows phone.

The start or sit tools work exactly like the desktop version and showcases 7 categories to help decide who to sit or start in a given week or day.  A decision on who to start or sit is shown at the very bottom of each decision with a percentage of certainty. We also provide trending trades or trending start decisions right underneath the main tool so you can see what everyone else is searching.

The trade analyzers look a lot different than the desktop version, but still offer the same in depth analysis and news.  When a trade is processed you will notice that each player is listed under Team 1 or Team 2 vertically.  A trade will have a stronger side or a weaker side.  The goal is to be on the stronger side of a trade.    Each player has their own interactive row that can be expanded to reveal their fantasy graph, stats, analysis, and latest player news.

So the real question is, how do you access them?

You will notice that our mobile site has a new footer at the bottom of every page for quick access.  However, the majority of users won’t even have to do anything different and will automatically be shown the proper version of the start or sit tool or trade analyzer depending what device you use.

We will continue to push the envelope on our fantasy tools in 2013 and beyond.  Keep an eye out for another major update coming soon to the trade analyzer.

Evaluating players is a tough thing to do, just ask the scouts.  Here at FantasySP we evaluate thousands of players algorithmically based on a variety of factors.  Our process is not perfect and has continued to evolve over these past 5 years.  As of yesterday a major update went live to baseball player ratings.  You may have noticed that Rankings/Ratings inside the Fantasy Assistant have changed as a result.  I wanted to take a moment to talk about player ratings and give you inside insight on my thought process and what our latest update means.

FantasySP has a wide variety of tools and all of them rely on accurate Player Ratings, often referred to as FSP.  Needless to say, it is important that our ratings are as accurate as possible.  Over the years player ratings have gone through countless updates to further improve accuracy.  Yet I still felt that they were still missing something.  Then, a conversation over at the /r/fantasybaseball subreddit with Capper22 finally made things click.

He said that the trade analyzer and player ratings were lacking.  In some cases, it was pretty egregious.  He was right.  In some instances players were rated better than they should have been and vice-versa.  One part in particular that caught my attention is when Capper22 wrote:

“I’m just trying to think about how I go about evaluating trade involving those who you singled out.”

So well said!  Let’s do just that.   Before we get to improving player ratings, let’s take a step back and go through a list of questions you might ask as yourself when evaluating a player.  Then, I can compare this to what I have already implemented and see where the problem might be.

Here is a list of possible questions you might ask yourself when evaluating a player:

• Historical stats.  How has this player performed over the past two or three years?
• Current Season. How has this player performed this year so far?
• Comparisons.  How does this player compare to other players at the same position?
• Injury Situation. Is this player healthy?
• Trending Stats. How has this player performed in the past 30 days?
• Upside.  How much upside or downside does this player have?
• Expert Opinions.  What do the experts across blogs, newspapers, and fantasy sites say?

If you noticed, all of the questions that go into evaluating a player have almost nothing to do with fantasy scoring or fantasy leagues.  Kind of odd for a site called FantasySP, right?  Well, fantasy scoring is essentially another way of repackaging what the raw statistical data already says.  Since leagues could have different scoring, it makes more sense to look at the raw data rather than customized scoring systems.  So that is where I look first.

After taking these questions into account I felt that my core player rating logic was still sound.  Part of the problem is that I was over emphasising Trending Stats.  This was one of the factors that lead to guys like Jarrod Parker being rated better than Yu Darvish.  Without getting too technical and give away too many secrets… I rewrote some of the logic that looks at trending stats.  I also took a closer look at how I factor in historical stats as well.

What we are left with are more accurate player ratings. Another evolutionary step forward.  Many of the updates I made to baseball will also be applied to football, basketball, and hockey over the coming weeks.

Is it perfect now?  Well, no.  Which brings me to the Dodgers picture that is included with this post.  As you might of guessed, that’s Yasiel Puig who is off to a hot start to his career.  He is also a reminder that evaluating rookies is hard and that player ratings will never be completed.

The Trade Research Center exists within the Fantasy Assistant, and is a feature that I alluded to in my previous blog post about position based analysis.  This new tool will allow you to easily research various trades and even receive personalized trade suggestions.  The development of this feature was heavily influenced by users of FantasySP with testing and/or suggestions by Michael, Steve, and Rob.

The Trade Research Center is based off of the position ratings that were released two months ago.  It consists of three separate areas:  Position Ratings, Research Area, and Trade Suggestions.

Position Ratings

Position based ratings show you where various positions on your team rank against other teams in the league.  This is slightly different for each sport, but works exactly the same for all sports.  We also chart each team’s data on a daily basis so you can easily see where you are trending.

The ratings are generated based off of the average of your player ratings for each specific position grouping.

Based on what we see on the right, it appears that I have a fairly balanced team.  My worst position is Corner Infielders, but not by much.  The blue line for each box indicates the current trend of my players.  For the most part, all positions are gradually improving over time.

Any time you see a big spike or dip, it generally indicates a waiver wire move that was performed on my part.

Research Area

The research area of the Trade Research Center allows you to delve  deeper into what other team’s look like.  You can see all the teams in your fantasy league and see exactly where they rate and rank in each position.  It also shows you the depth of each position.

To start with, let’s look at the Corner Infielders position and see why this tool is helpful and what you can do with the data.  Based on the screenshot to the right, I am currently ranked 7th of 10 teams in my league.  Based on the Starters rating, I am 12 points behind the top team.

Clearly my Corner Infielders need help some help, so let’s try and develop a trade based on this need.

The top team, Arods, only has two players and they are the best in the league right now. My chances developing a trade with him may not be in my favor.   Instead, let’s focus on the 2nd ,3rd, 4th place teams.

All of those teams have more than 2 position players, so we know they have a surplus. That may work in our favor.

The other key ingredient for a trade is to be able to fill a need of another team’s weakness.  Outfielders just so happen to be my strongest position, so the goal here is to give up an outfielder to help bolster my Corner Infielders.

BAMF Bulldogs and Commo Dawgs are in desperate need for an outfielder and are ranked 9th and 10th.  There is no question that I should narrow down my list of teams to them and see if a deal can be worked out.

But what if I don’t want to do all this work researching?  What about automatically suggesting a trade based on this type of data?

Trade Suggestions

We’ve got you covered for that in our Trade Suggestion area!  As I stated in the previous area, we’ve already narrowed down the choices of teams to trade with.  If this feature works as advertised, then it should be selecting BAMF Bulldogs or Commo Dawgs.

Right now the Trades that are suggested involve team BAMF Bulldogs.  Getting Edwin Encarnacion and Desmond Jennings would be nice additions for the right price.

You can click on the “view analysis” button to view more information such as latest player news, graphs, and player breakdowns.  This works exactly like Waiver Wire Suggestions.

So the real question is, are these trades helpful in any way?  These trades are listed as in our favor by 100% and are certainly in the ballpark.  I personally do not think my opponent would accept the first trade for Josh Willingham and Allen Craig, but it can’t hurt to propose it?

As for the second trade, giving up McCutchen and Craig to get Encarnacion and Jennings is a bit too much for me.  I would, however, consider giving up David Ortiz since I know that he can be played in the Utility spot and may not keep up his current pace.

In any case, I can go on and on here about potential trade scenarios but I think you get the picture.  You can see how quickly and easily I can come to a trade by doing a bit of research with our new tool.

I can easily pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses as well as my own.  I also get trades suggested to me that I can use as a starting point.

This feature will work with all major fantasy sports including NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL.  Right now I still consider this feature to be in BETA so expect there to be changes down the road to further increase its accuracy.

Go ahead and sign up for FantasySP and enjoy a free trial to gain access to the Fantasy Assistant.

Update 5/11/2013: The CBSSports App now has this feature as well.