Advanced Player Projections

Not too long ago, we introduced you to Weekly Projections.  Today, we are building upon our projection engine and offering advanced Player Projections for every player on your team.  Player Projections are available for NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL fantasy leagues inside the Fantasy Assistant.  We will offer daily player projections or weekly projections.

Let’s take a look at what the Player Projections look like and where to find them inside the Fantasy Assistant. After selecting your team, mouse over the blue projection icons under “My Roster”.

Here is what Jay Cutler’s Projections look like for Week 12 against a very weak Bucs defense.  I am hoping to see good things from both Cutler and Alshon Jeffery.

 

player-projections-nfl

 

Player Projections for NBA, NHL, and MLB leagues can be customized based on the categories that your league actually uses.  We automatically narrow down our projections to the current fantasy week.   Those of you in category based leagues will love the ability to compare players stats who are scheduled to play 2 games vs 4 games.

player-projections-nhl

Many of you also play in fantasy leagues where daily lineups can be set.  We also have you covered and offer the ability to change the setting to daily and see how those projections stack up.

player-projections-nba-2

 

(Sorry baseball fans, but no pictures to show you since it is currently in the offseason)

Tips & Tricks

There are a few tips that you should keep in mind when setting your lineups based on these projections.  First, our projections are updated daily, so you are guaranteed to have the latest projections.  Second, you see the Trust rating right next to each player projection?  Those numbers indicate the chances of a player meeting or exceeding fantasy expectations.

Let’s say for example, that you are planning to start Jay Cutler for Week 12.  His Trust rating is 82, so that means he has an 82% chance to meet or exceed his fantasy expectations for this week.  With a projection of 25 points against a weak Bucs defense and a high trust rating… what’s not to like?

Now what happens when you are in a bind to decide who to start?

There may be player’s with better projections for the week or day, but it’s critical to look at Trust ratings while looking at these projections.  A player with a good projection, but low trust rating is an extremely risky play.  Sometimes it may be best to start a player with lower point projections if he is the safer choice, but it all depends on how badly you need him to win or lose and how much risk you are willing to take.

My last tip is to make sure you continue to look at our Weekly Projections inside the fantasy assistant.  Use these player projections in conjunction with our weekly projections to see where your team stacks up for the coming week.

Expect to see even more features involving projections in the coming weeks.  Now go out there and set some quality lineups.

Still not a member of FantasySP?  Well, sign up because your league opponents aren’t guessing anymore.

What fantasy players are trustworthy?

How much do you actually trust the player’s in your starting lineup?  It’s no easy task to decide who to start and sit, especially when it comes to fantasy football.  As of today, there is a way to quantify the trustworthiness of each player on your fantasy team.  Trust Ratings are available for football, basketball, hockey, and baseball leagues.

The new fantasy metric we created is called their Trust Rating, or Trust for short.  A player’s trust rating indicates the likelihood that they will meet or exceed fantasy expectations.  Each player’s trust rating is rated on a scale of 1-100, 100 being the highest.  Trust Ratings appear across various areas of the site, including the fantasy assistant.

Fantasy Assistant Trust Ratings
Fantasy Assistant Trust Ratings

How Do Trust Ratings Work?

Trust Ratings look at how a player performs throughout the course of the season.   Usually a player has highs and lows throughout the fantasy season.   We crunch this data and come up with the likelihood that he will perform to expectations.   Early in the fantasy season, we will not be able to calculate trust ratings until more games are played.  However, for fantasy football, we have more than enough games played to calculate these, as shown above.

Speaking of fantasy football, the above picture shows that Tony Romo has a trust rating of 80.  This means that there is an 80% chance that he will meet or exceed expectations.  It is extremely unlikely that a player will have a 100% trust rating, even if his name is Peyton Manning.

How Do I Use Trust Ratings?

For this blog post, we will be analyzing fantasy football trust ratings and how you should use this data to set your lineup.  The same thought process and logic can be applied to any other sport – no matter if you are in a H2H category league or a rotisserie league.

Trust ratings will play an important role for the Fantasy Assistant and other areas of the site.   Let’s take a look at my Week 7 Projections, which match the starting lineup shown above.

Week 7 Projections
Week 7 Projections

You can see that Tony Romo is projected to have 22 points.  You’ll also notice that he is one of the highest rated player’s on my team, meaning he is extremely important to the success of my fantasy team.  I may very well end up losing this week if he cannot live up to expectations.  The fact that he has a trust rating of 80 bodes very well for me.  The same can be said about my running backs.

Looking at my Wide Receivers, you’ll notice that it tells a slightly different story.

I am projected to get 34 points  from T.Y. Hilton, Alshon Jeffery, and Brian Quick.  This combination ranks me 3rd in the league.  Not bad!  But take a closer look.  Alshon Jeffery is the most reliable of the bunch at 78%.  Meanwhile Hilton and Quick have ratings of 51 and 64.  T.Y. Hilton has such a high ceiling that he is absolutely worth his risk rating and others agree because his start percentage is so high. Quick has a 51% chance of performing below expectations – which means he is pretty risky.

This is where strategy can come into play.  Generally speaking, it is not wise to start a lot of risky players in a given week.  If I know that Brian Quick is a risky play, then I may opt to put in a lower rated player that is more trustworthy, even if he has lower projected points.

Would you give up 5 or so projected points if you can decrease your risk by 25%?  I know I would.  So go ahead and jump in and take a look at your lineups before Week 7 begins.

Improve Your Fantasy Outlook

The Fantasy Assistant offers many different ways to analyze your team and how you fit into your fantasy league.  Today we are releasing a drastically improved roster analysis tool.  You will find much more information about each player: roster trends, your fantasy outlook, and more trending stats.

Roster Analysis
Roster Analysis

Brand new in this update are the own and start bar graphs to the left side of each player.  Along with the start and own graphs will be trending information and arrows indicating fluctuations in these numbers.  Some players will have green or red arrows to indicate significant movement in start or sit trends.  These trends are extremely important when setting lineups and making roster moves.

A relatively new addition that were redesigned are the red and green backgrounds surrounding certain player ratings.  These colors indicate if a player is overachieving or underachieving and are also an important factor of expected performance.  These can play an important role in formulating trades and putting player importance into better perspective. You’ll notice that each player has their complete player information shown with position, team, and injury status.

Perhaps the biggest change to roster analysis is the addition of Fantasy Outlook indicators at the top right.  The fantasy outlook indicates how well the team is set up for success.  The ideal number is 80%+.  In the screenshot above, it shows a green outlook bar but other colors include yellow and red.  Your team’s outlook is updated once per day, or any time you make roster moves.

The team Outlook should be looked at in conjunction with other factors to gauge how well your team is performing.  These include: Season Projections, Weekly Projections, Daily Team Ratings & Rankings, and Daily Position Based Rankings & Ratings.

A lot of factors contribute to your team’s outlook, such as the health of your team, performance, and trends.  If you have a bad record, but a good outlook, then you are doing your job as a team manager by trying your best to improve them.  Alternatively, if you have a good record but a bad outlook then expect things to take a turn for the worse.

Sign up and take full advantage of this roster analysis.

Help with the Waiver Wire

Deciding who to pick up or drop in your fantasy league can be a daunting task.  The Fantasy Assistant offers a brand new way to help decide who to pick up.  Our Waiver Research tool  combines player trends with fantasy performance.

The Waiver Research tool is offered for all major fantasy sports, including fantasy football, baseball, basketball, and hockey.

Waiver Research
Waiver Research

Our tool offers various ways to analyze the waiver pool in your league.  You can break things down by a specific timeframe of days or weeks.  You can also break things down by specific positions.

A key aspect of the Waiver Research tool is the F+ rating, shown in green.  The F+ rating combines fantasy performance with player trends to help you decide who to pick up.  The higher the rating, the better the pickup.

You’ll notice that player’s you own are also shown in the mix and are highlighted in yellow.  It is critically important to show where your player’s performance stacks up against the waiver pool.   We make it easy to compare your player’s performances across shorter and longer timeframes to see if a free agent may be worth the pickup.

The icons next to each player name provide links to the fantasy league player page and an availability breakdown of which league he is owned in.

Finally, we also provide each player’s OWN and START ratings which are shown as two orange graphs.  When deciding who to pick up, it is very important to take note of these percentages. We guarantee  by using our Waiver Research tool that your research time will be cut down drastically.

Go ahead and take the plunge with the Fantasy Assistant.  If you aren’t a member yet, then SIGN UP now.

Projecting Weekly Fantasy Points & Records

Today we are introducing a new feature that projects weekly fantasy points and weekly records for your fantasy teams.  This update applies to all of your favorite fantasy sports, including fantasy football, but for this post we will be discussing how this works for fantasy baseball.  Our projections support Head-to-Head Points, Rotisserie, and Head-to-Head Category leagues.

In our previous update, we announced Season Projections inside the Fantasy Assistant, which shows category comparisons and rankings against the rest of your league.   This update builds upon that.

Right below Season Projections, you’ll see our new Weekly Projections area…

These are REAL projections from my fantasy baseball league.  The categories have been customized to my specific league.  In this specific example, I’ve selected a category h2h league, so projected records and category breakdowns are also shown.

For each category, you’ll notice  your projected number in bold and your projected rank, along with a color of red, green, or orange.   As you can see, I am projected to be very competitive in just about all categories.  At first glance, it would seem my RUNS category may be lacking due to a ranking of 5th place.  However, I am near the top of the league based on the estimated league range of 32-47 RUNS.

Speaking of ranges.  The smaller gray number towards the bottom of each category shows your league range, or how a specific team matches up against you.  You’ll notice in the image above that when “rocky mtn oysters” is selected, the gray numbers change from ranges to his team’s projections.  This will be critical for setting lineups and gauging week-to-week performance.

Not shown are Head-to-Head Points projections, but we also support them.

Fully Customizable

Weekly Projections are shown every Monday and Sunday for fantasy baseball, hockey, and basketball users.   However, fantasy football users will see weekly projections starting on Thursday through Sunday morning.

You can easily customize your league and select the categories in your league, Player Pool, and league type.  For those of you in fantasy football leagues, you can easily specify a PPR league as well.

For those of you still not using our site, sign up now.