There have already been quite a few significant updates to the Fantasy Assistant that I wanted to make note of. The first day of it’s release was huge and I want to thank everyone for their feedback. I’ve pushed out a bunch of changes today based on your feedback including:
New sign-ups can use the Fantasy Assistant during their trial period. (Thanks to Ben!)
Separate blog posts will be created to keep you guys informed on latest updates. This link now appears on the Fantasy Assistant footer.
I have revamped the “loading…” popups placement and design to be more subtle and out of the way. This is due to reports of the “loading” screen being stuck on the screen. It will no longer be in your way, even if it does get stuck. (Thanks Jerry, Bryan)
Waiver Wire Suggestions bug fixes have been applied. Sometimes the data would not be refreshed.
NBA Waiver Wire Suggestions: Low Risk have been improved to be more accurate. Low Risk behaves more like a low risk pickup. (Thanks Stephen)
NBA Waiver Wire Suggestions: High Risk have been slightly improved in terms of accuracy.
Thanks everyone and hopefully these updates addressed a lot of your concerns.
The Fantasy Assistant has finally arrived at FantasySP. The Fantasy Assistant is the ultimate fantasy tool to help analyze your synced teams and recommend waiver wire pickups. It was built to help newbies and veterans gain an edge in their league.
Home Screen
The Home Screen
The home screen shows each sync league that I have. As you can see each team has two separate rank and rating numbers assigned to it. We break up ratings into Full Roster and Starting Lineup. Each day teams are analyzed and a rating is collected to see where you rank in your league. Here is a link to my FantasySP basketball team. Feel free to browse around the league to see which team is the top ranked and their performance over time with the handy team graphs.
Team Selected
Once your team is selected you are presented with a new screen consisting of your complete lineup and a quick analysis of your players.
Team FantasySP.com Selected
Each player is assigned an importance evaluation in relation to the team’s success as a whole. According to this, my most important player is Chris Paul at 12.70%. He is currently 1.50% more important than Greg Monroe. Interesting. So how is this helpful?
Clearly Chris Paul was my first round pick. Greg Monroe was drafted much later, more like the 4th round. So far it’s safe to say that was a solid 4th round pick. Let’s say a team in my league offered a trade for Greg Monroe. He is currently my second most important player on my team. A quick look at this indicates who I should trade, and an idea of what I should get in return if traded.
But let’s say we want more information on Mo Williams, who is currently on my bench.
Select Player
As you can see a new box pops up on the right side giving us loads of information.
Mo Williams Selected
Starting at the top we have Mo Williams’ stats. The black and gray box has two rows of his numbers. The first row indicates his stats on the season and the second row indicates how he performed at the exact same point last season. His numbers are more or less equal, expect for a big drop in assists per game. That might account for his lack of usefulness?
Waiver Wire Suggestions
Now we have waiver wire suggestions, which is broken down into two categories: High Risk & Low Risk. As you might have guessed, the high risk stat analysis focuses on a shorter time period than low risk. However, the high risk category may have some sleeper picks that others may have missed, so let’s check these out. The goal is to find a guy like Nickola Pekovic before everyone else does. (I actually picked him up based on the Fantasy Assistant’s recommendation.)
Anyway, back to the Waiver Wire Suggestions… first on the list is Jordan Crawford, who is currently a free agent and has better numbers in just about every category. Keep in mind these stats are averages from a specific time-frame and are NOT the entire season’s worth. We want to know who is hot right now. If I want to get his complete analysis then click on the green “View Analysis” button next to his name.
Jordan Crawford Analysis
According to this, Crawford has been playing better as of late compared to his season’s numbers. It also showcases his complete stats and a comparison to the same point last season. We also see a detailed analysis of his performance and where he ranks in certain categories. Plus there is a fantasy graph and more to look through. Awesome? I think so.
Mousing over the gray icon next to Jordan Crawford’s name will tell me which league he is a free agent in and will provide a direct link to pick him up.
Link to pick up Jordan Crawford
I could continue to check out the rest of the suggestions, or I could hop over to the Low Risk category to see what type of Low Risk options I have.
Wrap Up
As you can see there are many useful features in the Fantasy Assistant that will help you research and make more calculated moves. As of this blog post, some of these stats are already outdated, but the premise remains the same. As of today, the NBA section is 100% working. Later this week I will activate the NHL section’s Waiver Suggestions. Soon after that the MLB section will be activated. In the fall the NFL will go live.
The Fantasy Assistant will constantly be improving based on feedback. I already have plans to have enhanced features for Roto leagues. There are nuances that I did not touch on, but will be discovered as you use the Fantasy Assistant.
Long time users, this feature was made specifically for you. I truly appreciate your continued support and for believing in this site and my vision. Enjoy this new feature and, of course, be sure and email me if you have any questions or comments.
Sorry for being late. This past weeks updates addressed a lot of small issues that need to be handled. I’ve also added about 6 new sources for news that you may have noticed by now. From this point on, my time will be dedicated to the yet-to-be-released new feature that I’ve been talking about. I’d love to show you guys screenshots, but it’s not quite there yet.
Now, the full list of changes:
Mobile FantasySP now uses new caching technique (the entire site is finally finished! wahoooo)
Various fixes for NBA player stats table
Time on Ice for NHL players is now averaged to fix longstanding bug.
Daily and Weekly emails have been updated to our new sexy layout.
Implemented automatic downgrade when user cancels membership
Added support for Yahoo 2012 baseball leagues, and enabled daily updates (yes, its that time again!)
New background image on the site has a bit of texture in it, instead of plain gray.
Disabled cloudflare to address lag concerns. This will be enabled again at a later date when they fix their issues.
Fixed bug on mobile site where story time posted was in the negative.
Revamped backend with better caching to make sure FantasySP stays fast and will continue to be fast for many months to come. It has been about two weeks in the making and lots of late nights. I managed to do this without any downtime whatsoever, which is pretty remarkable considering how many changes had to take place under the hood. I will continue to monitor the speed of the site in-case any further tweaks are necessary.
But that’s not it. There is more good news.
Team / Trade Analyzer Updates
The Trade/Team Analyzer for all 4 major sports have undergone a face-lift and major speed enhancements. The analyzers interface has undergone improvements in the past, but this is the biggest overhaul it has had in many months. Previously, graphs and player breakdown information would appear when mousing over particular icons or text. A window would appear that sometimes would jump off-screen where it was unreadable.
The new trade analyzers have tooltips when mousing over particular icons, and when clicked, opens up a dialog box that encompasses everything you need to know about the player. You can see it live with this nba trade. It’s easier to read and easier to navigate.
Unlike before, the player graphs are now interactive. When you mouseover the data in the graph you’ll see totals pop up making it easy to follow and understand. These new player graphs are also found on their player pages, such as Kobe Bryant’s.
Team Ratings
Fantasy team graphs have also been updated to showcase our new charts. Have a look at my fantasy basketball team’s chart, which showcases how my team has performed across the season. You can historical scoring charts for starters or the full roster. Team FantasySP.com is currently sporting a less than spectacular 0-6 record thanks to some key injuries. 🙁
Enjoy all these changes as these are just a glimpse on what is about to come. Stay tuned.
By now I was hoping to get the yet-to-be-announced feature out the door and work on tweaking its effectiveness. However, server performance has been slowly eroding over the past 2 months or so. While I was on vacation, it was particularly bad. I’ve had no choice but to address the performance problem before it gets to be a big problem.
Without getting too geeky, I realized that I needed to move over to a new caching system because my current implementation was no longer good enough. I decided to move over to something called APC. A lot of changes had to be made under the hood before I even got around to doing the real work. This also means that I need to revamp all of the old caching techniques to utilize the new caching system. All of the stats for each player that are displayed on the site are cached for varying periods of time. This also includes graphs, player analysis, and player breakdown data for the fantasy trade analyzer.
Of the top of my head, there are about 18 new sets of data that need to be reworked and cached. It’s a huge pain in the ass, but I would say I’m about halfway through the process. I will also be updating the graphs that are generated on the site to a more modern library. This will cause the process to take a bit longer, but the current graphs are no longer adequate.
The site should be A LOT faster by the time I am finished with the revamped caching system. I already see improvements on response times and these will continue to improve. This will also give FantasySP a higher ceiling on the amount of traffic it can handle.
Now, after all of that has been discussed, lets get to the actual release notes:
Styling tweaks to all tables across the site
Player Alert email tweaks
New Feature: Paying Member leagues are now updated every 3hrs instead of just once per day
