Deep League Help- Landry Fields

Landry Fields scored 18 points with 5 steals and 5 rebounds Tuesday night against the Detroit Pistons.

Analysis: Landry Fields now has three eighteen point games in his last six contests. The shooting guard is also impressing in other fantasy areas as well. Fields has at least one steal in each of his last eight games with a total of fifteen steals in that eight game span. Fields has also hit seven threes and has averaged 4.8 rebounds in his last five games. This guy is on fire right now and he is available in about eighty percent of fantasy leagues.

The most important factor in his production has been his floor time. Fields has played at least thirty minutes per game in nine of his last ten contests. If he can get twenty-five plus minutes per game for the rest of the year he will provide a boost to any fantasy squad. Fields also chips in with assists as well, he’s averaging 3.0 assists per game on the year. His biggest weakness is his free throw percentage of 64%, that’s awful for a fantasy shooting guard. Regardless, he remains a hot commodity right now and is worth a look.

Selling High- Jodie Meeks

Jodie Meeks is one hot shooting guard at the moment, but you cannot count on him in anything other than deep leagues.

Analysis: Jodie Meeks has hit fourteen threes in his last five games. That’s 2.8 threes per game and you can understand why he has his place in deeper leagues. However, Meeks doesn’t produce in any other fantasy category to make him viable. Meeks rarely gets to the free throw line nor does he shoot well from the field at 44% for the 2011-12 season. Meeks also gets over twenty-six minutes of floor time per game yet he doesn’t average 10 PPG or 1 SPG or even 1 APG.

On the positive side of the coin you really cannot argue with fourteen threes in five games. You also have to like that he has been rebounding rather well as of late. Meeks is averaging 5.2 rebounds per over his last five contests and if he can give you 3.5-4 rebounds per game he may have a small role on some fantasy squads. Meeks is one hot player right now and I cannot imagine his stock getting any higher than it is at the moment. It’s time to sell high on the shooting guard that is still available in seventy percent of fantasy leagues.

January 30th Weekly Release Notes

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
  • Site dupe improvements
  • Caching improvements (listed above)

Buying Low- Jared Dudley

Jared Dudley recorded forty-two minutes of floor time Saturday against the Grizzlies and his stock appears to be on the rise.

Analysis: Jared Dudley has had a disappointing fantasy season thus far but if he continues to start for the Suns and play some big minutes, he is one sneaky good fantasy player. Dudley is hitting one three per game along with one steal per game. His points production of 10.2 per just doesn’t get it done at the shooting guard/small forward position. Dudley’s free throw percentage this year sits at 77% which is solid but his rebounding can be a real fantasy strength. Dudley is averaging 4.1 boards per game but he’s been in six games where he’s played less than twenty-five minutes, so there is some hope for him to really produce in the rebound category for a non big man this year. It really is a mixed bag with Dudley, he’s also been in seven games where he’s played at least thirty-five minutes this year.

At the moment Dudley is a great buy low option considering he is available in about eighty percent of fantasy leagues. If he continues to start and play big minutes he can really do some damage in the three ball, steal and rebound departments.

Mike Fisher Is Heating Up

After a disappointing start to the 2011-12 season, Mike Fisher has found his form this January.

Analysis: Mike Fisher has tallied thirteen points in twelve January contests this year. Compare that with just fifteen points in his twenty-nine games prior to his January hot streak and you can see why he is such a hot commodity in the fantasy world right now. Fisher is available in over half of fantasy leagues across the country and he is going fast.

Fisher is a reliable source of goals, assists, ice time and shots on goal for a lower tier center. However, his biggest strength recently has been his power play points. Fisher has six power play points this month which has turned him into a nice little five to six category fantasy performer. We all know he can score twenty plus goals each year but his plus/minus is finally starting to make the difference, especially this past month. In addition to Fisher, Nik Antropov is another center I would seriously consider picking up at the moment. He too is finding his groove over the past couple of weeks and is showing no signs of slowing down.