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Fantasyopolis

Building your fantasy sports team from the ground up.

Archives for October 2015

October 16, 2015 Leave a Comment

Fantasy Hockey Auction Draft Review for Keeper League

One of the beautiful things about playing in custom scoring leagues is that if you do your planning correctly, you can engineer a team on draft day that is built to score gobs of points from week to week during the season.  When the draft is done via auction, the chance to succeed is even better since you can target valuable fantasy players who might have little star power in real life hockey.

Although the season has already started, I wanted to revisit my auction draft for an 8-team keeper league that was conducted a couple of weeks ago on Yahoo. Rosters in the league are large, with the following positions (not including IR/NA spots):

3 x C
3 x LW
3 x RW
1 x W
1 x F
4 x D
2 x Util
2 x G
7 x BN

Where this league gets interesting is in the custom scoring system.  In doing my research before the draft, I realized that one stat value stood out more than others.  Here are the scoring settings:

Forwards/Defensemen Stat Category Value
Goals (G) 5
Assists (A) 2.5
Plus/Minus (+/-) 1
Penalty Minutes (PIM) 0.5
Powerplay Goals (PPG) 2
Powerplay Assists (PPA) .5
Shorthanded Goals (SHG) 1
Shorthanded Assists (SHA) .5
Game-Winning Goals (GWG) 1
Shots on Goal (SOG) .5
Faceoffs Won (FW) 1
Faceoffs Lost (FL) -.5
Hits (HIT) 1
Blocks (BLK) .5
Goaltenders Stat Category Value
Wins (W) 4
Goals Against (GA) -1
Saves (SV) .5
Shutouts (SHO) 2

So which of these stats stood out to me?  The valuation of faceoffs won at 1 point.  When I filtered through 2014-15 fantasy stats for my league, I noticed that the highest scoring player was Patrice Bergeron, followed by Claude Giroux, Ryan Kesler, and Jonathan Toews.  Meanwhile, Alex Ovechkin was the 12th highest scoring skater.

In real life, there would be dozens of skaters more valuable than Bergeron, and in most fantasy leagues this would hold true as well.  In my league, however, Bergeron produced the most points primarily because of his 1175 faceoffs won, which was easily tops in the league.  Other stat categories, such as goals, did matter, but not nearly as much as faceoffs.  The stat values for goalies was more in keeping with their real-life relative value, but even the highest-scoring goalie in my league according to last year’s stats was only the 8th highest scorer overall.  Skaters were therefore more valuable than goalies.

Armed with this knowledge, my draft strategy was simply to target the best players at winning faceoffs in the NHL.  I also targeted the top two goalies in my league according to their fantasy production last year.  Starting with a budget of $800, here’s whom I picked up:

1. (1) Claude Giroux (Phi – C,RW) $201
2. (8) Carey Price (Mon – G) $120
3. (24) Braden Holtby (Was – G) $160
4. (40) John Tavares (NYI – C) $150
5. (70) Jonathan Toews (Chi – C) $66
6. (76) Patrice Bergeron (Bos – C) $52
7. (92) Tomas Plekanec (Mon – C) $11
8. (129) Jason Spezza (Dal – C) $10
9. (136) Kyle Turris (Ott – C) $10
10. (152) Mark Streit (Phi – D) $4
11. (161) Mike Smith (Ari – G) $1
12. (168) Troy Brouwer (StL – RW) $1
13. (175) Travis Hamonic (NYI – D) $1
14. (180) Johnny Boychuk (NYI – D) $1
15. (184) Antoine Vermette (Ari – C,LW) $1
16. (187) Petr Mrazek (Det – G) $1
17. (190) Mikko Koivu (Min – C) $1
18. (193) Jack Johnson (Cls – D) $1
19. (195) Ryan Callahan (TB – RW) $1
20. (197) Carl Soderberg (Col – C,LW) $1
21. (199) Paul Stastny (StL – C) $1
22. (201) Mike Fisher (Nsh – C) $1
23. (203) Luke Glendening (Det – C,LW,RW) $1
24. (205) Andrew Shaw (Chi – RW) $1
25. (207) Justin Williams (Was – RW) $1
26. (208) David Savard (Cls – D) $1
Unused $0

As you can see, I got the top scorer in the league last years – Bergeron – for $52, or about 6.5% of my budget.  Giroux was expensive at $201, but I was competing against an autobid bot which would not stop bidding until we got to the $200 mark.  Had a real-life manager showed up to the draft, I probably could have drafted Giroux for $50-$100 less.

By the end of the draft, I had secured the top four skaters in terms of faceoff win production, and three of the top four skaters in terms of overall fantasy scoring from last year.  Mikko Koivu, whom I drafted for $1, was the 11th highest producing skater from last year (right behind Sidney Crosby and right in front of Ovechkin).  Because I was targeting players with high faceoff win numbers, I ended up drafting a plethora of centers early.  This did not go unnoticed during the draft, as I had a fellow manager comment on this at the time.  Nevertheless, I seem to have been the only manager to take advantage of the special scoring setup, and I suspect that I was the only manager to recognize its potential effect on my team’s prospects for winning this year.

What does this say about custom scoring leagues?

If you’re thinking to yourself that whoever set up the scoring values in my league was to blame for such a skewed system in which players like Koivu or Ryan Kesler can outproduce players like Ovechkin, then I will agree with you.  Commissioners should really know the ramifications of their scoring systems before they initiate their league drafts in order to maintain competitive play.  But the reality is that this kind of thing happens all the time, and it’s important to know how to respond to take advantage of it.

The test now is to see how well I do in my league this season. As the league is about to wrap up Week 1, my team has produced the most points in the league.  In fact, my team has produced 20% more than the next closest team.  While I can’t guarantee that my team will win the league, I think I have set myself with a good chance to succeed.

Filed Under: Hockey Tagged With: auction draft, Hockey and Hamburgers League

October 5, 2015 Leave a Comment

I was the champion of a fantasy baseball ghost league

They say that it’s lonely at the top.  In fantasy sports, it’s also lonely when you play in an abandoned league.  It’s the kind of league in which other team managers stop showing up to adjust their rosters, pick up or drop guys, or even visit the league page.  It’s a ghost league, and I just won mine.

That’s right, I was champion of a league, “oldmans hi scoring 7”, and I seem to have been the only one left visiting by the end of the season.  It was a small, six-team auction draft league (head-to-head) in which I was able to snag several top-tier players.  Here was my drafted roster:

1. (6) Andrew McCutchen (Pit – OF) $180
2. (9) Paul Goldschmidt (Ari – 1B) $119
3. (11) Greg Holland (KC – RP) $50
4. (14) Robinson Canó (Sea – 2B) $107
5. (18) Giancarlo Stanton (Mia – OF) $151
6. (20) Stephen Strasburg (Was – SP) $96
7. (32) Félix Hernández (Sea – SP) $113
8. (47) Devin Mesoraco (Cin – C) $8
9. (58) Jonathan Lucroy (Mil – C,1B) $8
10. (59) David Robertson (CWS – RP) $16
11. (60) Cole Hamels (Tex – SP) $27
12. (96) Evan Longoria (TB – 3B) $13
13. (122) Jorge Soler (ChC – OF) $1
14. (124) Alex Wood (LAD – SP,RP) $2
15. (125) Justin Verlander (Det – SP) $1
16. (127) Nelson Cruz (Sea – OF) $1
17. (129) Alexei Ramírez (CWS – SS) $1
18. (131) Phil Hughes (Min – SP) $1
19. (133) Marcell Ozuna (Mia – OF) $1
20. (135) Kole Calhoun (LAA – OF) $1
21. (136) Daniel Murphy (NYM – 1B,2B,3B) $1
22. (137) Fernando Rodney (ChC – RP) $1
23. (138) Brian McCann (NYY – C,1B) $1

I was fortunate to have a strong team from the beginning, and I started beating my opponents right away.  This continued throughout the months and I actually started to take quite a bit of a lead over my competition (we were all in the same division).  By season’s end, my record was 22-0.  This is the most successful I have ever been in a league, but of course I take it with a grain of salt.

Had other managers remained with the league, would I have won it all?  I would like to think so since my team was pretty strong, but I think I would have only gotten about 16-18 wins, rather than 22.  Of course, there’s no way to tell for sure.

Final Thoughts

I don’t really understand managers who quit on their leagues.  I can understand if managers don’t want to adjust rosters on a daily basis, but a few times each month is not unreasonable.  I’m going to stick with a league until the end, even if it means I’m playing against a team on autopilot.  Granted, the thrill of victory may not be that sweet, but it is still palatable.

 

Filed Under: Baseball Tagged With: Oldmans Hi Scoring 7 League, Season Review

October 5, 2015 Leave a Comment

Second-place finish in my ESPN baseball league

The baseball season in my 12-team ESPN “Baseball Stars” league came to an end yesterday, and unfortunately my team came in second after losing to the champion in finals week.

As I wrote last week, my team recovered from a semi-disastrous draft back in March in which I failed to draft any real quality starting pitching.

After making the playoffs as the #3 seed, I knocked off my opponent (#2 seed) in the semi-finals.  I had a chance to knock off my opponent (#1 seed) in the finals and I was ahead of him with about three days left, but he was able to pull ahead by a huge margin within the final couple of days. My strategy of streaming starting pitchers backfired when I started Henry Owens (SP-Boston) on Friday, who then incurred negative 16 points for my team.  Meanwhile, my opponent relied on his quality starting pitchers (e.g. Chris Sale, Stephen Strasburg) to carry him through the playoffs.

I should mention that my opponent in the finals was a peculiar characters simply for the fact that he was a chronic streamer, constantly adding and dropping players throughout the season.  By the end of the season, he had completed 216 acquisitions.  216!  By comparison, I was the next closest in terms of activity with 100 acquisitions.  I don’t know if I have ever had an opponent who was so trigger-happy on the waiver wire as I had this season.  Normally, that kind of activity will get you into trouble, but this time it worked out for him.

Anyway, it’s a relief to be done with this league since I always felt like I was digging myself out of a hole, trying to keep my head above water.  A bad draft will do that to you.  I’m glad that I was able to recover and make it into the playoffs, though, so overall it was a successful season.

Filed Under: Baseball Tagged With: "Baseball Stars League"

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