NFL Week 8 Elimination Pool Pick

Ok, the model says to go with the Chiefs at home against the Bills this week. However, I am personally not going to listen to my model this week and I'm going with the Jets instead. My model was going to save the Jets for week 17. But with the best teams resting players in week 17, I don't think it's worth saving one of the few best teams till then. Also, the Jets are coming off a bye week and the best teams tend to win coming off bye weeks. The winless Bills are really due for a win following their OT loss to the Ravens last week. So, in summary, my week 8 pick is the Jets.

NFL Elimination Pool - Week 7 Pick

6 Weeks down and 11 to go! As a reminder, I have already used (team's ESPN power ranking shown in parantheses):

Week 1 - Bears (12)
Week 2 - Packers (15)
Week 3 - Patriots (3)
Week 4 - Falcons (7)
Week 5 - Colts (5)
Week 6 - Steelers (1)

So I still have some good team's left (Notably Jets, Ravens, and Saints). This week there are two potential blowouts on the schedule for me to choose from: Bills at Ravens is the worst team playing the 4th best team and Browns and Saints is the 3rd worst at the 6th best team. The Saints I want to save for week 11 when they have the largest projected blowout on the calendar of the teams I still have available. So, I'm going with the Ravens this week as this is their easiest game left on the 2010 schedule and no other future weeks when they would present the best choice as well.

NFL Elimination Pool - Week 6 Pick

Week 6 is an easy decision for my model. We're going with the Steelers (ESPN's #1 power ranked team) is facing the lowly Browns at home. The only other option I'd even consider is the Giants to defeat the Lions at home. However, the spread between the Steelers and Browns is wider by 15 ranks. By the way, if I still had the Bears available, I would use them over the Giants (but not over the Steelers).

2010 NFL Elimination Pool - Week 5 pick

4 correct picks down, only 13 to go! In week 5 I'm going with the Colts to defeat the undefeated Chiefs this week. The Colts have the largest projected margin of victory of all favorites across all Las Vegas lines this week. I also considered the Ravens to defeat the Broncos at home this week, but I want to save the Ravens for week 7 when they have the Bills at home, and the Bills are even worse than the Broncos. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, according to the Vegas moneylines, the Colts are more likely to win than the Ravens this week.

NFL Survivor/Elimination Pool - Week 4 Pick

Week 4 has a few projected blowouts on the schedule: Panthers @ Saints, Lions @ Packers, and to a slightly lesser degree 49ers @ Falcons. I've already used the Packers, so that leaves me with the Saints or Falcons. According to me, this is the Falcons easiest game until week 17 when they get the Panthers at home. But, as I've discussed before, I downweight future weeks, (b/c your pool might not last until week 17), so you can say this is the best time to use the Falcons (if you're ever going to use them).

The Saints on the other hand, have projected blowouts at home in weeks 7, 11, 14, and 17 versus the Browns, Seahawks, Rams, and Bucs respectively. My model is telling me to save the Saints for week 14 against the Rams because that is the only projected blowout on the schedule that week.

So, my model is saying to go for the Falcons in week 4, and that's what I'm going to do (here's hoping for an 0-4 49ers team). If you have very few people in your pool, and are fairly certain that it will not last until week 14, then go for the Saints.

Also, if you had rebuys in weeks 1 and/or 2 and used bad teams as winners (and still have the packers and bears available), then that changes everything as well...

NFL Survivior Pool - Week 3 Pick

Lots of projected blowouts on the calendar in week 3 including Bills @ Patriots, Browns @ Ravens, and Lions @ Vikings. My model is telling me to go with the Patriots, saving the ravens for week 12 at home against the Bucs, and currently planning to never use the 0-2 Vikings.

NFL Survivor Pool - Week 2 Pick

Looking at the week 2 schedule, Green Bay is the obvious choice, hosting the lowly bills at home. This is one of 2 extremely lopsided matchups for Green Bay this year, they also get to host Detroit in week 4. However, since there aren't any other matchups anywhere near as lopsided this week, this is the ideal time to use Green Bay and there is no need to save them for week 4 (as the Panthers have to visit the Saints in New Orleans in week 4).

2010 NFL Survivor/Elimation/Suicide Pool - Week 1

Welcome back for another exciting start to the NFL season. And with that everyone is alive in their elimination / survivor / suicide pools. Let's cut right to the chase with a week 1 pick. I loaded ESPN's preseason power rankings into my season optimizer to see what it recommended for week 1. It's telling me to pick the Bears for 2 very good reasons. #1 The bears are at home and playing their easiest opponent of the entire season. #2 This game has the widest power ranking disparity of any game on the schedule in week 1 (after giving the home teams a boost for home field advantage). Any questions?

P.S. Is anyone else out there in a pool where you have to pick a different losing team each week? I am, and have a model for that as well...
P.P.S. Is anyone out there in a week with 2 or 3 strikes allowed? In some cases, that can change who you should pick! let me know...

MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

Well, fantasy basketball season is over, so I guess this isn't too relevant. But nonetheless, I have not posted in a while and that's because I've been doing fantasy research. A friend of mine, Paul Raff, and I entered this year's research paper contest at MIT Sloan's Sports Analytics Contest. We were extremely excited when our paper was selected as one of 4 finalists in the contest and we were invited to present the paper at the conference. Below is the abstract of the paper and you can find a link for the paper in its entirety here. Presenting at and attending the conference were great experiences and I am already looking forward to next year's conference and thinking about a new entry for the 2nd annual research paper contest.

In head-to-head fantasy sports leagues, it is common belief that managers try to do their best in all statistics categories. In this paper, we work to turn this notion on its head and investigate the strategy of effectively forfeiting certain categories while focusing on a certain subset of all categories. Through millions of draft and match-up simulations based on 2008-2009 NBA statistics, we found that approximately one-quarter of all possible subsets yielded strategies that defeated the "all statistics" strategy in a head-to-head match-up, and that the "all statistics" strategy is not the overall best one.

PVORP - Projected Value Over Replacement Player

Question: Who is a better to have as the 1st player on your fantasy team: catcher "AA" who will produce 80 runs, 80 rbi, and 15 SBs or CF "BB" who will produce 90 runs, 90 rbis, and 25 SBs?

Answer: AA who has less overall value, is the more valuable fantasy player, b/c he plays catcher. Catcher's don't produce much offense compared to outfielders. If you choose AA, you're still going to have to add a CF... and if you choose BB, you're still going to need a catcher. The point here is that AA + a CF you might add later will likely have more combined value than BB + a different catcher that you might add later.

So the lesson here is that you're evaluating players, don't compare them with each other, compare them with a who else is available at that position. Here is an example of the production you can expect to get from the 12th best player at each of the following positions in runs, RBIs, and stolen bases:

Position	R	RBI	SB
C	50	58	1
1B	84	94	4
2B	78	67	12
3B	77	77	6
SS	76	64	14
LF	79	77	15
CF	80	72	23
RF	80	83	13

AS you can see catcher AA described above is 30, 22, and 14 runs, rbis, and SBs above "replacement" level and CF BB is 10, 18, and 3 runs, rbis, and SBs repectively above replacement level. 30, 22, and 14 are all higher than 10, 18, and 3, so that is why AA is better than BB

Real life example: One of my fantasy leagues, (my family leagues) has keeper rules where you can pick any 2 players from your team the previous year to be assigned to your team this year in the last 2 rounds of the draft. I chose to keep Joe Mauer instead of A-Rod! Yes, A-Rod has more overall production, but the goal is to get the most production across every roster spot. And I think I can do better at C & 3B by starting that duo off with Mauer and adding a 3B later than by starting with A-Rod and adding another catcher later.