We've undergone many changes this season in terms of what we provide to those readers with a fantasy subscription, but with the end of the (fantasy) season coming up relatively soon, we wanted to pick your brains to see what it is you would like to see from us. In just a few weeks, head-to-head leagues will move to the playoffs, and in many cases, more teams in roto leagues are out of contention than are in it. There are more of you thinking about your 2011 fantasy teams than your 2010 ones because of this, so we want to make sure we strike a proper balance with coverage for both. We have the whole offseason to talk about 2011 plans in detail, but getting a head start on that now wouldn't hurt.
What has worked for you this season? What should we be doing more of? Less of? Do you want more list-based pieces from myself, or should I stick to covering a few players in detail at a time (or a mix of both!). We're still trying to work out how we can get a mailbag (one of the earlier wants from both myself and readers) to work–because we've been so active in the comments, it seems as if requests for help via e-mail have been more limited in the past, reserved for the occasions where a reader has a problem very specific to their own context (or a case they don't want divulged publicly because their league mates also read the site). We're thinking of ways to utilize that knowledge of a preference for comments into something that works like a mailbag that would be present on the site, but gauging your own interest in this is important as well. It's more content for you, and we're directly answering your questions, making it a win for everyone involved.
Besides that, I'll mention a few things I've been considering. Once again I want to go through my preseason rankings to see where my thought process was spot on and where it could use some work, with the point, of course, to be working towards improving the 2011 rankings in the same way I feel the 2010 ones were superior to 2009. I'm also considering a fantasy team blog series where I chronicle one of my team's seasons from start to finish, and maybe even run the team with a little crowd sourced help rather than doing it on my own. I have more I'm considering than just those things, but I would like to hear what you have to say.
Use this thread to tell us what's on your mind, and we'll do our best to implement some of these ideas into our last two months of coverage for the 2010 fantasy season. As always, thank you for reading.
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'Hot spots', though, only seems to touch on guys who have recently gained value, though. I'd like to see a bit more coverage on guys who have a sudden decline in value, particularly because they're starting to strike out, or are losing playing time, or whatever.
Otherwise you guys have been great!
For the rest of this season, something like a watch on pitchers likely to get two starts in the first week of September (because they'll also get two starts in the last week, more likely than not and have extra impact on the playoffs) could be very useful, even with the way rotations fluctuate.
More generally, it could be helpful to know which pitchers are liable to get shut down or just get extra rest for August/September and which pithers are likely to get CC Sabatia workloads for the playoff push could also help.
On the flip side, I have to thank you for your preseason player rankings. I took a $1 flyer on Jose Bautista (until I read your rankings I would have guessed he was no longer playing if I had been asked), based solely on your projections. You projected 20 HR, which I thought was a pipe dream but figured what they hey he can't be any worse than Travis Buck. It looks like Bautista will double his projection and then some.
That would BP at the forefront again.
Thank you.
I realize that there probably isn't enough of a constituency to justify much content for this niche, but we live in a different universe where free talent is really scarce and teams dump so they can contend for the following season.
As for the 'stubbornness' of PECOTA (well-put), maybe an ongoing, once-a-weekish, make-the-interns-do-it PECOTA-related ranking feature (with or w/o light commentary). You know --- a simple formula the results of which show us who's outperforming and underperforming his 50% PECOTA, by how much and, very importantly, for how sustained a period. (Or would this just re-express what's by then already common knowledge?)
This third and final thought is a bit amorphous and is born of fantasy football. I remember seeing, three years ago maybe, a semi-useful attempt to rank wide-receivers by their week-to-week consistency. (Assumption being that a 25 pt. week followed by a 3 pt. week is less valuable than two 14 pt. weeks.) I find myself wanting something similar in baseball.
With so many baseball leagues playing H2H, a player's ability to contribute numbers consistently is an attribute every bit as desirable as the numbers themselves. I guess, then, I'm wondering aloud about a BPro-exclusive volatility index. Like every stock has a Beta,(how much, how often, how wildly its price fluctuates) so too does a baseball player's weekly production. We just don't know what it is.
It would be very useful to be able to weed out the batch-producers in roto leagues as well. Who wants to wait around for 17 weeks for Mike Napoli to hit all 12 of his home runs in week 18? We see Ty Wigginton get picked up and dropped over and over again because people don't understand that all his numbers came in like a two and half days in April.
Love the mailbag idea, too. Nothing more fascinating to fantasy players than themselves and their teams --- and there's nothing more boring to their family and friends. I have no doubt this would be a very popular feature.
I would love an option in the PFM where you could select specific MLB teams for the player pool rather than the three default options of AL/NL/Mixed. I am able to do a rough and dirty translation by choosing mixed league and overstating the number of owners in my league to get the ratio of teams in the league to teams in the player pool right.
It would love to be able to get PFM values based on my league's actual player pool, especially before the league auction.
I'm not in fantasy leagues, as such. I play APBA games and when I'm out of the pennant races, I'm more into next years draft. Since all my leagues are keeper leagues, that means that I'm looking at rookies/prospects more than who can help this year.
And, in general, remember that many of your subscribers are of this type of "fantasy" leagues, not rotissiere leagues. Not the majority, I know, but, we are out there.
2. Fantasy mailbags are useless. On all but the most obvious of questions (which aren't worth answering anyway), you can't possibly give an informed opinion without knowing full details about the league structure, standings, owners, entire rosters, etc. And even if you can, it's not applicable to the rest of us.
I'd also like to see more for Scoresheet/keepers.
I'd also encourage mid-season updates both covering players declines/spikes but also covering updated usage patterns and expected playing time.
I echo the comments that the hot spots blogs showing players that are available in most leagues are great. Unfortunately most of those players are gone in my leagues (too deep), but occasionally they aren't and I think they are a great value.