Summary: Building A Better Fantasy Baseball Team
STATISTICS
Building a Better Fantasy Baseball Team by I. Elaine Allen, Kirill Kustov and George Recck
F
antasy baseball has grown to be a popular social activity for ambitious sports fans eager to display their baseball expertise in competition with their peers. The nature of fantasy baseball fosters meticulous planning and research in the hopes of outsmarting rival teams, contributing to the burgeoning market of readily available
In 50 Words Or Less
• Fantasy baseball is a competition that pits the performance statistics of Major League Baseball players against one another. • Applying multivariate and univariate analysis to players’ statistics can show which players have the potential to be the most valuable on a fantasy baseball …show more content…
This requires a team to have players performing well in each of the five categories to be successful. These preliminary conclusions come as a result of the conditions imposed by the ESPN fantasy league and are only the tip of the iceberg in relation to the findings the data will provide. The dataset used in this article is comprehensive statistics of MLB players during the 2005 season. The data contain 21 different batting criteria that are continuous variables and three categorical variables that group the players by position, team and league. The criteria are specifically batting oriented and do not reflect any pitching or defensive statistics, gearing the focus of this article to the offensive side of a fantasy team. The 21 continuous variables include the aforementioned five criteria used directly in calculating fantasy performance, leading initial analysis to be focused primarily on them. There are 278 separate player entries in the data with no missing values per player. All players are batters; no pitchers are included regardless of whether they batted during the season. There are some difficulties with these data based on the different league rules pertaining to the American League’s (AL’s) designated hitter (DH) position. DHs are classified as LFs, making the number of LFs twice as large as any other position and possibly skewing results because characteristics of DHs and LFs differ …show more content…
Notice shortstops have the most variation. For drafting order, simply ranking positions by their average or median index score does not take into account the roster restrictions, requiring further exploration to decide which positions to draft early. Looking at the standardized values of each of the five components of the index adds further information for drafting players. The boxplots in Figure 3 indicate the variability in HR and SB, with many outliers, offers the best opportunity for drafting a player that can consistently add value (and index points) to a fantasy
Building a Better Fantasy Baseball Team by I. Elaine Allen, Kirill Kustov and George Recck
F
antasy baseball has grown to be a popular social activity for ambitious sports fans eager to display their baseball expertise in competition with their peers. The nature of fantasy baseball fosters meticulous planning and research in the hopes of outsmarting rival teams, contributing to the burgeoning market of readily available
In 50 Words Or Less
• Fantasy baseball is a competition that pits the performance statistics of Major League Baseball players against one another. • Applying multivariate and univariate analysis to players’ statistics can show which players have the potential to be the most valuable on a fantasy baseball …show more content…
This requires a team to have players performing well in each of the five categories to be successful. These preliminary conclusions come as a result of the conditions imposed by the ESPN fantasy league and are only the tip of the iceberg in relation to the findings the data will provide. The dataset used in this article is comprehensive statistics of MLB players during the 2005 season. The data contain 21 different batting criteria that are continuous variables and three categorical variables that group the players by position, team and league. The criteria are specifically batting oriented and do not reflect any pitching or defensive statistics, gearing the focus of this article to the offensive side of a fantasy team. The 21 continuous variables include the aforementioned five criteria used directly in calculating fantasy performance, leading initial analysis to be focused primarily on them. There are 278 separate player entries in the data with no missing values per player. All players are batters; no pitchers are included regardless of whether they batted during the season. There are some difficulties with these data based on the different league rules pertaining to the American League’s (AL’s) designated hitter (DH) position. DHs are classified as LFs, making the number of LFs twice as large as any other position and possibly skewing results because characteristics of DHs and LFs differ …show more content…
Notice shortstops have the most variation. For drafting order, simply ranking positions by their average or median index score does not take into account the roster restrictions, requiring further exploration to decide which positions to draft early. Looking at the standardized values of each of the five components of the index adds further information for drafting players. The boxplots in Figure 3 indicate the variability in HR and SB, with many outliers, offers the best opportunity for drafting a player that can consistently add value (and index points) to a fantasy