Sports & Fantasy Sports Blog

Author: Billy Jones Introduction What’s up fantasy sports fam? Welcome back to my blog. It’s great to be back writing again after a brief hiatus, as I have been full send on creating and publishing fantasy football visualizations on Twitter and bought a house. Today, I am excited to reconnect with you all by diving into the sport that is my true love, baseball, through a retrospective review of The Dinger 2023 hosted by Underdog Fantasy data.  Although I sat out this tournament last year, I'm gearing up to launch multiple entries in the upcoming 2024 tournaments. But before I dive headfirst into the action, I thought it prudent to dissect the meta from the previous year. Understanding the dynamics, strategies, and outcomes from the 2023 event will undoubtedly provide me with valuable insights to fine-tune my approach for the upcoming competitions. While this exercise is primarily retrospective and descriptive in nature, mining insights from the past can be the catalyst for crafting...

Author: Billy Jones Introduction Hey fantasy football fam, welcome back to my blog! In our previous discussion, we dove deep into the world of running backs production from Best Ball Mania II and III, discussing the pieces of what made up an optimal draft strategy. Now in this part of the study, inspired by an intriguing article penned by Hayden Winks of Underdog Fantasy , I switch to investigating wide receiver production under different lights and varying levels of granularity. Armed with thought-provoking visualizations, I aim to shed light on what might be the optimal draft strategies in Best Ball Mania IV. If you're a fellow best ball data nerd, eagerly seeking the keys to victory in BBMIV, join me in this data-driven exploration. BBM Basics For those who may be less familiar with Best Ball Mania (BBM) by Underdog, it’s a unique and immensely popular fantasy football tournament. Best ball is a fantasy football format where participants draft a team and then have no in-season m...

Author: Bill Jones Introduction Hey there, fantasy football analytics fam! Welcome back to the blog. Today, we're diving back into Best Ball summer as I continue my exploration of the Best Ball Mania data provided through the Best Ball Data Bowl. Best Ball is the perfect format for those looking to draft during the summer fantasy downtime and offers a twist on traditional fantasy football by eliminating the need for weekly roster management. I’m a little over 100 drafts in on Underdog ($5 and $7 Puppy and Poodle tournament are too hard to resist) and I feel like I have a pretty good sense for the current draft market. The most annoying thing about drafting on Underdog right now is the current Wide Receiver landscape, as Wide Receivers fly off the board at an outrageous rate (Adam Levitan’s tweet demonstrates this perfectly). This wide receiver obsession got me wondering and I dug into the data to see what historical BBMs could tell us about the importance of scoring by position by...

Author: Bill Jones Introduction Once upon a time in the vast realm of fantasy football, a passionate adventurer set out on a thrilling quest. Armed with a deep love for the game and a fascination with data science, he embarked on an exhilarating journey to unlock the hidden secrets of best ball fantasy football. As he ventured deeper into the realm of best ball content, a dynamic data competition caught his attention: Best Ball Data Bowl. Intrigued by its potential, he delved into the depths of data hoping to unearth valuable patterns and insights that had remained concealed from the naked eye. Join me on this exhilarating journey as I attempt to the mysteries of best ball and rewrite the playbook for success.  Thanks for bearing with me while I had a bit of fun with chatGPT, now back to talking normal… BBM Basics For those who may be less familiar with Best Ball Mania (BBM) by Underdog, it’s a unique and immensely popular fantasy football tournament. Best ball is a fantasy footbal...

Author: Bill Jones Introduction Hey football analytics fam, welcome back to my blog! Today, I want to share another one of my studies. I recently saw on twitter a scout visual showcasing the statistic drop percentage for quarterbacks, but I have always considered drops to be a garbage figure, so this caught my attention. Intrigued by this being shown and my preconceived notion being incorrect, I embarked on a quest to uncover the truth through using some basic data science techniques. Together, we'll peel back the layers of this statistical onion and uncover the hidden truths that lie within the realm of drops. Let's kick off this study and get into the data. Ground Rules Before we jump back into the analytics, I would like to let the readers know the ground rules I will be playing with. The data used for this analysis was obtained from Pro-Football-Reference for 2018 through 2022. Additionally, for any quarterback to be included in the analysis they must have had 200 passing a...