Sports & Fantasy Sports Blog

Authors: Billy Jones Introduction As the anticipation for fantasy football draft season builds, analysts flood the internet with season-long player projections. While these projections serve as indispensable tools for shaping draft strategies, limiting our focus to mere averages would be a disservice to the complexity that underlies each player's potential. To be successful in fantasy football a more sophisticated approach is required, one that transcends basic mean projections and embraces the profound framework of distributions. Understanding and leveraging these distributions can revolutionize the way managers make decisions in individual games and throughout the entire season. Throughout this blog post, we will discuss the implications of outcome distributions on fantasy football and how you should be thinking through the range of outcomes for the players on your team while on the clock in your draft(s). From assessing individual game to season-long outcomes, we will shed light...

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: Billy Jones Introduction In the world of best ball fantasy football, where trades and roster management are off the table, every decision made during the draft becomes crucial. As I mentioned in my last post, I recently finished my 100th draft of the summer and I now feel like I have a good sense for the pockets of the draft and some common nuisances that one can run into when trying to build the optimal roster. Today I am going to put on my "Bye Week Bros" hat and address a particularly annoying week that has been plaguing me during my best ball drafts. This particular week keeps resurfacing, causing headaches and frustration as I strive to assemble the million-dollar roster. While some within the best ball community may dismiss the impact of bye weeks on player selection, let's explore the bye week situation that I keep running into issues with. BBM Basics For those who may be less familiar with Best Ball Mania (BBM) by Underdog , it’s a unique and immensely pop...

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 Hey football analytics fam, welcome back to my blog! As the best ball summer is upon us, I can't help but immerse myself in the wealth of Best Ball data that is available with the Best Ball Data Bowl . In this blog, I’ll continue my studies and explore the most basic question when thinking about roster construction and advancing from one’s pool into the playoffs “How many points does this team need to score?”. By uncovering this simple figure I can begin to process the best ways to construct my BBMIV rosters. Get ready to join me on this thrilling journey, as we navigate the intricacies of Best Ball and unlock the secret to advancing to the BBMIV playoffs. Let's kick off this Best Ball summer with a bang! 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-sea...

Author: Billy Jones Introduction Welcome to the fourth part of my blog series where I perform an analytical review for tight end fantasy performance from 2022. In this blog, we will be wrapping up our initial review of the tight end position in the 2022 season through the lenses of a few familiar statistical measures. Just like part 2 of this series, we will be using average and standard deviation to review the consistency of performers but instead today we will be looking at attempts and yardage (touchdowns are just too low volume – the results look very wonky). So, whether you're a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to the world of fantasy football, this blog will provide valuable insights into the performance of quarterbacks in the 2022 season, so let’s get started! Statistics 101 (skip section if you read part 2 of this series) As we continue down our analytical review, we are going to use specific data science concepts as tools to help us gain insights. As referenced in the intro,...