The Hardball Times Fantasy

Yahoo standings and category averages

by Marco Fujimoto
April 30, 2009

This is going to be a fairly short entry, but I hope it will still be informative. A couple Fantasy Focus articles over the last few weeks have referenced Yahoo leagues and this article, which provides the category averages for teams that finished in the top three of 12-team, standard 5x5 leagues in 2008. As I mentioned in my last Roster Doctor article, at the beginning of each season, I like to compare my current teams to the standings of previous leagues to see how they might do. I’ll take the average line of the project systems (i.e. Marcel, CHONE, Bill James, etc.) for each starter, add those numbers up by category and then check those past standings to help gauge the number of points my current team might accumulate in each category. While not an exact science, this method gives me a rough estimate of how I might fare in a particular league.

While the aforementioned Yahoo article provides averages for the top three places for each category, I haven’t seen an article that provides averages across all places. Yahoo allows fantasy sports participants to check standings of the past leagues they have taken part in, so I have compiled category averages for all positions for every 12-team, 5x5, Roto-style leagues I have ever participated through Yahoo. Dating back to 2001, I have apparently played in 27 of said leagues (this sort of makes me wonder what I’ve been doing with my life over the last near-decade, but whatever). Here’s the data, separated by category and sorted in descending order:

 Points   Runs     HR     RBI      SB     Avg      W       SV      K      ERA     WHIP   Points
   12    861.2   241.8   849.9   163.5   0.298    85.1   139.5   1059.9   3.35    1.18     12
   11    832.6   227.1   811.8   138.6   0.294    80.6   121.1   1012.8   3.57    1.22     11
   10    815.4   218.6   791.1   124.6   0.291    78.1   106.7   976.5    3.65    1.24     10
   9     794.9   209.9   771.1   111.3   0.289    75.9    97.3   947.8    3.75    1.26     9
   8     778.2   203.1   754.4   106.8   0.286    74.7    86.9   926.5    3.82    1.27     8
   7     764.6   197.9   741.1    99.3   0.285    72.8    77.2   900.9    3.89    1.28     7
   6     753.4   193.0   724.0    93.9   0.282    69.7    68.9   887.7    3.96    1.29     6
   5     739.7   189.3   711.4    88.1   0.280    67.0    62.4   856.6    4.03    1.30     5
   4     728.5   180.9   693.1    79.4   0.277    64.4    57.1   826.8    4.10    1.32     4
   3     710.8   176.3   673.6    68.8   0.275    61.4    48.8   771.2    4.17    1.33     3
   2     691.3   166.9   655.7    61.5   0.272    56.1    37.6   713.4    4.33    1.36     2
   1     624.9   150.0   595.3    50.5   0.267    48.3    19.2   643.7    4.52    1.39     1

Obviously, the sample size isn’t very large and I'm not sure taking averages across so many years is the best way to handle things, but I also don't think these numbers are too far off from what the averages will be for all Yahoo leagues this year. Hopefully, this table will give you a general idea of where your team may finish at the end of the year, and also give you an idea as to categories in which you could use improvement.



Marco thanks everyone for reading, apologizes in advance for his tardiness and requests that readers be patient in awaiting replies. He welcomes all questions, comments and thoughts on any topic, baseball or otherwise, here.

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