Yahoo standings and category averages

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 5×5 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, 5×5, 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.


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Mike
14 years ago

Marco, what a great wealth of info here.  When I did something like this, I think I had 3 leagues represented grin

I’d suggest lopping off the decimal point on the stats, just to make it easier to read.  A half of one of any of those stats is probably well within the margin of error.

Good stuff.

Beanster
14 years ago

This is good stuff.  I find it useful to target 100 pts to win the league, and I track my pace each week against target.  Point standings are deceptive early in the year so I prefer this approach so I don’t fall behind target.

Marco Fujimoto
14 years ago

Mike and Beanster, thanks for reading and visiting THT!

I’m glad you guys found this to be useful.

I actually thought about averaging and presenting the overall points for each place, 1~12, from the 27 leagues. But the Yahoo article already mentions that the average overall score of the first place team last year was 95. I think that’s the only number people should really worry about. I do think 100 overall points is a good number to target though, to be on the safe side.

Paul Singman
14 years ago

Good stuff Marco. Like Mike, I haven’t quite played in 27 roto leagues, but I guess it paid off now. smile