WHY ARE MY STATS SO BAD?
I know that it can be frustrating when you put together a solid team and then their fantasy stats don’t match what’s going on in real life. Here are some things to keep in mind when suffering through low points. The best news is that there's a correction function built in, so players who are UNDER-performing should adjust up and OVER-perform in subsequent weeks.
STATISTICS ARE VOLATILE, ESPECIALLY WITH LOW AT BATS AND INNINGS PITCHED. A difference of 50 batting average points is, after all, only a difference of 3 hits in 50 at bats. ERAs are notoriously unstable, even in the majors and even with a lot of innings pitched. An ERA off by half a run is still accurate to within 1 earned run every 18 innings. Usually, over the course of a season and a lot of at-bats things tend to work themselves out. A range of plus or minus 40 batting average points or half an earned run is normal, and not half bad for the simulation.
LOTS OF THINGS GO INTO AN EARNED RUN AVERAGE. The quality of the fielding, the speed of the base runners, the number of guys on base when the home runs go over the fence, are all things that influence an ERA that the pitcher (and the simulation) can’t control. Also, keep in mind that the lineups faced by your fantasy pitcher are NOT the same lineups faced by your pitcher in real life. Obviously, because the pitcher has faced different competition his performance will be different. It is possible, for example, that based on trades that happen in our league, a guy who never had to face Sosa and McGwire in real life might face them repeatedly in our league. In this case, the simulation would be WORKING if your pitcher’s ERA rose. Conversely, imagine that your pitcher faced Sosa in real life and gave up 3 HR on one bad start. If you face the fantasy Cubs who traded Sosa your pitcher’s HR% will still be high, but since he won’t pitch to Sosa in YOUR games against the Cubs, he should do a little better than he did in real life. What looks like statistical inaccuracy from one perspective might look like realism from another.
OUR LEAGUE TENDS TO BE MORE COMPETITIVE THAN THE MAJORS: Keep in mind that you can drop your 3 worst players and replace them with minor leaguers who will, for the purposes of our simulation, probably have better stats. Given roster flexibility, fantasy owners rarely have to field a pitcher with an ERA over 18 because we can look at the stats after the games have happened and sit a guy who would kill us. In real life, those pitchers take the field and take their beatings and nobody knows how bad they are until after they’ve logged the innings, surrendered the runs, and pushed their ERA over 18. Similarly, a hitter who is having a terrible time and hitting .073 after 100 at-bats in real life would simply be benched by a fantasy owner, while an actual manager has not choice but to keep trotting him out there. Statistically, those 100 at-bats with no hits are removed from the fantasy pool, but remain in the actual stats. Because fantasy owners can concentrate talent after the stats are known fantasy teams tend to be statistically better than actual teams. The result is that if your team is not better than its real equivalent your record and stats are likely to suffer.
I’M CONSTANTLY RUNNING TESTS TO MAKE SURE THINGS STAY IN LINE: As of this writing, the average fantasy batting average was within 20 points (2 hits in 100 at-bats) of the actual batting average. The average ERA was within 3/10ths of a run (1 earned run every 27 innings). Of course, there are some “outliers” and extreme cases that defy the odds (they usually appear on the league leader board), but I keep monitoring the league average to make sure that things are pretty solid overall.
THE GOOD AND THE BAD EVENS OUT: If you have a player who is seriously under-performing, check your stats and see if you have some players playing above their heads too. The ranges are all plus AND minus ranges, so you should have a couple guys a little over and a couple of guys a little under.
IF SOMETHING SEEMS BADLY OUT OF WHACK, LET ME KNOW. I’d like to check out anything that really seems amiss. All computer programming involves debugging, and it is difficult to generate code that is entirely error free. Sometimes the bugs take a long time to find and kill, but if you notice a problem that seems persistent, I’m here to check into it.