gosh, I hate to rain on your parade, but this sounds like a colossal waste of time. Your not going to find anything that can accurately project points in any format. Hell I thought thats whats RG’s best projected lineup was for.
Seriously, I have been there and done that. I went on a bas streak last year and couldnt win a game for anything. Wasted tons of time doing all that jazz and it was useless. If your on a cold streakm the best thing to do is to take a couple days off and then come back into it with limited research. Really dont look at all those crazy,time consuming splits.
It will turn around because a daily fantasy baseball player is similar to a real baseball player in that you are going to hit hot and cold streaks. This is not basketball where you can put up a consistent number day after day. You will go cold, everyone does.

Cam, that definitely sounds time consuming but you never know what you might come up with. I think that main factors you should consider are salary, matchups, and how well players have done recently. Although it would be hard to quantify matchups because there isn’t enough PvB stats for all players and pitchers.

I have tried to pick my closer based on Sportsbook odds but that didn’t have too much success. Anyway, I wish you the best of luck and keep us updated as to how it turns out.

@Cameron said…

Projecting Players/Lineups for MLB

I think it’s time for me to try a little experiment to see if I can’t get rid of the MLB funk I’m in. I’m going to do some more precise research and get my MLB game up to par. I plan on doing some rankings/projections in excel for the Saturday games to see how it comes out. With all the talk of BvP, Ball Park Factors, etc. – what do you look at and what should I use to project? Does anyone do this already?

I’ll compile everyone’s thoughts on how to best project a player’s performance, and try to do some thorough projections for Saturday in excel, then PM the results Saturday to anyone that helps me out with this little experiment.

The thing I’m worried about projecting is chance of a win based on SportsBook odds. What’s the best way to quantify that? If it winds up taking a bunch of time and not being too effective, this’ll be a one-time event – but I wanted to give it a shot and see if I can’t come up with a numeric projection that works.

Just ask Mitch, duh.

I think this is not worth the time and effort since so many things go into baseball. There is so much luck involved, making it impossible to project players out. NBA would be much easier. It is just not worth the 3 hours worth of time at least because you would spend all the time putting together something and you could come back that night and find out your team sucked it up. If you were just going to do it for a day, then why not try it out and see what happens, but everyday seems hard. Take in salary’s and match ups of the players. Maybe a little batter vs pitch.

Really, take a look at last night as a microcosm if you want. If you Went against Fielder and/or Quentin you were in trouble. But no matter how much you research it was a total crapshoot to take Fielder over Adrian G or Konerko. Every number you could come up with would have said to take the other 2 big 1st baseman just as much as Fielder. But firlder was the 2 homer guy and the other 2 were very average last night….. Every single split out there said take Nelson Cruz in right field. Going against an average LH. He kills LH pitching. He kills the ball at home. He is on fire with a couple of 2 HR games in the last week. Hot night and a small ballpark. So what do you get rewarded with for your research? A NEGATIVE 1 point and the guy with Quentin gets 2 hoers out of him. Baseball is just sick .

@headChopper said…

Really, take a look at last night as a microcosm if you want. If you Went against Fielder and/or Quentin you were in trouble. But no matter how much you research it was a total crapshoot to take Fielder over Adrian G or Konerko. Every number you could come up with would have said to take the other 2 big 1st baseman just as much as Fielder. But firlder was the 2 homer guy and the other 2 were very average last night….. Every single split out there said take Nelson Cruz in right field. Going against an average LH. He kills LH pitching. He kills the ball at home. He is on fire with a couple of 2 HR games in the last week. Hot night and a small ballpark. So what do you get rewarded with for your research? A NEGATIVE 1 point and the guy with Quentin gets 2 hoers out of him. Baseball is just sick .

Perfectly stated chopper

at the start of the season i looked at the numbers ect and i spent like 4 hrs setting up my lineups each day but my scores were under 30 so i stoped looking into the numbers ect and i have been winning more plus im down to a hr a day-p

@headChopper said…

gosh, I hate to rain on your parade, but this sounds like a colossal waste of time. Your not going to find anything that can accurately project points in any format. Hell I thought thats whats RG’s best projected lineup was for.
Seriously, I have been there and done that. I went on a bas streak last year and couldnt win a game for anything. Wasted tons of time doing all that jazz and it was useless. If your on a cold streakm the best thing to do is to take a couple days off and then come back into it with limited research. Really dont look at all those crazy,time consuming splits.
It will turn around because a daily fantasy baseball player is similar to a real baseball player in that you are going to hit hot and cold streaks. This is not basketball where you can put up a consistent number day after day. You will go cold, everyone does.

Haha. No parade to rain on hC. I appreciate the feedback. You might be right, but I’m still going to try it out a few times to see how it goes though. What I’m thinking is get all the stats together this weekend, then over the course of the season remove some to see which are most important to look at. I can’t promise I’ll keep up with this, but it sounds fun at the moment…Maybe I’ll learn something on the way, or maybe I’ll just be like hC was right – I blew 30 hours of my life…

Are you going to send it to us?

@headChopper said…

Really, take a look at last night as a microcosm if you want. If you Went against Fielder and/or Quentin you were in trouble. But no matter how much you research it was a total crapshoot to take Fielder over Adrian G or Konerko. Every number you could come up with would have said to take the other 2 big 1st baseman just as much as Fielder. But firlder was the 2 homer guy and the other 2 were very average last night….. Every single split out there said take Nelson Cruz in right field. Going against an average LH. He kills LH pitching. He kills the ball at home. He is on fire with a couple of 2 HR games in the last week. Hot night and a small ballpark. So what do you get rewarded with for your research? A NEGATIVE 1 point and the guy with Quentin gets 2 hoers out of him. Baseball is just sick .

I understand this, but I know there are people that are making awesome profits in MLB as well, so they have to be doing something I’m not. I’m kinda working towards building a spreadsheet where you just pop stats in for that day and it gives you the projections that will, over time, win you money and beat the opponent. Something that, with minor manual tweaks, I could enter a bunch of $5 lineups every day, and make a profit over time. It might be a lot of time up front, but there has to be a way to use all the stats available to project more accurately than most, if it can be organized well enough…we’ll see…

@jl9000 said…

at the start of the season i looked at the numbers ect and i spent like 4 hrs setting up my lineups each day but my scores were under 30 so i stoped looking into the numbers ect and i have been winning more plus im down to a hr a day-p

hmmm – another vote of confidence, haha.

@mitchdog said…

Are you going to send it to us?

Sending it out on Saturday AM hoepfully. Need to check schedules, when the FD games are for Saturday, and my schedule. Might do it for Sunday instead depending.

The things that ive been looking at lately, are things such as umpire stats (ball and strike facter) The ballpark like u said. Also,the obvious batter stats vs that pitcher. Lately, ive been riding hot streaks, but tonight i liked the adam dunn matchup because he has been so awful and thought he was due. He homered, so it payed off. One thing ive found helpfull, is the pitchers carear vs that team. Im not sure if this is what u were asking, and its not like it helps me cuz i still lose. But ive been scoring a lot higher then when i first started

@cheapshot420 said…

The things that ive been looking at lately, are things such as umpire stats (ball and strike facter) The ballpark like u said. Also,the obvious batter stats vs that pitcher. Lately, ive been riding hot streaks, but tonight i liked the adam dunn matchup because he has been so awful and thought he was due. He homered, so it payed off. One thing ive found helpfull, is the pitchers carear vs that team. Im not sure if this is what u were asking, and its not like it helps me cuz i still lose. But ive been scoring a lot higher then when i first started

Umpire stats, eh? That’s a new one to me. Thanks for the post cheapshot.

What do you guys think about projecting the Win from Sportsbook odds? I know it varies, but if you had to formulate it, how would you do it? Let’s say for example that if Latos is -160 vs. the Nationals? What would you calculate his % chance of win being on a site that takes X% juice? What if Lohse is -110 vs. the Brewers (also -110)?

see, now your talking. Let the sportsbooks do the work for you. They spend alot of time trying to set the proper lines. They have all the spreadsheets done for you and they post it for you by posting the lines everyday.
I use the sportsbooks #‘s everyday as a ready made tool.

Second

@headChopper said…

see, now your talking. Let the sportsbooks do the work for you. They spend alot of time trying to set the proper lines. They have all the spreadsheets done for you and they post it for you by posting the lines everyday.
I use the sportsbooks #‘s everyday as a ready made tool.

How would you use the sportsbooks for picking hitters? I have never tried this before. It seems hard to dictate that….

@headChopper said…

see, now your talking. Let the sportsbooks do the work for you. They spend alot of time trying to set the proper lines. They have all the spreadsheets done for you and they post it for you by posting the lines everyday.
I use the sportsbooks #‘s everyday as a ready made tool.

Yea, that’s what I’m working towards, but I don’t know if a -190 means a 65% chance of the W for Verlander, so he gets 4.55 projected pts for that…The % is really impeding me from making this a quick procedure.

Also, how can I say a ballpark effects someones matchup? If one is 300 ft and their home field is 400 ft, does the field that’s 300 ft get a 1.33 boost? —- Some of this might be time consuming, but I’m trying to find a way to set it up so it’s not…

to answer your question mitch- there is obviously no way of getting an accurate read on what a hitter is going to do on any given night. But if you look at a sportsbooks type of bets, most will have a seperate category called “team total runs”.. They are factoring in how bad or good the opposing pitcher is along with the type of park they are playing in(hitter friendly,pitcher friendly, wind factor etc..)… The higher the projected team runs are according to vegas, the better odds are that that team has a great matchup.. Nothing is 100% accurate and everything, but this stuff really helps and you dont have to spend one minute on a spreadsheet for it. Just a helpful tool

@headChopper said…

But if you look at a sportsbooks type of bets, most will have a seperate category called “team total runs”.. They are factoring in how bad or good the opposing pitcher is along with the type of park they are playing in (hitter friendly,pitcher friendly, wind factor etc..)… The higher the projected team runs are according to vegas, the better odds are that that team has a great matchup..

see, now you’re talking!

OK, I’m not gonna’ lie…these projections I’m working on look, er, weird? right now. I think I’m favoring Wins too heavily. I’m going to move the projections to Sunday’s games so I can look more into it. In the meantime, rank what you guys think are the most important stats to look at (we’ll start w/ just FD scoring system to keep it simple).

W – has to be #1 right? Maybe that’s why I’m off right now…

Ks? IPs? ERs?

the most important for ranking pitchers, to me, is K rate. A win is tough to predict even for the best pitchers that day. So I look for a guy who is going to get his points thru K’s then if he gets a win its even sweeter. Even the greatest like roy halladay are only going to win about 60% or so of the time they step out there. So predicting wins are tough. But if a guy strikes people out, it is usually there every outing