Using Advanced Stats
Jonathan Bales is the founder of RotoAcademy and author of the Fantasy Sports for Smart People book series.
Why do we use advanced stats in daily fantasy sports? The primary reason is that they’re predictive; stats like PER in basketball or Net-YPA in football help to predict future performance.
But another reason is because they’re often not properly priced into site salaries. Things like recent performance and bulk stats (like touchdowns or rebounds) might be important and they might (or might not) be predictive, but if they’re priced into salaries, there’s no edge to be had.
Further, if you’re a tournament player, you’re always looking for advantages over the field. Let’s say that Batter vs Pitcher data were theoretically really predictive, but that it was 1) priced into site salaries and 2) used widely by the field. The data would have no usable value to you because there’s no edge left to be gleaned, no matter how well it does or does not predict future performance on the field.
Advanced stats typically represent our best opportunity to predict future performance, but also to acquire the maximum benefit when we’re right, i.e. the “edge.”
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