Quite a few of the cafe members have annual projections for players that guide their cheat sheets and rankings. For those who do, I wonder if you go back and evaluate your projections once the season is over? How good are they? I'm not necessarily interested in specific success stories or failures, just wondering if you evaluate yourself and use that information to do the next year's projection.
I personally don't do my own projections because I think it's an exercise in futility. What I do do (doodoo, ha!) is evaluate the projections/rankings from a number of different sources to identify trends. That has certainly been enough for me to be successful in my leagues.
For those of you that do in fact make your own projections, are you more or less successful in picking surprises? I think this is the key. Obviously, anyone can look at the past year or two and project a guy to have similar numbers...that doesn't take any skill. What would be helpful though is the ability to project a "career year" or a decline year.
mak1277 wrote:Quite a few of the cafe members have annual projections for players that guide their cheat sheets and rankings. For those who do, I wonder if you go back and evaluate your projections once the season is over? How good are they? I'm not necessarily interested in specific success stories or failures, just wondering if you evaluate yourself and use that information to do the next year's projection.
I personally don't do my own projections because I think it's an exercise in futility. What I do do (doodoo, ha!) is evaluate the projections/rankings from a number of different sources to identify trends. That has certainly been enough for me to be successful in my leagues.
For those of you that do in fact make your own projections, are you more or less successful in picking surprises? I think this is the key. Obviously, anyone can look at the past year or two and project a guy to have similar numbers...that doesn't take any skill. What would be helpful though is the ability to project a "career year" or a decline year.
I think I do quite well. And yes I keep my spreadsheets every year to check back on them. Now keep in mind, doing quite well in regards to projections isn't necessarily good because if it was then I would make millions but lets just say I don't look at any expert lists or anyone elses lists for that matter because I usually do better..... at least in my eyes!
mak1277 wrote:Quite a few of the cafe members have annual projections for players that guide their cheat sheets and rankings. For those who do, I wonder if you go back and evaluate your projections once the season is over? How good are they? I'm not necessarily interested in specific success stories or failures, just wondering if you evaluate yourself and use that information to do the next year's projection.
I personally don't do my own projections because I think it's an exercise in futility. What I do do (doodoo, ha!) is evaluate the projections/rankings from a number of different sources to identify trends. That has certainly been enough for me to be successful in my leagues.
For those of you that do in fact make your own projections, are you more or less successful in picking surprises? I think this is the key. Obviously, anyone can look at the past year or two and project a guy to have similar numbers...that doesn't take any skill. What would be helpful though is the ability to project a "career year" or a decline year.
I think I do quite well. And yes I keep my spreadsheets every year to check back on them. Now keep in mind, doing quite well in regards to projections isn't necessarily good because if it was then I would make millions but lets just say I don't look at any expert lists or anyone elses lists for that matter because I usually do better..... at least in my eyes!
Jason
Just out of curiosity, are you projections formula based or more gut instinct?
mak1277 wrote:Quite a few of the cafe members have annual projections for players that guide their cheat sheets and rankings. For those who do, I wonder if you go back and evaluate your projections once the season is over? How good are they? I'm not necessarily interested in specific success stories or failures, just wondering if you evaluate yourself and use that information to do the next year's projection.
I personally don't do my own projections because I think it's an exercise in futility. What I do do (doodoo, ha!) is evaluate the projections/rankings from a number of different sources to identify trends. That has certainly been enough for me to be successful in my leagues.
For those of you that do in fact make your own projections, are you more or less successful in picking surprises? I think this is the key. Obviously, anyone can look at the past year or two and project a guy to have similar numbers...that doesn't take any skill. What would be helpful though is the ability to project a "career year" or a decline year.
I think I do quite well. And yes I keep my spreadsheets every year to check back on them. Now keep in mind, doing quite well in regards to projections isn't necessarily good because if it was then I would make millions but lets just say I don't look at any expert lists or anyone elses lists for that matter because I usually do better..... at least in my eyes!
Jason
Just out of curiosity, are you projections formula based or more gut instinct?
My projections are gut instinct. I will go to that players profile and look at his career stats (not just last 3 years, though those are most important). To see how his trends are looking, what his career lows are for each stat, career highs, age, team, etc etc etc and just put in my projections based on "gut instinct". I will then use my "basic" formula to put the guys in a quick ranking but will usually tweak those rankings based on "gut instinct".
mak1277 wrote:Quite a few of the cafe members have annual projections for players that guide their cheat sheets and rankings. For those who do, I wonder if you go back and evaluate your projections once the season is over? How good are they?
In years past, my projections have been pretty decent. For 2006, I think I was wrong on every single player in baseball , and it showed in my standings in most of my leagues this year.
I had a very bad season this year, but I looked back and my projections were not bad at all. The problem must be with my draft stratagy, I did not get nearly enough pitching.
How good are they? I dunno...how accurate is my Magic 8-ball?
Actually I also use a ouija board and hold seances with the spirits of Ruth and Gehrig for their opinions.
Then I find a Mac (has to be a Mac since you do not want to try this on a real PC), grab a copy of Bill James' latest nonsenical geek programs and run stats projections through them just to weed out the occassion Alan Ebrees and Casey Fossums. Then I gather round the Mac and sing Kumbaya while I put a sledge hammer to it.
Seriously though, projections are pure nonsense in the end and the only thing they are useful for is in anticipating the relative worth of one player vs another. Show me 1 person who had projected Kenny Rogers' numbers for this season. Or Dan Uggla. I generally will pick a set of projections from a major provider (like Rototimes) and use that as a starting point and tweak players I like more up some, players I dislike down some. It is as good a method as any without going nuts.
Cafe Home
Fantasy Football
Fantasy Basketball
Fantasy Hockey
by mak1277 » Thu Oct 12, 2006 11:23 am 
