TSN rankings

[Absolutely Adequate]

I don't know if anybody would be interested in this, but I'm in a league with 9 friends and before the season my buddy Dan ran our rosters using TSN numbers to see who would win. There is generally not a lot of trading because none of us trust the others (the biggest trade - Sheets for Armas) so the rosters stayed fairly close to the originals. Anyway, here's the projected and real rankings.

Sh**ty beatles 79 (77.5-3rd)
Ewing Oil 79 (42.5-9th)
Mad Murdocks 73 (76-4th)
Anti-Semitic Clods (me) 72.5 (89-1st)
Righteous Tsunamis 72.5 (75.5-T5th)

Slaughter All 71.5 (62-7th)
I like Lauren Bush 59 (87.5-2nd)
Beware the French 54 (75.5-T5th)
Homerun Hurin 50 (50.5-8th)
Bada Bing 49.5 (24-10th)

So there you have it. Some are startling close, while others (I like Lauren Bush, anyone?) are wayyyyy off. I do think it’s interesting, though, that 4 teams were all in the top five in both rankings.

And then there are the crazy variations in baseball in general — I suspect Loaiza alone was responsible for at least 7 or 8 of I like Lauren Bush’s points, and who could have predicted that?? Ewing Oil vanished after I pissed him off and McCall spent a lot of time in the hospital and such, so they probably would have been better (although not up to prediction) if they’d managed their teams all season.

Does anybody else have some stats like these? I'm trying to figure out which free projections are the best to use - Obviously, you can't just use one, but I'm trying to see who is closest.
Anyone?

[Tribe-Fan]

The last few years I have used the free TSN rankings, the free rototimes rankings, ranking I got out of Lindys fantasy baseball mag, and pay services Baseball Notebook, Fantistics and Baseball HQ. (Not all the same year by the way, i'm not a nut!)

Anyway, I have found 1 truth to be evident. They all hit and miss, so much so that trusting 1 set of projections is crazy. I got some good guys last year using the projections, guys like Millar and Zambrano, but they also touted guys like Weaver and Radke so much that I took them early and spent the entire 2nd half trying to fix my ERA and WHIP.

My advice is this: Projections are fun to look at, and can be useful to a point, but trust your gut and never lay all your faith in someone elses numbers.

[chinch sacs]

My advice is this: Projections are fun to look at, and can be useful to a point, but trust your gut and never lay all your faith in someone elses numbers.

I agree, dont use just one, most fantasy rankings are bias to one type of player anyway (i.e. vet. starters, players with power and speed, closers, etc)

Last year I got a hold of as many mock drafts and rankings as I could, and set up my cheat sheet like this...

so you take the mock draft and break it down by position, if Bonds was the 1st outfielder taken then hes the #1 ranked outfielder in the draft, and so on...

then I took all the rankings from the drafts and the other rankings and found the average for each player and had my master rankings.

I also had my little sheet of "sleepers" This would have the names of the players that were metioned most often by the magazines, yahoo, The Cafe, etc (sometimes you tend to forget your deeper sleepers if you dont write them down. Someone will grab them and your like "oh yeah, I was going to take him as my back-up 3rd baseman, oh well, and then the player goes off that season. Ahem, Hank Blaylock" )

[Absolutely Adequate]

You see, I understand all that. My buddy Dan uses TSN exclusively and bragged to me before the season that he was projected to win, which is the only reason I've got these numbers. I was really just wondering if anybody had numbers for other sites, anything similar. I'm just curious whose predictions were closest.

That's all.

[Shitney™]

You see, I understand all that. My buddy Dan uses TSN exclusively and bragged to me before the season that he was projected to win, which is the only reason I've got these numbers. I was really just wondering if anybody had numbers for other sites, anything similar. I'm just curious whose predictions were closest.

That's all.

i see what you are saying, i don't have anything to help though..

[Madison]

*Empties pockets*

Sorry, I don't have anything like that either.

[Tribe-Fan]

Most of the pay sites claim to be the best at projectiong next year's numbers, but none that I have seen put up a list at the end of the year showing where they were right and wrong, and what their percentage of correct projections were compared to other services. One reason I suppose is because this question..What is a correct projection? If site A said Preston Wilson would drive in 120 runs last year and he actually drove in 141 like he did, is that accurate? It's tough to qualify.

Having said that, I have no proof or data I can point to, but of all the sites I have used for projections, and there have been many, I can not point to one as hands down better then the rest. Its more of a gut feel, but that is my opinion.