- It's 2 parts correct stats from Monday thru Saturday. - Mixed with 1 part uncorrectable stats from Sunday. - Shaken over ice and served in a chilled sorry we don't have the "tool" to fix anything that happens on a Sunday.
It's delicious.
And that's why you shouldn't use Yahoo. They are terrible.
Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball. ~Jim Murray
I think Yahoo does a pretty good job of ranking players these days. I think they find some standardized mean for each category and then determine the player in question's influence on that category. For example, if the average number of owned hitters in a league was 250, they would take the mean BA of all of the top 250 players and value a player's contribution to that category based on their +/- from that mean. BA would be the most difficult stat to do this with for hitters because all of the other categories are integer values in a standard 5x5. All category ratings for a player then contribute equally to their overall grade.
About 4 or 5 years ago, Yahoo's system was palpably more flawed than now. If anybody has been playing for a while, they probably remember when Yahoo did not properly weigh ratio categories such as batting average, ERA and WHIP for the number of IP or ABs. This resulted in the elite closers being consistently rated in the top 10 of overall players. If you didn't prerank for an autodraft in 2005, you had a 95% chance of ending up with Gagne or Smoltz in the first round
Sure a 1.50 ERA with a 0.75 WHIP is great and all, but over 70 IP, it doesn't put a closer in the top 10 of overall players. A starter with a 3.00 ERA and a 1.00 WHIP over 220 IP makes a more favorable overall contribution to one's ratio categories. Thankfully Yahoo finally figured this out.
CBMGreatOne wrote:About 4 or 5 years ago, Yahoo's system was palpably more flawed than now. If anybody has been playing for a while, they probably remember when Yahoo did not properly weigh ratio categories such as batting average, ERA and WHIP for the number of IP or ABs. This resulted in the elite closers being consistently rated in the top 10 of overall players. If you didn't prerank for an autodraft in 2005, you had a 95% chance of ending up with Gagne or Smoltz in the first round
Yahoo's Relivers rankings on 26 March 2005: 28. E Gagne 47. M Rivera 49. B Lidge 54. Fr. Rodriguez 56. K Foulke 59. B Wagner 61. J Nathan 63. Fr. Cordero 64. A Benitez 66. O Dotel 70. T Hoffman 76. J Isringhausen 88. J Smoltz 99. G Mota 100. E Guardado 102. D Kolb 110. B Looper 111. T Percival 112. S Takatsu 113. BJ Ryan 114. D Graves ...
the awesome sig by soty
"You should be mindful of the future, but not at the expense of the moment." - Qui-Gon Jinn (keeper league expert?)
CBMGreatOne wrote:About 4 or 5 years ago, Yahoo's system was palpably more flawed than now. If anybody has been playing for a while, they probably remember when Yahoo did not properly weigh ratio categories such as batting average, ERA and WHIP for the number of IP or ABs. This resulted in the elite closers being consistently rated in the top 10 of overall players. If you didn't prerank for an autodraft in 2005, you had a 95% chance of ending up with Gagne or Smoltz in the first round
Yahoo's Relivers rankings on 26 March 2005: 28. E Gagne 47. M Rivera 49. B Lidge 54. Fr. Rodriguez 56. K Foulke 59. B Wagner 61. J Nathan 63. Fr. Cordero 64. A Benitez 66. O Dotel 70. T Hoffman 76. J Isringhausen 88. J Smoltz 99. G Mota 100. E Guardado 102. D Kolb 110. B Looper 111. T Percival 112. S Takatsu 113. BJ Ryan 114. D Graves ...
OK, give us this same breakdown for 2004. You'll see what I'm talking about. I don't know where the heck you got this list though.
CBMGreatOne wrote:About 4 or 5 years ago, Yahoo's system was palpably more flawed than now. If anybody has been playing for a while, they probably remember when Yahoo did not properly weigh ratio categories such as batting average, ERA and WHIP for the number of IP or ABs. This resulted in the elite closers being consistently rated in the top 10 of overall players. If you didn't prerank for an autodraft in 2005, you had a 95% chance of ending up with Gagne or Smoltz in the first round
Yahoo's Relivers rankings on 26 March 2005: 28. E Gagne 47. M Rivera 49. B Lidge 54. Fr. Rodriguez 56. K Foulke 59. B Wagner 61. J Nathan 63. Fr. Cordero 64. A Benitez 66. O Dotel 70. T Hoffman 76. J Isringhausen 88. J Smoltz 99. G Mota 100. E Guardado 102. D Kolb 110. B Looper 111. T Percival 112. S Takatsu 113. BJ Ryan 114. D Graves ...
OK, give us this same breakdown for 2004. You'll see what I'm talking about. I don't know where the heck you got this list though.
Yahoo Relievers rankings 2004 Feb.
4. E Gagne 20. K Foulke 23. B Wagner 26. J Smoltz 46. M Rivera 56. T Hoffman 61. E Guardado 86. U Urbina 107. J Borowski 108. O Dotel 109. T Worrell 121. D Marte ...
its old data that I didnt delete. 2003 is the earliest I got.
the awesome sig by soty
"You should be mindful of the future, but not at the expense of the moment." - Qui-Gon Jinn (keeper league expert?)
by Fantasy Sports Genie » Tue Feb 08, 2011 4:16 pm
It may be impressive, but it also bears no resemblance to how we actually calculate rankings heh
This has been discussed in many threads over the years I've been on the Cafe, and you're welcome to dig up those discussions if you like. The short answer is that we use fundamentally the same formula as baseballmonster and I gather most of our competitors. There are minor facets of that approach that have an air of subjectivity to them, which is why we don't match up with them 100%. It is also the case that our rankings are based on standard league settings, so that should be kept in mind if your league does NOT use standard settings. If people want to continue to insist we're horrible because our rankings were bad in 2003, that is certainly their right to do so. I'll just note that was 8 years ago, I'm not sure Bryce Harper was even born yet , and the ranking code has been essentially rewritten since then.
Oh. Actually, this discussion is a bit off the rails already. If you're looking at O-Rank, those are *not* statistically calculated. There is a statistical basis underneath it, but then purely subjective rankings are applied. If you value the opinions of our experts, feel free to use them. If you do not value our experts, then don't. That's all that is. The Rank column, on the other hand, is what I was referring to above, and is purely statistical in nature. But there is a bug at the moment where the Players page isn't giving you the option to use 2010 stats. Which are really the only statistical rankings I imagine anyone would want to see. I expect that gets fixed shortly.
Genie, I only brought up the old school RP rankings as a quasi-humorous anecdote in the context of saying that the rankings have vastly improved. In any case, I think they're pretty much right on these days, just in case there was any confusion.
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by jbird669 » Sun Feb 06, 2011 4:01 pm 
, and the ranking code has been essentially rewritten since then.
