Izenhart wrote:What the article basically tells me is projecting is such a big guessing game, it can't be done with any form of accuracy. I say - if you believe that, then how can you consider yourself an expert?
Well, it is a guessing game. Sure you can make it a better educated and researched guess than the next guy, but at the end of the day the results will do their own thing based on all kinds of things that are out of your control. It's like the old bear joke..you and a buddy are out in the woods and a bear starts chasing you...you don't have to outrun the bear to survive you just have to outrun your buddy. In fantasy sports you don't have to be 100, 90, 80, 70 or even 60% accurate with your projections..you just have to be more accurate than your leaguemates. Another example, I project a player to put up .290/20/90/90/10 and you project that same player as .280/15/75/75/10 and then the actual player finishes the year at .320/35/110/100/20. Neither of us was right, or even very close, but I was closer than you and that means I valued him higher than you and that likely means I drafted him before you did, which is all that matters.
There is more to skill than just projecting players though so just because projections are flawed doesn't mean that luck prevails. I stand by my opinion that if you stick me in a league with a random smattering of skill levels that I will finish in 1st place at least twice as often and probably closer to 3 times as often as I should if it were just luck.
Ender wrote:There is more to skill than just projecting players though so just because projections are flawed doesn't mean that luck prevails. I stand by my opinion that if you stick me in a league with a random smattering of skill levels that I will finish in 1st place at least twice as often and probably closer to 3 times as often as I should if it were just luck.
Agreed with the posts that say it depends on the quality of your competition. I believe that most of us are relatively intelligent and that there's a wall most of us hit when attempting to project stats - there's only so much we can know.
In some leagues all it takes is paying the most attention and being the most active (Yahoo Public for example), and that's not skill.
That's why things like in-draft management, projecting playing time, consideration of injury risk, and contract consideration (in keeper leagues) are the skills that pay the bills, but many of us are about as equally skilled as each other. When you have a bunch of guys that are equally skilled, then luck is a far greater determining factor.
Last year in a Cafe league I picked up RA Dickey on the waiver wire. It wasn't because I was the smartest guy or even the most active. I was just the one that decided first he was worth a second chance. There was really no skill at all in my decision.
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” --Henry David Thoreau
IMO it is much harder to win a competitive auction league than a similarly competitive snake draft..Luck kicks in immediately in a snake draft w/the luck of the draw
IMO it is much harder to win a competitive auction league than a similarly competitive snake draft..Luck kicks in immediately in a snake draft w/the luck of the draw
True but winning when you pick at the back is sweet. I'll be stuck there for a cafe league draft this year, expecting that will be the toughest league to pull out a victory.
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by J35J » Thu Mar 14, 2013 10:00 am 
