LTR

Another example from last season was Justin Verlander (though I'm not aware of any injury but it was clear his performance dropped off along with velocity). Projections were very high on him all season (projected points to cost ratio was really good). He would often come up as the optimum pitcher. But sensibly speaking, if you rolled with him I think you'd be losing out on better line-ups.

For the sake of argument let's just say it's an undisclosed or unforeseen injury.

Coors field often has rain and higher POP, so it could really hurt if you're not playing those players based on high POP and the game still gets played (hurt me in a couple line-ups last season). By the way, I wanted to get your opinion with regard to what I said earlier about some projections being out of wack due to players having unforseen health or other issues affecting their performance. The players will keep showing up in your optimum projected line-ups but they will really hurt your chances. Do you have any plans to deal with these "anomolies" or you're just going to roll with the projections and such?

Con-artist hard at work... j/k... though I noticed you may get a little cheaper on StubHub http://www.stubhub.com/toronto-blue-jays-tickets/blue-jays-vs-rays-4-13-2015-9160157/

On this note I wanted to give a word of warning: If you rely solely on the projections data without using analytical "common sense" you will wind up losing a lot of games. Why? There are a small percent of players that will consistently under-perform projections (usually for unforeseen issues like health)... these players will keep coming up in your optimized line-up because their "projected points to cost ratio" will be very good. In my system I use a flag to exclude players that fall into this group from the optimized line-up. For example, imagine you were to keep betting on Josh Johnson in 2013 because his projected points to cost ratio was really good... you would be in for a world of hurt. I know some people here don't believe in hot and cold stretches which is fine but if a player is under-performing due to health or other unforeseen issues you will want to be able to flag that.

Well done.

That's interesting way of doing it but I'd prefer to go by the experts in this case (and adjust accordingly). Though I would like to know exactly how ZiPS and Steamers projects RBIs and runs.

Yeah, I was on the same page as you. Nevertheless, if a guy has been playing with the same people in the same spot in the order for a 3+ years... I think you would be deflating or inflating his projected runs and RBIs (because of his spot in the order and those batting around him) even though in this case you should probably do nothing. I believe most projection systems use around 3-5 years of data so the only way to validate what you're doing is compare against past line-ups and batting order positions during the years used for projection, which obviously gets too crazy. UNLESS, projection systems like ZiPS / Steamer completely ignore past data for RBI and runs when projecting, but I doubt it.

Well JFaS said he's doing the same (of sorts) so perhaps I'm wrong but I just don't see how you can account for past line-ups and batting orders and weigh those according to current line-up and batting order. It's too tricky.

I deleted that post because honestly it requires more thought. Projections are based off past performance... if Jose Reyes, for example, always (or at least in recent years) batted in the 2-hole with X batting before and Y batting after and the same line-up occurs in the game in question there's no real reason to adjust anything... the projections would be in-line with this. So for that reason I ignore these variables all together, if that makes sense.

I also have the problem with duplicate player names, it's relatively minor issue (there's only a handful of players with the same name). I'm not sure there's a real solution since you're dealing with different sites using different IDs, etc. Though in theory you could probably cross reference the team to make sure it's the right player.

Weather makes sense if you can trust it. You're being finicky with the "home field advantage of called strikes". If you go that far you might as well start taking into account ump biases (relatively difficult to quantify).

I'm guessing you're changing (hacking) the 'page size' to max and then triggering the post back to get the entire list?

I see no reason to venture out really, I'm just going to focus on one site so I can streamline my system.

If you've done this correctly you should be able to make a lot of money.

I haven't figured out a way to automatically gather this either. But since projections and "handedness" data isn't going to change much on a daily basis I was only updating once a week (manually). How do you get it automatically (it's not table based so can't be imported easily into Excel) unless you're doing some nifty parsing? Haven't used DK myself, so was just curious. I was gathering my data automatically from RotoGuru. For example, FD: http://rotoguru1.com/cgi-bin/stats.cgi?04d - They have the up-to-date data for the next day usually at 11 PM the night before if I recall correctly (they also have data for DK and other sites there). I like to do my line-ups the night before (since I can't really do them during work hours). So I would prep my line-ups using all active players and offset that list with this simple injury listed I created: http://users16.jabry.com/eragonth/test.asp (parses the MLB Injury List data into a simpler form). Still requires an additional step of taking out any players not in that days "optimum" line-up and then re-running the optimizer.

JFaS: Cool. Interested to know some of your tricks (if you're willing to share). Where are you getting your projections from? I'm guessing Fangraphs, in which case you are probably having to manually update that as needed (by manually I mean downloading the XLS)? Same question goes for handedness data? And what time-frame are you basing the handedness data on? What stat are you using as a baseline to evaluate each players handedness? How are you vetting guys who are not in the line-up due to injury and other reasons? Where are you getting the daily DK player data? I probably have more questions but those come to mind initially.

This is dumb if you're not averaging the quality lost over the quantity lost

Stro out Seasons over Fo Sho

You are funny man. Do it up!

I don't use their tool, but I read their daily blog line-up recommendations (which are based off their tools data) as a sanity test against my own line-ups... I know at least a couple other people here that do this as well.

On the topic of being constructive I'm pretty sure that's all I have been doing since I rejoined. And on that note I would also suggest averaging 3+ years of PF to get more reliable data.

Clearly wasn't an attack and more a bit of humour on the fact that he was giving away trade secrets (so to speak)... Why am I on short leash... I think both times I got banned was because I wanted to be or set out to be... Also I'm clearly not hiding...

Way to go you dink! But I wouldn't say profit is automatic... a large portion of the entrants are doing some similar variation of this so you have to be better. dailyfantasysportsrankings.com also has a tool you can subscribe to ($15/mo) that does pretty much this. And you have to be diligent with your line-ups to the last minute... if a player is out of the line-up unexpectedly and you have him in yours you will probably lose.

Not necessarily true, if you just want to slap a line-up together for fun it obviously doesn't take any time but if you want to build the line-up with the best chance to win that definitely does take time.... at least in the beginning it takes time until you figure out short cuts and develop automated methods (depending on the tools you're using).