With 10 weeks in the books, we’ve reached the halfway point of the fantasy baseball season. While there have been numerous charts trying to show week-to-week success, there has been no effort to forecast the rest of the fantasy baseball season. With half of the season gone, now is the perfect time to take a look at some of the trends across the league. Using a moving average, we can look at the teams that started off strong and are not faltering, and the teams that are beginning to make their push for the playoffs at the right time. What we are looking at in all the charts below is the expected number of wins based on my spreadsheet that I make every week, and then placing a 3 week moving average over each player.
Moving Average
This is obviously a messy chart, so let’s take it player by player and see what kind of predictive knowledge we can extract.
Right off the bat, we can see a few players are on a pretty ugly downward trend, with none uglier than Spencer:
Spencer certainly had one of the strongest starts, placing himself amongst the leaders through week 5. Unfortunately for him, he experienced a stunning decline from week 5 to week 8, giving him by far the worst trendline of any player this season. His last couple of weeks have shown promise, but I’m going to see a few more weeks of improvement before I’m ready to say he’s back in contention.
Two other players with demoralizing trend lines are Hunter and Emmett:
Here again we see two players who started strong and are now unable to right the ship. These two in particular are an interesting case because of how consistent their downward spiral has been. I wouldn’t bet on either of these teams to turn it around, but crazier things have happened.
There are two more players I want to highlight that are showing a consistent downward trend – Sean and Evan:
These supposed favorites are two wastemen in disguise. This is pure and unadulterated garbage from two teams that spent approximately $15000 each on fantasy baseball. Neither of these teams should be middle of the road over the last 3 weeks, yet that’s where we find them. It is tough to put too much gravity on these trends given the obscene amount of money these two spent on baseball, but terrible management from Evan combined with Sean’s stars sudden inability to hit the baseball have put them both in a relatively ugly situation. This is something to monitor over the next few weeks.
Next, we’re going to take a look at two teams that have shown improvement throughout the season: Sam and Jake:
Now, before diving into this, I want to make something clear: these are not necessarily good teams. Jake has “improved” from worst to fourth worst and my improvement has been anything but steady. What it does show, however, is that these teams are starting to work their way closer to the center rather than being total bottom feeders are should be relatively tough outs on a week to week basis. Neither of these teams will likely contend for a playoff spot, but both are solid enough to cause some upsets along the way.
Two of the most interesting teams in the league also have two of the most interest trend lines: Jacob and Taylor.
Taylor is relatively impressive, slowly but consistently getting better on a week to week basis. He has worked himself up to being one of the top 5 teams over the last 3 weeks and with solid management and an impressive level of consistency, I expect this to continue through the rest of the baseball season. That said, I think Jacob is the one team that the “contenders” should fear moving forward. After battling a slew of injuries to start the year, his team is now coming on extremely strong. He has a lot of ground to cover, but he has shown sustainable improvement and I expect him to be a top 3 team for the rest of the year. The question is, will it be enough to make up for his abysmal start?
Finally, we are going to look at the three teams that have been undoubtedly the most impressive throughout the year: Cameron, Ronak, and Adam.
Cameron in particular showed some impressive resiliency in the middle weeks. After selling off what seemed like half his team, he has battled back to being a consistent top four team. Although he has still performed above his level, I expect his management expertise to keep him in the top five for the rest of the season.
Finally, we come to our two juggernauts. Adam and Ronak have been dominant throughout the season and are the clear front runners. No other teams have come close to matching their consistency and I expect these two teams to remain the top two for the rest of the year. The only thing that could stop them is their inexperience in baseball or a strong surge from Jacob.
Of course, all these trends could change over the next few weeks. Sean and Evan may get their shit together, regression may finally come for Cameron, and Jacob could falter on his way to the top. That said, based on this data my playoff projections are currently as follows:
- Adam
- Ronak
- Jacob
- Sean
Sean gets the SLIGHT edge over Cameron due to his early season dominance, which I expect him to eventually return to. Overall though, the league is in a good place, with more parity than could be expected at this point in the season.
The Fantasy Gauntlet 