Auditing your H2H fantasy basketball team

I am going to use a standard category Yahoo H2H league to go over roster auditing and roster management techniques and hopefully also receive a bit of valuable feedback as well. The guinea pig for this will be the Ballers H2H Keeper League (which is league ID #47162, for those who care.) This league keeps five players from each season, so most of the 14-man roster is not going to carry over, making it very much like a redraft league.

Ballers is a 12 team league, with 14 roster spots and 10 active spots (PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, C, Util, Util, BN, BN, BN, BN) open for each day, with daily changes.

Categories are FG%, FT%, 3PTM, PTS, REB, AST, ST, BLK, TO. These are very common settings. So, we begin:

Viewing Team Stats

The league front page will list the standings, and I am doing well in this league so far so that is very good. I'm in second place, one game out of first and a half-a-game ahead of the third place player. But it is very early, too soon to tell from early results just how good my team is. I need to do an audit.

Won-Lost records

First, I select the Head-to-Head Stats link at the top right of the header just above the standings. This will display 9 columns, one for each category, with your won-lost record for each stat for each week played. The default will give you the shooting percentage as first column selected, but you can click on the link at the top of each column to compare where you stand for each category. Now, it is nice to know that I am 6-0 in blocked shots but only 1-5 in FT% but that is dependent partly on how good my team has played and partly on who I was playing. So I select the Totals link at the top left, just to the side of Win-Loss.

Totals

Now this shows me how I have compared so far to the entire league. My won-lost in FG% was 4-2, but I lead the whole league with a .488 percentage so I am happy with that cat. I may be 1-5 in FT%, but my .764 percentage is right in the middle (6th place) so I am not quite as bad as I seem there. As I scan the columns, I find that I am second in rebounds, second in steals and third in points in addition to first in FG%. So I am now quite sure of my strongest categories. I am mediocre in assists, 3PTM, FT%, TO and blocks. But I see that with 159 blocks so far this year, I would be in third place if I'd just had 5 more. A little improvement there can really make that category much stronger.

Conclusion

I have strong categories and average categories, but no bad ones, so I will be consistently good. I'll be better if I can upgrade one more category to the strong side and right now blocks looks like my best category to look to upgrade.

Scanning the roster

Clicking on my My Team tab brings up my players and who they are playing today. I can choose all sorts of options to display here with splits and stats and ranks, etc. However, to get a good feel for how good my team is I will first do something different.

Players

I click the Players tab and all available free agents appear, ranked by default along preseason ranking lines. But I can select Sort By options at the top of the columns and so I change the default settings to Status = radarthanyouthink (my team name) and Position = remains on all players and Stats = Season (avg)

Now I can see what each player is averaging for each category for the season. There are also columns for O-Rank (beginning ranks for the season, by Yahoo) and Rank. I usually sort by Rank first. Here are my players, listed according to season average rank:

Rashard Lewis
(Sea - SF)
Jason Kidd
(NJ - PG)
Leandro Barbosa
(Pho - PG)
Andre Iguodala
(Phi - SG,SF)
Tim Duncan
(SA - PF,C)
Luol Deng
(Chi - SG,SF)
David Lee
(NY - SF,PF)
Wally Szczerbiak
(Bos - SG,SF)
David West
(NOK - PF)
Ime Udoka
(Por - SF)
Zydrunas Ilgauskas
(Cle - C)
Devin Harris
(Dal - PG)
Erick Dampier
(Dal - C)
Chris Kaman
(LAC - C)

Now I have 3 players in the top 25, 4 more between 38 and 68 and a total of 9 from ranks 1-91. Mathematically I would expect to have 8 at most, so that is good. My top 9 ballplayers are too good to consider dropping, obviously.

The next three are Udoka (#121), Ilgauskas (#128) and Harris (#129). They are possible drops.

My last three are the likely drag on my team so far. They are Dampier (#145) and Kaman (#205). Both are centers and it is likely that the remaining free agent centers are pretty lame, so I have to be careful about dropping either of them, too.

The reality of position management

In a Yahoo H2H league, you need versatility so that you can play as many players as you can during the week. To ensure this, you try for a minimum of at least three players eligible at every position with the exception of center, where you should have four because there are two "C" positions to fill each day. So how does my current lineup look?

PG- 3, and one of them is Harris, so if I decide to drop or trade him I need to replace him with another point guard-eligible player.

SG- 3, all in the top 91. No changes to make here.

SF- 6, but 3 of them are my SG guys. Udoka at #121 is the only guy I might consider dropping here.

PF- 3, once of which is also a SF, one of which is also a C. All rank high, no drops here.

G and F positions are filled with the above players as well, as you likely already know if you've played the Yahoo game.

C- 4. For my way of thinking, this is the minimum you want at the position. So even though 3 of the 4 guys are among my 4 worst players by Yahoo ranking, I would have to replace any of them with another center.

Conclusion

I might drop Harris for another PG, or I could afford to drop Udoka for a player at any position. If I drop a center I have to replace him with a center but I suspect injuries have caused Kaman to underperform and he will get better. I also expect Big "Z" to improve his performance, so my centers I am unlikely to touch. It comes down to Harris or Udoka. Both are starters for their teams but both are on a short leash. Udoka is far exceeding expectations right now and I know a trade or just a change of mind could plop him on the bench. He is the most vulnerable guy I have, it seems.

Before making a move

Now I click on individual cat columns to see if Harris and Udoka are expendable in my strong areas or if they are a drag on my average cats. Finally, do I see an opportunity to really boost my blocks while keeping the other cats strong by replacing one of them? I switch from Season(avg) to Last Week (avg) in the drop-down menu for Stats to consider trends. I may look at the last month averages, too.

I am reminded that Wally Szczerbiak has been out recently and that David West has been off for almost a month. Wally will certainly boost my 3PTM and percentages and points when he returns while West will help with points, rebounds and blocks...blocks! Yes, he will block around a shot a game and that is enough to really help that particular category.

I decide that I just need to get healthy and at first glance I don't need to make any changes. But we'll take a look at scouring the FA/Waiver wire in the next post anyway and maybe use a different team to actually make a change. Ciaou!