How to Get the Most Out of This Website

jricha06  3/24/2014 9:37 AM

Hello,

First time user of baseball monster. Do you have some documentation that explains the usage of each tool on this website? I am struggling to comprehend what each tool does and how to maximize it.

Thanks,

JR

ken_admin  3/24/2014 10:28 AM

Yes, some of the pages are less intuitive than others. For now, I assume you're interested in viewing projections and using the draft tracker, or were you wondering about other features?

jricha06  3/26/2014 8:46 PM

I have used the draft tracker but mostly all the other features. Is there some type of tutorial?

nathan_oake  3/27/2014 9:45 AM

Thanks for starting this topic- you read my mind. I love the draft tracker, and picked up the tolls for that through a video tutorial of Basketballmonster on Youtube a couple years ago. 

My question is - now what? The team is drafted- the season is about to begin- how do I use the tools to make smart decisions on either adds/drops, trades, or setting lineups during the season and hopefully into the playoffs? 

Do the Hot Players mean anything- IE- guys I should add? Or is this info late by the time its calculated. 

Is it possible to still "Connect to the Yahoo" and enter the league ID midseason to see if any available FAs are suggested adds? Or is the Draft Tracker connecting to Yahoo only useful for the actual draft. Don't get me wrong- I love the draft tracker feature- just looking to see if I can use the product all season long this year. 

Thanks in advance

silentjim   3/27/2014 11:00 AM

Are you in a ROTO or H2H league? Both?

Under settings>import team players you can constantly update who is rostered in your league.

If it was a ROTO league, I'd look at anaylsis>projected standings and see where you're projected to fall. For H2H I'd do it similarly and check how you stack up in cats vs the other teams.

Also for H2H do anaylsis>head to head weekly and see how your first matchup is projected to play out.

That's where I'd start as well as just analysis>team analysis and see where your positive and negative cats are

mbuser   3/27/2014 11:07 AM

Settings -> Import Team Players lets you import from Yahoo! with a few clicks any time you want. This updates all rosters any time you run the process.

Player Rankings show you what players have done, Projections show you what players are projected to do. One both pages, you can choose the other as the Comparison Column, and get a look at who is over- or under-performing expectations.

Team Analysis shows you the strengths and weaknesses for your own team and for every team in the league. How you match up with certain teams, who to approach with trades based on those strengths/weaknesses. You can manually swap players in/out here if you are considering a trade or add/drop and see how it affects your analysis. (It won't overwrite your saved team, that only happens if you make a change on the Import Team Players page.)

Trade Analysis shows you how transactions line up categorically, how and where you win/lose within a trade or an add/drop.

Weekly Projections show you who is projected to do what for the short-term timeframe you select. Use "Available & My Players" to see which FAs are projected to be more impactful than the players currently on your roster.

The Head to Head Daily tool allows helps you analyze current/future h2h matchups. Run your import, then select/load teams from the drop-down, click "Save Matchup" to see the breakdown. You can select/de-select individual players for individual days to make it more precise or "Select All Players." You can analyze/save up to 10 matchups. Head to Head Weekly is a snapshot of h2h matchups.

Projected Standings are just that, projecting where you will finish. For roto: Total Value, low bench%, Show Standings. For h2h: Per-Game Value, high bench%, Show H2h Matchup.

Ease Rankings show you the best/worst matchups for hitters/pitchers, based on data for any date range. This can come in handy in particular for streaming pitchers and looking at next day opponents.

Look at the Schedule Analyzer as part of your consideration for adds/drops. It will show you quantity of games and schedule ease for whatever future date range you select.

Hot Players shows you who is hot/cold relative to previous performance for the dates you select. Let's say we are four weeks into the season: select "Last Week" and it will be relative to the first three weeks of production, select "Last 2 Weeks" and it will be relative to the first two weeks of production.

nathan_oake  3/28/2014 7:03 AM

wonderful- thank you very much. Time to dig in- its clear I was not getting even a sliver of all that is available here...

silentjim   3/28/2014 8:40 AM

@nathan, if you get a free minute join the chat here or on the basketball side on occasion. There are usually a few guys in there depending on time of day and you might be able to get some more direct questions answered if you've got them.

nathan_oake  3/28/2014 9:32 AM

appreciate it- did not realize there was one. Thanks again

Guinness  6/5/2014 11:29 AM

"Low bench %" seems to have no impact on projected standings in roto league. What am I missing?

Innings limit works as intended for pitchers. But for hitters, whether I set bench % at 100 or 0, projected standings are same (and some teams projected to accumulate 6,000 AB vs 5,000 for others). We have 162 game limit for each position, so this kind of disparity shouldn't be possible.

ken_admin  6/5/2014 11:31 AM

We consider the bench those players you have marked Inactive, and it looks like all of yours are marked active. Typically, if users want a bench, they will uncheck the Mark Active when importing Team Players.

Guinness  6/5/2014 11:40 AM

OK, then is there a way to impose/reflect the games limit so that hitting stats are constrained appropriately in the same way that pitching stats are by the innings limit?

For example, AB limit?

Else I have to mark every team's bench players as "inactive" in order to get a realistic projected final standings?

Thanks for the speedy response!

P.S. I see that doing the import with hitters not all active, then using 0% (or low %) for bench role gets pretty close to this. Good enough for now, I think.

ken_admin  6/5/2014 11:46 AM

Currently, we don't support an AB limit on the hitter end since we can't import ABs from Yahoo! If we do something, it would likely be a total game limit which would give a reasonable estimate rather than having users enter game limits for each of their roster spots. This would at least punish those teams that are way ahead in games played.

descender  6/5/2014 11:47 AM

It would be great if there was a feature that would automatically mark your best player(s) at each position as active based on your league's starting position settings.

I find going through every team in the league and setting it manually makes the active/inactive feature just short of useless.  Who wants to go through that every time they import their leagues players (which is... daily for me)?

It would make the projected standings page infinitely more useful as well. :)

ken_admin  6/5/2014 11:48 AM

Yes, we plan on creating a more intelligent starter/bench detector, and your method seems like a reasonable start.

descender  6/5/2014 11:54 AM

Off-topic, but something that struck me yesterday... when viewing weekly or daily projections and using the "full season" or "last xxx days" as the analysis instead of the projections, some really strange players start to bubble up to the top of the list (generally players that had like 1 or 2 good games and don't play regularly).  If there was some sort of AB or IP cutoff that could clean the list up nicely.

I would also love some details on how to properly use category weights.  Say I'm falling behind in SB's, what's the appropriate weight to apply to them to get myself "back in the game" so to speak?  I find myself at least doubling the value of SB's, or i have to search way down the list looking for them.  I've messed with it extensively in the past, setting the weights based on how many points back I was in each category, but who knows if that's producing a useful result... as my place in the standings last year didn't reflect good work being done on my part :p