Having good projections can help you make better decisions for your fantasy team. It may seem the point is trying to spot undervalued (or overvalued) players, and while that certainly is important, that’s not the only thing projections can do to help your team.
I’ve recently introduced Projected Standings to RotoValue, a feature that lets you combine both what has happened with some projection of what might happen to see what your standings would be.
Here’s a projected standings page from my 4×4 National League:
Where do the numbers on this page come from? I’m taking the season-to-date standings for the league (through Thursday, April 26), and then combining them with prorated data from the season, assuming no more lineup changes happen. The projected data is scaled to each pro team’s remaining games.
The dropdown (which is obscuring the name of projected league winner, Team Lorin, and runner-up Doppelganger) shows the available sources for the future stats. By default, I use prorated current season statistics (which, in the first week of the season can generate some *very* amusing numbers!). But you could instead choose any of the projection systems I have – CAIRO, Marcel, Steamer, ZiPS, and my own RotoValue projections. Or you can use prorated 2011 stats. When using prorated stats as the data source, you can choose any date range. If a player’s role has changed during the season (say, a middle reliever has recently become a closer due to injury), you might want to prorate statistics since that role change to get some idea of how your team may do moving forward. The custom date range for the source lets you look at things, and it’s a valuable tool. But it isn’t perfect: the shorter the time range you use for the source, the more likely random luck would explain certain players playing either well above or well below their overall skill level.
Projected standings can give you some idea of how recent changes to your team affect its longer term prospects. And of course it’s especially fun to look at projections if your team is the projected winner!