What's the Best Fantasy Baseball Analysis Website?

[Sour Masher]

I've used Fantistics in the past, although it tends to be a little wonky for me, they really seem to know their stuff, and their daily updates are second to none.

Hornsby's recommendation got me on to them two years ago. It s so hard to find resources for custom points leagues, and I've found them to be a real boon. Two years ago, I won both leagues I was in, and last year I repeated in both. All 14 team leagues. I'm not saying I won because of fantisitcs, but I will say I love their auction prep software. It isn't pretty, but it has really helped my auction prep the last couple of years.

Although, I have nothing to compare it to, because it is the first service I've ever paid for, I am happy with it and plan to continue to be a customer.

[umjewman]

I usually send Moonlight J a bunch of messages during the season. He gives reasonably decent advice and it annoys him, so it is kind of a win-win!

[revo]

My guess is that it is a lot harder to do this for baseball because of so many roto-leagues as opposed to head-to-head, and the large number of variance in categories among leagues. Also, the far, far, far larger rosterable population in even a semi-deep baseball league (and the shallow ones wouldn't pony up for such a service) much make such a project a whole lot more difficult. Baseball is just a different and far harder beast.

All sites would have to do is just link into your league site through your ID/Password and then provide their own projections. Shouldn't really matter about HTH vs Roto.

For instance, "Start'em/Sit'em" -- Site has your team info and uses their projections under your league scoring system. "Waiver Wire" would just comb who is available in your league, and combined with their weekly and/or ROS projections, offer an opinion as to who to pick up. These shouldn't be too difficult to do, as FBGs just takes their projections and translates it into whatever your league scoring system is by linking in.

[Ken]

All sites would have to do is just link into your league site through your ID/Password and then provide their own projections.

I think FBG has a contract with ESPN/CBS/Yahoo/etc to allow this interaction.

I wonder if it is cost prohibitive?

Also, after having pulled lists of names from different sources to build my own projections and pricing models, the biggest pain in the ass is player names. There will be ~50 names every year in baseball that the different lists don't agree on. Is it Yuli Gurriel or Yulieski Gurriel? Is it Eric Young or Eric Young Jr or Eric Young Jr.? Is it Chris Young (the outfielder) or Chris Young (the pitcher)?

These sound like small issues but to truly solve these problems you need to maintain an up to date database of the names used by each provider. And it is a huge pain.

[revo]

I think FBG has a contract with ESPN/CBS/Yahoo/etc to allow this interaction.

I wonder if it is cost prohibitive?

That's a good point. No idea.


As far as the names, is it possible that they're in the Lahman format within the site's HTML?

[Ken]

As far as the names, is it possible that they're in the Lahman format within the site's HTML?

Unfortunately no, we're not that lucky. Lets take CBS for example, I randomly went to the first team in one of my CBS leagues and the first player and found Willians Astudillo. The reference to Willians for CBS is to playerID 2210421, which is an internal reference within CBS to Willians Astudillo.

https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/players/2210421/willians-astudillo/

No one else is going to have him as ID 2210421, that's CBS specific.

In onroto he's player ID 5536.

No mention of astudwi01 anywhere to be found.

[Moonlight J]

I think FBG has a contract with ESPN/CBS/Yahoo/etc to allow this interaction.

I wonder if it is cost prohibitive?

Also, after having pulled lists of names from different sources to build my own projections and pricing models, the biggest pain in the ass is player names. There will be ~50 names every year in baseball that the different lists don't agree on. Is it Yuli Gurriel or Yulieski Gurriel? Is it Eric Young or Eric Young Jr or Eric Young Jr.? Is it Chris Young (the outfielder) or Chris Young (the pitcher)?

These sound like small issues but to truly solve these problems you need to maintain an up to date database of the names used by each provider. And it is a huge pain.

The lack of standardization within the industry is really surprising. Would be great if everyone agreed to use the name and player ID on MLB.com. Nelson Cruz is 443558. That should be the standard for others to develop toward. Don't charge for the standard - let everyone build toward the same data standard but compete on functionality.

[Ken]

The lack of standardization within the industry is really surprising. Would be great if everyone agreed to use the name and player ID on MLB.com. Nelson Cruz is 443558. That should be the standard for others to develop toward. Don't charge for the standard - let everyone build toward the same data standard but compete on functionality.

I think it comes down to money (like always).

Right now there's no motivation in the fantasy baseball industry to standardize. Each platform is independent and they want to offer you the "full fantasy experience" for hosting your league with them. They don't care about outside platforms digesting their data, they want you to use their own tools and they want to upsell you.

Until/unless there is outside pressure to standardize, there's no motivation for them to do so.

I think the rise of smaller names like fantrax helps our cause. But even they use their own IDs (https://www.fantrax.com/player/02ibc - 02ibc is Willians Astudillo)

[Ken]

Note that the CBS api sends an elias ID which could be a standard to adopt as well.

I poked around with the api last year but havent looked into it much this year.

[Moonlight J]

If there were standardizations around the IDs and such, could lead to an integrated experience. People can't control their league software, but they can control where they go for advice. RotoPass has had the model from one end where SSO allows for a singular login experience. There's a demand for the other end of that equation, but a model would need to be worked out.