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Has anyone looked at the chances of finishing in a money spot if a team is in such a position at the All-Star Break in a standard rotisserie league?
I've looked at the standings at the ASB and compared them to the final standings in my two local leagues. The records aren’t complete. I only have data for 20 seasons; seven years in our AL league and 13 years for our NL league. I understand that this is a small sample. Both leagues allow trading, are keepers, have a $260 budget at the auction, use FAAB to pick up players after the ASB, don’t have benches, and have played 4x4 but are now 5x5. I'm the only owner that plays in both leagues.
We’ve paid the top four or five teams depending on the size of the leagues. The leagues have fluctuated in size – as small as 10 and as large as 14 teams. The last two spots that finish “in the money” don’t get much. The last team to get a payout typically gets enough to take a date to the movies and buy popcorn and a drink; the team right ahead of them typically gets enough to cover their buy-in expenses.
Here’s a summary of what I found:
I've looked at the standings at the ASB and compared them to the final standings in my two local leagues. The records aren’t complete. I only have data for 20 seasons; seven years in our AL league and 13 years for our NL league. I understand that this is a small sample. Both leagues allow trading, are keepers, have a $260 budget at the auction, use FAAB to pick up players after the ASB, don’t have benches, and have played 4x4 but are now 5x5. I'm the only owner that plays in both leagues.
We’ve paid the top four or five teams depending on the size of the leagues. The leagues have fluctuated in size – as small as 10 and as large as 14 teams. The last two spots that finish “in the money” don’t get much. The last team to get a payout typically gets enough to take a date to the movies and buy popcorn and a drink; the team right ahead of them typically gets enough to cover their buy-in expenses.
Here’s a summary of what I found:
- A surprising 90% (18 of 20) of the time the team in first at the break finished in first at the end of the season. There were years when the lead changed after break (last year the lead in our AL league switched six times in the last eleven days), but this fact surprised me.
- Teams in a money spot at the break finished in a money spot almost 80% of the time (74 of 93 times). If I just looked at the top three places, a team in one of those positions at the break finished in the top three about 62% of the times (37 of 60).
- Fifty percent of the time the team one place out of a money spot at the break finished the season in the money (10 of 20). These teams only were only 2.25 points out at the ASB on average (a median of 1.5 points).
- Teams that were out of a money position at the break, but finished in the money at the end of the season, were well within striking distance at the ASB. These teams were only an average of 3.5 points out (median of 3) at the break.
- I looked at the ratio of points a team had at the ASB compared to the total possible points. If teams had at least 60% of the total points (for example they had 60 points at break in a 10-team 5x5 league (“perfect scrore” = 100)) they were 87% likely to finish the season in the money (65 of 75 occasions).
- If teams entered the break with a ratio of points to total possible points of 50% or lower they were essentially done; only 5% of these teams finished in the money (4 out of 85).
- Teams that were in the bottom three in the standings at the break tended to stay there more often than not; 65% of the time these teams finished in a bottom three place in the league (39 out of 60 times). Only once in these 20 seasons did a team enter the break in a bottom three position finish in the money (it happened last year – a team entered the break in 9th in an 11 team league and finished in 3rd).
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