There’s at least one team in each league that complains that they were screwed over by matchup luck every year. We set out to determine how often, exactly, that is happening. We aggregated data on our Fantasy Genius platform where we provide customized weekly recaps, previews, and a hub for your league’s data. See an example league here.
Critically, we used each team’s Power Rank (which we calculate on our platform) and compared that to their league rank to see how often the cream is rising to the top. See below for a couple definitions/caveats before we get to the fun visuals.
Data definitions/caveats:
- Power rankings are determined by matching up every team with every other team in the league each week. For example, in a 10 team league, each team would play 9 hypothetical “games” against every other team in the league. If your team scored the 3rd highest points in the league, your “Power Ranking Record” for that week would be 7-2, regardless of your actual matchup outcome. Power rankings are calculated by determining which teams have the highest winning percentages for those hypothetical matchups. We like this system vs using total points scored as it ensures that every week counts equally and it takes matchup luck out of the equation. I’ve also seen this called “all play” in certain circles.
- We used all of our 12-team leagues for this analysis and for consistency’s sake, assumed that 4 teams make the playoffs in each league.
Okay let’s dive into the charts so that you can see exactly how unlucky your squad has gotten this year. There’s a couple ways to think about this which will depend entirely on your current power rank/league rank. Teams ranked 4th in power rankings are basically a coin flip on getting into the playoffs. If you’re #4 in power rankings, that probably seems quite unfair. However, speaking as a mediocre manager myself, it’s pretty awesome that you can be kind of garbage (7th in power rankings) and still have a 20% chance to sneak into the playoffs. Keeps things interesting…
Here’s the same information but with all of the curves plotted on the same axis. I find the chart above easier to read but this looks cooler:
I have a few more charts that basically tell the same story – power rank is highly correlated (0.75) with league standings, meaning that generally league standings do a pretty good job of putting the best teams into the playoffs. But there are always outliers and if that is you this year, you have a legitimate right to complain.
Here’s a heatmap of all of the power ranks and league ranks plotted:
I’ve got all of the same charts for 8 and 10 team leagues that I may post elsewhere but for the sake of brevity, sticking with 12-team leagues today.
Has your team gotten hosed this year with terrible matchups? Or are you one of the lucky ones that is going to sneak in and try to steal a championship this year?
For those interested, we recently opened up a Yahoo beta where you can sync your league and receive customized weekly newsletters for your league as well as the data hub mentioned above. Check out what it looks like in the demo league here:
https://www.fantasygenius.io/league/007225007/home
We already support Sleeper & ESPN leagues with Yahoo currently in beta. Everything on the site is free – sync as many leagues as you want!