Show HN: Advanced analytics for fantasy baseball players
baseballengine.com
baseballengine.com
Another issue is that selection of stat categories for the "BE scorecard" does not match up with most fantasy baseball 5x5 leagues since it is missing AVG.
I think the idea of bringing more data visualization to baseball is great though. This is actually the topic I am using for my class project in my data visualization class (due in a couple weeks now!) I will definitely keep an eye on this site though, and hopefully you will continue developing and improving it.
Tyrone, it seems like your site's main marketability strategy is to allow fantasy owners big and small to customize their own comparisons and data visualization based on the stats they want to see. So with the above concern raised in mind, what if you allowed users to input their own 5x5 categories for their league and boiled that down into one number?
For example if someone was playing in a league that counted just Hits, Runs, Stolen Bases, Home Runs and OPS, and they wanted to know how Alexi Ramirez was doing in this format, they could just input these five stats and create a "Custom BE Rating".
This way, the hardcore data crunching aspect is still there, but the user will still be able to get a full amount of value from the site because it offers them the ability to tailor the data to their own league.
1) I would love for the site to integrate with my Yahoo/CBS/ESPN leagues and adjust the stat displays to account for my league settings
2) These stats are great for during research, but are also available at baseball-reference.com, fangraphs.com and several other sites. What would be great is for this to use the CBS/Yahoo API (scrape ESPN until they open their fantasy leagues API), and pull in my league info, teams, settings, positions and give me customized advice.
3) One this I found 2 years ago was that these stats were great for hard core stat nerds, but for more casual games, I've found that these numbers didn't make sense to them. We had to provide a simpler dashboard, with easily digestible recommendations/graphs and allow them to drill into more detail for each point.
4) Historical data is nice to have, but the real value would be to use the historical data to try and project the future. I don't really care that in 35 career ABs that Aaron Hill hit 4 HR (too small a sample size). What I'd like to know, is given his age, his ball park, and the profiles of the opposing starting pitchers, what range of stats can I expect from him?
5) In addition to historical stats, it would be nice to use your particular league context to define what a "good" trade is. For instance, trading Miguel Cabrera for Michael Bourn late in the season may seem crazy, but if you need SB and trading Cabrera to an opponent might prevent your nearest opponents from gaining on you in HR/RBI, this trade might make all the sense and actually improve your odds of winning.
These are just some of my quick thoughts and I hope they help.
I think the first thing I'll add is the projections, because that seems to be meaningful to a lot of people.
I really like the ability to compare up to 4 players on any given stat that's available, but the choice of stats is kind of lacking and I don't see much to draw me away from Fangraphs at this point.
I know you said this is primarily for fantasy nerds, (and stats like UZR don't really matter for fantasy baseball) but you could pull in stat nerds in general if you expanded the stat selection to be competitive with FG/StatCorner/etc. Pitch f/x data could also be something to think about as a future addition to add huge utility to the site.
There are some really smart people out there working on projection systems that you could look into. Dan Szymborski does ZiPS, Tom Tango does Marcel and then you probably know about Bill James who has a projection system by the same name. There are others, but these are probably the most popular.
I'd love to offer my assistance; baseball nerdery plus development nerdery would essentially be my dream job, but I would be way too swamped until June or so to be able to contribute. I don't know how SABR savvy you are, but my contact is in my profile and you're welcome to bounce questions off of me. There are also tons of resources out there I can direct you to.
One complaint: on the root page, the right (?) puts text off-screen, and you can't scroll to view it because that hides the text.
As for a football version, since the format is week to week you should heavily consider incorporating weekly matchups for players (ex. Arian Foster vs. Indanapolis Colts Defense, at home). There are a few good resources that I could direct you to for projecting matchups, but if you made your own incorporating split stats you could honestly provide a great resource to fantasy owners and, with the right marketing, capture a good portion the fantasy football market.
Positions are much more important for fantasy football than they are in baseball, so the tabbing system you have right now to distinguish pitchers and hitters is good, but expanding that concept to QB, RB, WR, WR/R, K, DEF would provide a good resource for all fantasy owners.
If you have any questions, email me. I'd love to help you out with this, and I could go on and on about where you could take this idea. The market for this type of site is just getting off the ground! My contact information is in my profile.
would love to see a blog post from you explaining your development process on the project
There appears to be a lack of advertising on the site as well. Seeing that you work for Google, I'm assuming its not because AdSense wouldn't accept the request for ads, but a strategic move on your part. Nice job, it looks very clean and easy to trust. Having no ads at this phase in the site's development is a smart move, and as the site gets more web traffic it might be a smart idea to reevaluate.