Fun with Excel #11 – Who’s My 2015 Fantasy Football MVP?

January 6, 2016October 27, 2016 JeffCam Newton, Fantasy Football, FF, football, fun with excel, Jordan Reed, MVP, Tim HightowerLeave a comment

Four months ago, I had never watched a full game of American Football, nor was I remotely interested in doing so. Now, after participating in my first ever season of Fantasy Football (and winning the Championship!), I find myself an enthusiastic follower of the sport. For those of you not familiar with Fantasy Sports, here’s a definition courtesy of Wikipedia:

A fantasy sport is a type of online game where participants assemble imaginary or virtual teams of real players of a professional sport. These teams compete based on the statistical performance of those players’ players in actual games. This performance is converted into points that are compiled and totaled according to a roster selected by each fantasy team’s manager. These point systems can be simple enough to be manually calculated by a “league commissioner” who coordinates and manages the overall league, or points can be compiled and calculated using computers tracking actual results of the professional sport. In fantasy sports, team owners draft, trade and cut (drop) players, analogously to real sports.

Online fantasy sports are a multibillion-dollar industry, and fantasy NFL football is by far the most popular fantasy sport.

Being the highly competitive stats nerd that I am, Fantasy Football caught my interest the moment the draft began and gradually became a part of my daily routine for the better part of 16 weeks. While there is inherently a lot of randomness and luck involved in the game, Fantasy Football at the end of the day is a game of skill – managers who take the time to draft wisely and follow the latest player and team developments put themselves in a good position to make savvy moves for their fantasy team on a week-to-week basis (e.g. picking up valuable free agents off the wavier wire, making trades with other managers, optimizing the starting lineup), which in turn leads to better performance over the long run.

After taking home the Championship in Week 16 (I guess it’s all downhill from here on out…), I became curious as to who the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of my Fantasy Team was. MVPs are handed out at the end of the season in real sports, so I wanted to come up with a methodology to do the same with my Fantasy Team.

League Details

14 Teams, ESPN, 1 PPR Scoring, QB/2RB/2WR/1TE/1FLEX(RB/WR/TE)/DST/K, Auction Draft ($200), FAAB Waiver Wire ($1,000)

Thought Process

I wanted to not only quantify each player’s contribution to the Team’s performance throughout the course of the season (Weeks 1-13 Regular Season, Weeks 15-16 Playoffs due to First Round Bye), but also measure each player’s performance during key games — their “clutch” ability, if you will. In the end, I came up with 3 ways to rank players by their points contribution and 2 ways to assess their “clutchness.”

Results and Rankings

First, a table summarizing my Team’s season as well as every player (27!) who contributed points during the campaign:

In addition to tables, I’ll be providing some charts throughout this post that will help to better visualize player performance and rankings.

Ranking Methodology #1 – Total Points Over Season – Fairly straight forward. Who contributed the most points over the course of the season?

Ranking Methodology #2 – Average Points Per Game Started – Unlike the first ranking, this measurement normalizes player contribution by the number of games started and highlights productive players who were picked up later on in the season (or, conversely, high performing players who unfortunately had their seasons cut short due to injury). Under this simple points per games scheme, both Cam Newton (7 games) and Jamaal Charles (5 games) rank higher thank Demaryius Thomas, despite Thomas (15 games) starting every game in the season (and interestingly enough the only player to do so this season!).

Ranking Methodology #3 – Average Contribution % Per Game Started – In this measurement, I assessed each player’s points scored as a percentage of my Fantasy Team’s total points scored for a particular week/game. I then averaged this percentage over every game the player started over the course of the season. In the end, this was an alternate measure of a player’s relative importance that resulted (unsurprisingly) in a ranking similar to the simple average method (#2).

Clutch Factor #1 – Over/Underperformance in Close Games (<= 10 Points) – I was curious to see how players performed in close games, which I defined somewhat arbitrarily as any game with a margin of victory/defeat of 10 points or fewer. There were 4 such games during the season, in Weeks 4 (Win), 5 (Win), 8 (Loss), and 12 (Win). To actually measure “clutchness,” I employed a calculation akin to the Sharpe Ratio. I first calculated each player’s average PPG over the full season (Weeks 1-16), as well as the standard deviation of their performances. Then, for every Close Game, I took each player’s points scored, subtracted his average PPG, and divided this difference by the player’s standard deviation. A positive number would indicate over-performance while a negative number would indicate under-performance (the bigger the absolute value of the number, the bigger the over/underperformance). Finally, for each player, I took an average of his over/underperformance figures over all the Close Games that he played in.

Clutch Factor #2 – Over/Underperformance in Playoffs Games (Weeks 15-16) – While there is nothing that makes a Playoff Game inherently different from a Regular Season Game, the vast majority of leagues structure the Playoffs as a single-elimination bracket where every game becomes a must-win. Therefore, I performed the same calculations of “clutchness” for the two Playoff Games that my Team played in this season.

Final MVP Calculation

With the above measurements complete, the only thing remaining was to come with a methodology to calculate my MVP of the 2015 Season.

First, I assigned points to the Top 10 performers in each of the 3 Ranking Methodologies. Rather than assign 10 points to the top ranked player, 9 points to #2, 8 points to #3, 7 points to #4, etc., I used the current Formula One World Championship points scoring system, which assigns 25 points to #1, 18 points to #2, 15 points to #3, 12 points to #4, 10 points to #5, 8 points to #6, 6 points to #7, 4 points to #8, 2 points to #9, and 1 point to #10. This gives more value to the Top 5 performers (and to #1 in particular) and creates more separation between the very best players and the second tier players. I then summed up each player’s ranking points across all 3 Ranking Methodologies to get to a Composite Ranking Value. From the table below, it’s clear that Cam Newton is the runaway favorite for MVP at this point, ranking #1 across two categories and #2 across the third category for a whopping total of 68 points, almost double the next highest total.

Here’s where things get more interesting. Remember, the 2 Clutch Factors calculated earlier help to quantify each player’s performance in close games and (more importantly) playoff games. Any positive number here means a player performed better than expected, while a negative number means the opposite. Rather than simply add the 2 Clutch Factors, I first multiplied Clutch Factor #2 (over/underperformance in playoffs) by 1.5x, as I deemed Playoff Games to be more important than Close Games during the Regular Season. I then added the result to Clutch Factor #1 to come up with a Composite Clutch Factor. Lastly, I multiplied the Composite Ranking Value by 1 plus the Composite Clutch Factor to arrive at the final calculation for MVP Points.

To recap: MVP Points = (Ranking #1 Points + Ranking #2 Points + Ranking #3 Points)*(1 + Clutch Factor #1 + 1.5 x Clutch Factor #2).

So there you have it! My MVP for the 2015 Fantasy Football Season was Jordan Reed, TE from the Washington Redskins. Not only did Reed end up tied for 2nd in scoring among all TEs (only 11 behind Gronk despite missing two games to injury), he peaked at the optimal time, putting in monster performances of 27, 27, and 33 points in Weeks 14-16 and going for 5 TDs during that span. An Honorable Mention goes out to #2 Tim Hightower (RB, New Orleans Saints), whose real life story is even more amazing than his scintillating Fantasy performance. After literally not playing NFL football for 4 years due to injuries and repeatedly getting cut and re-signed by the Saints earlier this season, Hightower was thrust into the starting position after a season-ending injury to Mark Ingram. The 29 year old made the most of his chances by rushing for 85 yards and a TD in his first game as a starter in Week 14 (16 points). He followed this up with a 11 point performance in Week 15 and a monster 31 point game (122 rushing yards, 47 receiving yards, 2 TDs) in Week 16, no doubt single-handedly winning the Championship for many Fantasy owners. My second Honorable Mention goes out to #3 Cam Newton (QB, Carolina Panthers). Since being acquired in a mid-season trade, Cam never left the my starting lineup, averaging a ridiculous 26.9 PPG from Weeks 9-16 (Week 14 excluded due to Playoff Bye). Although he put up a disappointing 13 points in the Championship, he was nevertheless instrumental in propelling many Fantasy teams into the Playoffs and beyond. Cam ended the season as the highest scoring QB by a sizable margin of 37 points and in fact was second only to Antonio Brown by 6 points for highest scoring player in the league.

As a final parting shot, I will note that none of the players in the top 5 of my MVP rankings was drafted (Reed – trade, Hightower – waivers, Newton – trade, Aiken – waivers, OBJ – trade). This just goes to show that while a bad draft can lose you the season, playing the waivers and making favorable trades are what win Championships.

The Story of Bobby H, the Strangest and Perhaps Most Uplifting Encounter of My Life

May 24, 2015 JeffBobby, fate, karmaLeave a comment

I was walking down Fulton Street with my head down and checking my phone when a black man shouted at me, “Hey Chief, how’s it going?” I looked up. The man who stood in front of me was not familiar. “It’s Bobby, I used to work security at your building,” he says, “You don’t remember me?” Alas, I didn’t. My initial reaction was that this had to be part of some elaborate hoax to scam me out of a few bucks, but it turns out that Bobby had worked security at the front desk for Barclays at 745 7th Avenue. Last November, when the firm did a round of restructuring, he and many others were laid off. Then, in December, his schizophrenic mother committed suicide by slitting her throat right in front of his eyes. Bobby had a mental breakdown and was committed to Bellevue. He refused to eat for a while and had to get fed intravenously. He was just released last Friday and was living in the streets, digging through the trash to survive. His clothes were worn and his cheekbones were sunken. This was a man who had hit rock bottom, and I could tell he was hurting inside. But Bobby was cheerful. “Guess what?” he says, “The city is putting me in a DHS Shelter in July. But I have to live on the streets until then. I ain’t giving up though. I know my mother and the Lord would tell me to stay strong and keep on living.” I was shocked and amazed. I still couldn’t believe he had recognized me. “Yeah,” he said, “I remember like 3 or 4 years ago, back when you were an intern.” (I had indeed done my summer program in 2012.) “Man, I loved that place,” he continued. “A lot of people wake up in the morning and hate going to work, but not me. I’m like, ‘I’m going work man!’ Cuz you know what, we were like family there. Oh, and all the pretty girls…” We shared a hearty laugh. “Especially in the summer man, when the skirts come out, mm hmm, and the interns!” Bobby was wide-eyed and animated. I couldn’t help but laugh along with him. “How’s everything at Barclays now?” Bobby asked. “Well, I’m no longer there,” I said. “I left last October.” “Oh shit!” he exclaimed. “Well look at you, moving on to bigger and better things.” He zipped up his hoodie a little and shook his head in mock jest. “So where are you now?” I shuffled a bit, somewhat embarrassed, “I’m at Carlyle now…” I started. “Daaaaaaamn, look at you. My man, at the Carlyle Group.” He zipped up his hoodie all the way and did another head shake as I laughed sheepishly. Despite all his troubles, Bobby seemed genuinely happy for me and in fact (and here’s where I was too embarrassed to admit) happier for me than I have been in myself for some time. “But listen man,” he said, his tone getting serious, “I know I’m embarrassing myself but I need to ask you something.” “Shoot,” I replied. “So a friend of mine offered me an uniform [security] position, but in order to work, I need a place of residence. My friend hooked me up with an inn around here, but guess how much they are charging me for the week? Guess how much my life is worth?” I shook my head. “$52.50,” he sighed in disbelief. “Could I please ask you to help out?” At this point, I could have given Bobby my wallet. I took out a hundred dollars without hesitation and gave it too him. His eyes were filled with joy as he embraced me. “Thanks man, you don’t know how much this means to me!” “Don’t worry about it,” I said, “I hope this helps you get back on your feet. I don’t know if I’m ever going to see you again Bobby, but good luck my friend.” We embraced again. I had never felt so close to a stranger before in my life. “Don’t say that,” he said. “It was meant to be, and we will see each other again.” As we parted ways, I turned and looked back at Bobby. He was walking with a spring in his step and (as I’d like to think) a new found sense of hope. I couldn’t help but smile as his last words hung in the air. For what it’s worth, I really hope we do see each other again one day.

Fun with Excel #10 – World Cup Goals

April 26, 2015September 26, 2016 Jefffootball, fun with excel, goals, soccer, World CupLeave a comment

While I’ve always been fascinated by sports statistics, I must admit I did not realize that gathering data for this particular project would be so time consuming. No, it didn’t take me 9 months to tally up all the goals ever scored in the World Cup starting from 1930, but I did lose interest about halfway through the data mining (from Wikipedia, no less), and I never got around to tying up loose ends until now. Nevertheless, I’m proud to present my results in this post.

Raw Data — The raw data spanned 836 rows…

Let’s get straight into the pretty charts shall we?

This first chart shows the pace at which goals were scored for every World Cup in history, and while it is indeed pretty, it does a poor job of showing any trends. You might notice that more recent World Cups have seen more goals scored on an absolute basis (and that is indeed the case if you look at the following chart), but you must also keep in mind that the tournament has expanded drastically since its early days.

Starting with just 13 teams at the inaugural 1930 World Cup in Uruguay (18 matches were played), the tournament expanded to include 24 teams in 1982 (52 matches) and finally to 32 teams (the current format) in 1998 (64 matches). Therefore, it should come as no surprise to anyone that more goals are being scored in the modern era, as there are simply more matches being played.

We can quickly verify this by comparing “% Matches Complete” versus “% Goals Scored” rather than “Cumulative Goals Scored,” as this will normalize for the increasing number of matches played over time. As the following two charts show, the actual pace of goalscoring on a per match basis has remained relatively consistent over time. This should be expected, as the rules of the game have changed little since the inception of the World Cup.

I will leave you with one more chart before I sign off, which I find very interesting:

This is a busy chart, but it shows 2 trends which should be obvious, and 2 trends which are not as obvious. The 2 obvious trends are: (1) the absolute number of goals scored per tournament has, on average, increased over time, and (2) the number of matches per tournament has increased over time. The 2 less obvious trends are: (1) the early years of the World Cup (1930-1958) had the highest number of goals per match and (2) that same early period also had the highest average goal differential per match. There are a couple of explanations for this intriguing pattern. First, soccer as a game was not as developed in the early days of the World Cup. There were only a few powerhouse countries in South America and Europe that dominated the international scene, but seeing as the entire purpose of the World Cup was to bring together teams from all over globe, it was inevitable that lopsided results would arise from powerhouse countries stream rolling some of their less fortunate competitors (e.g. Argentina dismantling USA 6-1 in the semifinals in 1930, Hungary beating the Dutch East Indies 6-0 in 1938, with Sweden overrunning Cuba 8-0 that same year). Second, the format of the tournament was in part to blame, an issue most pronounced in the 1954 World Cup, which featured an astounding 5.38 goals per match and 3.00 average goal differential, statistics which will likely never be matched again in the modern era. From Wikipedia: “The sixteen qualifying teams were divided into four groups of four teams each. Each group contained two seeded teams and two unseeded teams. Only four matches were scheduled for each group, each pitting a seeded team against an unseeded team.” In other words, low ranking teams were forced to play high ranking teams, which led to such absurd scorelines like: Brazil 5 – Mexico 0, Hungary 9 – South Korea 0, Turkey 7 – South Korea 0, Uruguay 7 – Scotland 0, and Austria 5 – Czechoslovakia 0. As the game grew in popularity worldwide and more and more countries began sending their most promising players to play in the most competitive leagues in Europe, the playing field has evened substantially. Furthermore, the modern game places a lot more emphasis on defense, which is why it is now rare to see a lopsided scoreline in any competitive international match (and also why Germany’s 7-1 drubbing of Brazil last year was so unexpected). While further expansions in the tournament seem almost certain (after all, more matches played = more money to be made), I expect the goals per match and average goal differential to remain in line with where they have been in the modern era.

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For those of you interested, the data I aggregated can be found here.

A Week in Puerto Rico: A Short Photoblog

August 3, 2014September 24, 2014 Jeffbeach, bio bay, Puerto Rico, San Juan, vacation, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle MaintenanceLeave a comment

Sunday, 7/27/14

We arrived at San Juan’s Luis Muñoz Marín Airport a little after 4 AM, electing to take a late flight in order to save a day’s worth of lodging costs. After bumming around for a few hours, we made our way to our hotel, La Terraza de San Juan, which at first blush appeared to be a hole in the wall in the heart of Old San Juan.

Fortunately, the interior was quite impressive – the lobby was spacious and well air conditioned, a welcome respite from the early morning heat and humidity. While we waited for our room to be cleaned, we enjoyed some free breakfast and took a short walk in the surrounding area. When we finally got to our room, we were not disappointed at all. It was extremely spacious and I must admit that having our own terrace overlooking Calle Sol (despite a semi-busted door) was a nice perk.

After taking a few much needed hours to nap, we explored the narrow streets of Old San Juan before having dinner and calling it an early night.

Monday, 7/28/14

Our primary objective being relaxation rather than exploration, we decided to spend most of the day beach hopping. Originally, we had planned to check out Escambrón Beach (the locals’ beach) and Condado Beach (located in a more tourist/resort area). However, we got lost and actually stumbled upon a third and much smaller beach along the way, which we dubbed the “locals’ local beach.”

Although the sand wasn’t the cleanest, the water felt amazing. En route to the other beaches, we ate a quick lunch at El Hamburger, which had simple and quick American food with a bit of Puerto Rican flair.Upon arriving at a very crowded Escambrón, we decided to continue the trek to Condado, which turned out to be a much higher quality beach with whiter sand and clearer waters. We even joined some of the local daredevils in jumping off the bridge on Ashford Avenue into the water.

Later, we took a tour of the The Condado Plaza Hilton and made good use of the gym, sauna, jacuzzi, and swimming pool.

As evening approached, we made our made back to Old San Juan, where we enjoyed delicious and reasonably priced local food at La Fonda del Jibarito (El Jibarito), before having a couple beers at La Taberna Lúpulo, which had an amazing collection of hundreds of local and imported brews. I even finished a Krušovice Cerne, which was 1 pint and 0.9 ounces…

Tuesday, 7/29/14

We got up early to check out the local shops along Calle San Francisco and Calle Fortaleza, which mostly featured locally crafted wooden trinkets, clothing, and soaps. We also took a short tour of the historic Castillo de San Cristóbal. A fort built by the Spanish in 1783 to protect San Juan from attacks, the site also affords one of the best views in all of Old San Juan.

When the light showers from later in the morning finally cleared up, we returned to the locals’ local beach, where we lounged around for a couple hours before returning to the hotel and doing the same on the rooftop terrace.

Dinner was at the popular Pirilo Pizza Rustica, where we had the Hawaiian and El Pecado pies, both of which were delicious.

We rounded out the night at La Factoria (renowned for its unique cocktails) and La Taberna Lúpulo.

Wednesday, 7/30/14

We decided to return and relax at Escambrón Beach. The sand was great and the weather was fantastic, but as early afternoon hit, it was almost too hot so we ended up leaving earlier than we expected.

At 6 PM, we left to go kayaking in the bioluminescent bay (Laguna Grande) in Fajardo. It was a long drive, followed by a couple miles of kayaking to and back from Laguna Grande, but the experience was definitely well worth it. I don’t have any pictures as most people left their things back at shore for fear of getting them wet during the kayaking. The magic begins when you actually get to the lagoon, where there is a type of plankton called Pyrodinium Bahamense in the water that only lights up when disturbed, emitting a greenish blue color. In our case, the night sky was almost perfectly clear, which made for fantastic stargazing as well. Regardless of your purpose to Puerto Rico, the bio bay is a must see.

Thursday, 7/31/14

We spent a day of chilling on the hotel terrace, where I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance before having dinner at El Jibarito.

Friday, 8/1/14

As a last hurrah, we walked the 4 kilometers from our from hotel to Condado Beach, taking in the sights of Old San Juan one last time before hailing a taxi to the airport.

Overall, Puerto Rico was an amazing experience – great weather, not too expensive, and plenty to do whether you want to explore or simply relax.

Read: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

June 14, 2014September 24, 2014 JeffMuriel Barbery, summer reading, The Elegance of the HedgehogLeave a comment

As part of my resolution to do a lot more reading this summer, I’ve decide to briefly document my progress as I make my way through my reading list. (Note: things have gotten tough now that the World Cup has begun…)

From the novel’s Amazon’s page: “Renee is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good. Over the years she has maintained her carefully constructed persona as someone reliable but totally uncultivated, in keeping, she feels, with society’s expectations of what a concierge should be. But beneath this facade lies the real Renee: passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her employers with their outwardly successful but emotionally void lives. Down in her lodge, apart from weekly visits by her one friend Manuela, Renee lives resigned to her lonely lot with only her cat for company. Meanwhile, several floors up, twelve-year-old Paloma Josse is determined to avoid the pampered and vacuous future laid out for her, and decides to end her life on her thirteenth birthday. But unknown to them both, the sudden death of one of their privileged neighbours will dramatically alter their lives forever.”

I found The Elegance of the Hedgehog to be a charming novel. It’s not a a nail-biter that you’ll want to finish in one sitting, but rather a deliberate collection of thoughts from two very interesting characters that will keep you thinking long after you’ve put the book down. Through a healthy dose of satire, Muriel Barbery touches on a variety of themes ranging from philosophy, class divisions, and art. More than that, the novel serves as a reminder of the adage to never judge a book by its cover (perhaps both literally and figuratively), and what it means to find love and beauty in this world.

A good read, and recommended for anyone looking to dive into something a little different this summer.

Jeffrey Fan

Random Musings of an Amateur Data Scientist

Fun with Excel #11 – Who’s My 2015 Fantasy Football MVP?

The Story of Bobby H, the Strangest and Perhaps Most Uplifting Encounter of My Life

Fun with Excel #10 – World Cup Goals

A Week in Puerto Rico: A Short Photoblog

Read: The Elegance of the Hedgehog