Alright, let’s talk about my little project for the 2024 baseball season. I’ve been messing around with some data to get ready for my fantasy league. It’s nothing too fancy, just something to help me figure out which players might be worth picking up.
So, I started by grabbing a bunch of player projections. You know, the usual stuff like how many hits, home runs, and stolen bases a guy is expected to get. I used the Steamer600 projections, which are pretty well-known. They give you a good idea of what to expect from each player over a full season.
Then, I put all this data into a spreadsheet. Yeah, I’m a spreadsheet guy. Don’t judge. It’s the easiest way for me to organize everything and start playing around with the numbers.
Once I had all the projections in one place, I started tinkering. I wanted to create my own custom rankings, tailored specifically for my league’s scoring system. We use a points system, so some stats are worth more than others.
Here’s what I did:
- Data Collection: First, I gathered all the preseason player projections I could find from Fangraphs. That site’s a goldmine for baseball stats.
- Spreadsheet Magic: I dumped all those numbers into a Google Sheets. From there, I could sort, filter, and basically just move things around until they made sense to me.
- Custom Calculations: This is where it got a little tricky. I had to figure out how to weight each stat based on our league’s scoring. For example, a home run might be worth 4 points, while a stolen base is only worth 2.
- Ranking Creation: After doing all the math, I was able to generate my own custom rankings. It’s basically a list of players, ordered from most valuable to least valuable, based on my calculations.
The cool thing is that I can adjust things pretty easily. Let’s say I decide to emphasize power hitters. I can just tweak the weights in my spreadsheet, and boom, new rankings. It’s super flexible.
Honestly, this whole thing was a bit of a learning curve for me. I’m no data scientist. But I figured it out, and now I have a personalized tool that gives me a leg up in my fantasy league. Plus, I learned a bunch about spreadsheets and data manipulation along the way. Who knew, right?
Anyway, that’s my story. Just thought I’d share my little project. Maybe it’ll inspire some of you to create your own fantasy baseball tools. Or maybe you’ll just think I’m a huge nerd. Either way, it’s all good. Batter up!