QUESTION ABOUT OUR DEPTH CHART AND RANKING TIERS

[Todd Zola]

Gang - need an opinion or two...

I am preparing the depth charts for the Draft Kit. And seeing this is a FANTASY site, I was thinking about a few ways to add some fantasy wrinkles.

Keeping in mind that with depth charts

A. I want them to be printed out on 2 sheets for each league (or front and back on one sheet)
B. The more "extras", the less time I will have to do other things

Question 1

Would including the projected AB for pitchers and IP for pitchers be useful information to have?

Question 2

What is most useful:

a. listing the players in the standard manner, with the starter up top and the backups underneath?

b. listing the players where they qualify for fantasy purposes in "standard" leagues?

With respect to tiered rankings, would it be helpful to have a quickie line projection like .276-12-56-4-53 with each player?

Again, keep in mind, adding these extras would need to be done every update. If the consensus this is significant value added, I will consider doing it.

[msugray]

Todd,
All good suggestions, but not value added for my usage.

The added information being offered here is redundant to the draft spreadsheet I put together.

In my case, the depth chart and ranking tiers are used as reference tools not working, drafting tools.

I prefer a streamlined depth chart with starter and backup listed at each position.

[Todd Zola]

Everyone -- please continue to share your thoughts, but I am leaning towards doing the "fancy" depth charts in preparation for drafts beginning the weekend March 14 & 15. By this time, the updates will not involve as many players, so it will not be as much of a burden to update them as projections change through the first week of April.

[viper]

I like the idea of AB or IP. Often you know a platoon will exists but the level of the platoon isn't clear. Assuming manny signs with the dodgers, they will have Manny, Kemp, Ethier and Pierre in the OF [play a few ABs for others]. Hvaing something liek

LF: Manny (475) --- Pierre (250)
CF: Kemp (550)
RF: Ethier (500)

would be meaningful an indicate the level of Pierre as a platoon effecting all OF slots.

[rotodog]

I like the idea of AB or IP. Often you know a platoon will exists but the level of the platoon isn't clear. Assuming manny signs with the dodgers, they will have Manny, Kemp, Ethier and Pierre in the OF [play a few ABs for others]. Hvaing something liek

LF: Manny (475) --- Pierre (250)
CF: Kemp (550)
RF: Ethier (500)

would be meaningful an indicate the level of Pierre as a platoon effecting all OF slots.

I second this thought...And IP too. I like to know if your tier value is based on 120 IP or 180 IP...

[eudubbz]

I prefer the simpler one. You can see the rest of the info on the projections. Biggest thing I look at on these are the closers in waiting.

[scaci]

I prefer the simplier ones too. Want to be able to glance quickly to see who the player is at that position, then check my own rankings to see where I have him. The AB projections should be factored in when I rank the player. Keeps it very easy and efficent.

[SteveB]

I agree with the simple crew.....love seeing closers in waiting but i also liked how you guys sued to include "impact" minors at the bottom

[shif6]

I think $ values would be valuable on tiered rankings as well as a stat line. I think depth charts are widely available, that customers on this site have access to them elsewhere (on free and paid sites) and that they are not worth your time. Given your staff limits, there will be inevitable time lags creating inaccuracies, and you have better things to do prior to the start of the season and during the season.

On the other hand, as Steve B observes, your views on closers in waiting and impact minors would be valuable.

[Hambowen]

I will always back to rankings. Depth chart is more useful in a simpler form.

[viper]

after additional thought on the matter

1. the depth chart should be just that - a depth chart
2. for any tier ranking, I realize that I would just recreate it and add those things I am interested in to my personalized tier ranking. For me at least, the net effect is whatever you have will be modified for my purposes. However, many will just use this as their only source so, at a minimum, it should have dollar value. Then AB and IP would be the first additional item I would want. My own tier chart will likely include HR, SB & AVG.

[Todd Zola]

Couple points for clarification...

Either way, they will fit on one page. Yes, depth charts are available elsewhere, but the utility is sizing them to fit 6 AL and 7 NL teams on a sheet of paper printed landscape, so if you did front and back, it would only be 1 page. So all I would be doing is adding a little information to the cell with the player's name. If I add the info, I may need to only use the player's first initial, but that shouldn't be an issue.

Of course, you will have our projections with this information, so it is not NECESSARY, per se.

If people used the depth charts to track the draft (cross off the names), I could see where it would be helpful to only have the name down once per chart, even if they played one position and backed up another. Other people might want to know where each player may play for future eligibility.

Personally, all I use depth charts for is reserve rounds. I don't necessarily draft the highest valued player remaining at a position, I prefer to draft the player whose value would be highest if there was an injury to another player and they got more playing time. A depth chart helps visualize this as I can see how injury prone his teammates are.

Things like closers-in-waiting and impact minors are more general fantasy information that depth chart information, and the plan was to provide each separately. You can get an idea of the closer in waiting by the projections, looking for the other closers we assign a handful of saves. Some are fairly obvious, others aren't. And you need to keep in mind another term for closer-in-waiting is speculative closer, so it would be just that, speculation.

I have decided to leave the additional information out, but have the player's name match identically how it appears on the projections. If anyone wants a customized version, I can send instructions how to use Excel to generate it pretty easily, pulling the information from the projections using vlookup.

I am still deciding on how to list the players in terms of positions. As of now, I am not breaking OF up into LF/CF/RF.

Thanks for your feedback. As is always the case when people have different opinions, some will like what we come up with, others won't like it as much. But if the reason they don't like it as much is because they don't need the extra info and they can still use them just fine, we're OK.

[shif6]

Will the tiered rankings also be available on a grid occupying a small number of pages? By the way, it would be easier to do this (and easier to vizualize for the vast majority of leagues that make no such distinction, I think, if you did not distinguish between lf, cf, and rf. This is by contrast to the depth charts where the information is more useful in determining which backups to target.

[Todd Zola]

Will the tiered rankings also be available on a grid occupying a small number of pages? By the way, it would be easier to do this (and easier to vizualize for the vast majority of leagues that make no such distinction, I think, if you did not distinguish between lf, cf, and rf. This is by contrast to the depth charts where the information is more useful in determining which backups to target.

Yes, the tiers will be available in a printer-friendly format. As it stands now, the automated value calculator generates the tiers, I am adding a feature where the dollar value is included with the name.

The tiers Perry used to generate grouped players by dollar values ($45 and up, $40-$45, $35-$30 etc) so it was not as necessary to have the actual value.

My main conundrum is I have never used depth charts as a drafting tool, other than as I described, to help me in the end game of deep "single" leagues and for reserves. I am not sure if this is because I spend the majority of the spring updating projections based on playing time so I sort of have the depth charts already embedded in my gray matter or if I would not use them anyway and stick to projections, letting the estimated playing time and position eligibility provide the necessary information.

[Todd Zola]

As an aside, if you guys can arrange for Manny, Abreu, Dunn, Sheets, Perez etc. to sign, I would be forever grateful. When you think about it, not only do we have to update the projections and dollar values, but the depth charts and tiered rankings are also affected. What this means is since we are going to roll out projections on Super Bowl Sunday, 2/1, these guys are all going to sign on Saturday 1/31.

[viper]

I'll get my people to work on those signing tomorrow if that's OK

[Todd Zola]

I'll get my people to work on those signing tomorrow if that's OK

Excellent -- I don't want to be too greedy, but if they announced their deals by Thursday, that would be great