2019 Season Preview

The historical records are updated, the background picture has been changed to reflect our current champ, and fantasy magazines are hitting the shelves - it's time for FALAFEL's 11th season. We can start the Rivalry Week Draft next week, but this post focuses on some advanced fantasy analytics. As usual this post can be used as a de facto cheat sheet for the Division Draft between Weissbard, Levine and Zacherman, but there will be plenty of disrespect thrown around for the rest of you as well.

FALAFEL Team Power Rankings

The historical records have been updated on the sidebar, and for those who only care about wins and losses, here are our fun facts for this year:

• Zacherman and Marco switched spots with Z now on top, which at least keeps an active league member in that spot.
• I was the biggest riser, going from 10th to 7th on the heels of my third straight playoff appearance. Hopefully Year 11 leads to my first playoff win.
• BAM was the biggest faller, going from 6th to 10th behind a 10-loss season.
• Despite winning his first Chef's Coat, Weissbard stays in the same spot as last year.
• There are 5 Stevens Bowl Champs at .500 or below, and 5 above .500 (counting only the teams as they won the title i.e. AGD together but not separate).
• Thanks to solid or better years from Weissbard, Belfer, and Reap, the bottom three spots are now occupied by Long, Kimmel and Bruno, which feels appropriate. Belf would need to go 3-10 to fall below the Long Line.

However, the point of this post is not to just look at records. As always, I've put together PAA (Points Above Average) to look at the cumulative quality of each team in comparison to league average for the years they were active. Here are the results updated through 2018:

Some thoughts:

• Levine had an above average 2018, but it was nothing special from a points perspective, however he still laps the field here. If he is never not participating in the Division Draft, he's an easy last pick.
• As I mentioned last year, 4 of the top 5 active teams in PAA made the playoffs, so the predictive power of this stat seems to hold up. The outliers were Belfer (small sample size) and Weissbard (small).
• Belfer,  Alan, and Reap are below the Long Line in this metric which is never a good sign. 
• Bruno's one season was twice as bad as Levine's five season have been good. #NeverForget

And here are my Division Draft tiers:

• Tier 1: Levine (Captain)
• Tier 2: Zacherman (Captain), Marco, Esco, Kumpf, Ajay
• Tier 3: Weissbard (Captain), Bennett, Barnard, BAM, Gutman
• Tier 4: Belfer, Alan, Reap

Overall points scored for those who are interested:

Z has taken a lead of over 100 points over second place, and has scored over 1,000 points more than Alan in the same number of seasons. He seems due for a Chef's Coat...

Gambling Corner - Week of 7/29

MLB Bets
A's (-122) vs. Brewers - Win
Indians (+170) vs. Astros - Loss
Orioles (+140) vs. Blue Jays - Win
Pirates (+118) vs. Mets - Loss
D-Backs (+138) vs. Nationals - Win
Last Week: 1-0
2019 Record: 72-69 (-4.84 units)
Historical Win Percentage: 41.18% (-6.77 units)

MLS Spread Bets
LA Galaxy (+1.5) at Atlanta - Loss
Columbus (+1) at San Jose - Win
Last Week: 0-0
2019 Record: 9-11-3 (-3.84 units)

MLS Moneyline Bets
Houston (+125) vs.Chicago - Loss
Real Salt Lake (+140) vs. NYCFC - Win
Minnesota (+115) vs. Portland - Win
DC United (+130) vs. Philadelphia - Loss
Last Week: 0-0
2019 Record: 4-6 (-0.85 units)