Head to Head Strategies: Player Correlations

Here’s something you probably don’t think about very often but can have a huge impact on your weekly head to head matchups in any fantasy sport. It has to do with having too many players from the same team, or too many players with any kind of similarities, and how that impacts your game. In statistics, the term is correlation. Correlation is a powerful explanatory statistic that you can harness for success.

During the 2009 Fantasy Baseball season, one of the managers in my league was dominating his regular season matchups. He had an extremely powerful lineup anchored by three specific players: Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Raul Ibanez. These three guys all had excellent seasons, and in fact for Ibanez, it was his best season ever. They all also play for the same team, the Philadelphia Phillies.

This manager entered the playoffs that year as the number one seed in the league, and proceeded to get bounced by the number 8 seed in the first week of matchups. It was a stunning defeat as we all expected his team to at least make the semifinals. Errr, they all did. What this manager hadn’t properly accounted for was the power of correlation. Situationally, during the first week of the fantasy playoffs the Philadelphia Phillies faced three former Cy Young award winning pitchers. As a whole the team had difficulty producing runs, and none of their players produced anything fantasy relevant. This is a risk you need to avoid in head to head matchups.

Correlation is a measure of the magnitude of strength of the relationship between two variables (or in this case three). Without running the actual numbers, it doesn’t take a genius to see that, on average, when one of the Philadelphia Phillies hitters has a good game, the other hitters have a good game too. If Raul Ibanez knocks in a home run, it’s likely that Chase Utley and Ryan Howard were on base, thus scoring runs themselves. If Chase Utley isn’t getting on base, then there’s no one to score when Ryan Howard smacks a double, and thus no RBI. In baseball, correlations have a strong impact on your game, and it’s wise to not own too many hitters from the same team. The same does not hold for pitchers, or pitchers and hitters, because (again as you would assume) there isn’t much correlation between how a pitcher does one night, and how the next pitcher does the next night, or how the pitcher does and how the hitters do. 

We see much of the same football too. If your QB is playing against a tough defense, I wouldn’t want to own his primary receiver too. No matter how good they are, the chance that the QB has an off day, or plays a tough defense, just when it matters most, is too high for my liking. The same thinking goes for Tight Ends; however it does not go for running backs in general. This is because teams tend to be defensively focused; they’re good at stopping either the pass or the run, rarely both.

Basketball is the one we care about the most. Correlations show up in basketball just as much, but in different ways. I hold Chris Paul and David West on my team, which isn’t an issue in ROTO but is a no no in H2H. However this isn’t due to a team correlation, or fears of them playing a good defense, but instead is due to player correlations. Fact is, when CP3 does well, West does well. When CP3 steals the ball and runs the floor, the dish off is going to David West following him. As rare as it might be, I’m not going to bet my entire season during playoff week that CP3 won’t go cold, thus making two of my players go cold. Same thing goes for Steve Nash, Jason Richardson, and Amar’e Stoudemire. Both J-Rich and Amar’e are highly dependent on Nash running the floor well, they need him to do well. If he struggles, they struggle.

If you haven’t gotten the point yet, let me spell it out clearly. You don’t want to own guys that play for the same team as your top PG’s. The risk is too high that they will have a bad game during playoffs, thus negating two or even three of your players on that one game (or stretch of games). You don’t want to own two (or more) players dependent on the same PG either, so if you’re holding J-Rich and Amar’e on the same squad, listen up. This all (of course) highly depends on the point guard. In general, guys like Nash, Deron, CP3, and Baron Davis are the highest risk names. The other players on their team don’t generally score well when their PG plays poorly. It’s different on say, the Celtics or even the Wizards, where there’s players that can drive and score (like Paul Pierce or Caron Butler) or work the post to draw in defenders (like KG). Other cases, where there are two distributors, are OK too, like the Hawks (Bibby and Joe J) or the Cavaliers (LBJ and Mo Will).

Remember, in a H2H league, it’s all about the playoffs. Give yourself the best chance to win and take the least amount of risk doing so. Learn about the players on your squad, find out how they score and who they are dependent upon to do so. Then set yourself up for success when it matters most. This is how WE dominate. 

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