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Tuesday, August 27, 2013

An Open Letter Response To Anna Gunn

On Friday August 23, 2013, Anna Gunn (the actress who plays Skylar White on AMC's Breaking Bad) wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times about the fan hate and utter vitriol regarding the character of Skylar White entitled, "I Have A Character Issue" In the piece, Gunn talks about the fan's reaction to her character on various AMC and other message boards, describes her reaction to seeing death threats because the fan's dislike her character so much, and briefly describing the roles of women on television in recent years.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Proven Players Off Of A Bad Year: 2013 NFL Edition

While Matthew Berry helped popularize this concept last year during 2012's NFL pre-season, that is a concept that all experienced fantasy players are fully aware of. For the most part, players are who they are. Every once in a while, that player will have a bad or down year, but that shouldn't deter us from the large sample size they gave before us. Take Ryan Braun for example.

For the first year ever in fantasy baseball, I drafted Ryan Braun. This was a guy who has been a consistent superstar the past few years, so even if he didn't perform like the #1 player in fantasy, I knew he'd still be good. Suspension notwithstanding, he was terrible. Yet, I will still gladly draft Braun next year. Because no matter how much he hurt me this year, and no matter how poorly he performed in 2013, his career as a whole tells me that he'll not only rebound in 2014 and play like the stud that he is, but I can also get him for a discounted price.

That's how you win your draft, by finding value no matter at what spot you draft. Players like Stevan Ridley and Alfred Morris last year in fantasy football were amazing values that helped you win your fantasy league. However, based about what the Patriots and Redskins did in 2011, using multiple backs to frustrate you week to week, dropped each player's value significantly.

This Recency Effect is what creates the value. We too often put too much weight on what the player did the year before, as opposed to looking at their career as a whole. Therefore if a player comes off a bad year, that player automatically drops in ranking. But if you looked at said player's career as a whole, and not just what they did last year, then you can find great value to help you win fantasy leagues.

Here is my list of potential proven players coming off of a bad year (as well as players who's value are depressed based upon Recency Bias and not career numbers)