How to Read the Almanac

A scatter plot where every manager sits on two axes: Points For (PF) on the x-axis — how good the team actually was — and Points Against (PA) on the y-axis, inverted, so high luck (low PA) sits at the top. The cross-hairs are the league averages.

That gives four quadrants: Lucky and Good (top-right, high PF + low PA), Unlucky and Good (bottom-right, high PF but tough schedule), Lucky and Bad (top-left, low PF but soft schedule), and Unlucky and Bad (bottom-left). Skill and luck, separated.

What your record would look like if every week you played every other team in the league instead of the one matchup ESPN gave you. If you score the third-highest in week 7, you go 5–2 that week (you beat the five lower scores, you lose to the two higher ones).

Stripping out the schedule lets us compare managers fairly. All-Play % is the most stable measure of who actually played well.

The gap between your real record and your all-play record. If you went 8–6 actual but 5–9 all-play, your Luck Δ is +0.21 — you got 21 percentage points of help from the schedule.

Positive Luck Δ means the schedule did you favors. Negative means it ate you alive. Most seasons land within ±10 points; anything past ±15 is a story.

How many points your starters scored as a percentage of the optimal lineup you could have set with the players on your roster that week. 100% means you nailed it. 85% means you left ~15% of your potential output on the bench.

We also track Bench Points— total points scored by players who never started. The “Worst Lineup Setter” record is the career sum of those forgone points.

One number per manager grading a draft. It blends two ideas: Value over Expected per Game (VoE/G) — did your picks score more points per game than the average return for that draft slot? — and Position Rank Surplus (PRS) — did your picks finish ahead of the other players drafted at their position? The Draft Score is the z-score average of the two, per pick.

Positive = stole value. Negative = reached or got hurt. Sub-4-game injury picks are excluded so a season-ending Achilles in week 1 doesn’t torch the grade.

For every executed trade, we sum what each side’s players scored from the trade week onward. Started surplus only counts points the receiver actually started (no credit for bench-hoarding); total surplus counts every point the player produced. A positive number means you fleeced your opponent on points that mattered.

The “Biggest Fleecings” hall of fame on the Trades page sorts by started surplus when available, total surplus when it isn’t.

Twelve specific matchups on the schedule each carry a name — The Obliterate Bowl, The Collusion Cup, The Tylenol Bowl, etc. — drawn from the long history of grudges, jokes, and on-the-couch rulings between two managers.

A named matchup gets the “Game of the Week” treatment on /this-week when it’s on the schedule. The full list is below.

For every waiver / free-agent ADD, we sum the player’s points scored from the pickup week onward — regardless of which roster he ended up on later. That credits the manager who spotted the talent first, even if the picker eventually dropped him to someone luckier.

The fairer companion measure, started pickup value, only counts points the picker actually played. FAAB-spent and pickup count round out each manager’s career file.