We’ve had 219 different folks try our weekly contests since launching last month, and we truly appreciate the support we have received (speaking of – register HERE for SCS#5, by Monday 6/23 at 10:45PM). For those asking “what’s the big deal,” here are three reasons these contests are valuable:

1. Competition – It’s just fun having a new way to compete, and we’re bringing together 100+ people from different leagues each week to compete against each other. Every day you survive is an accomplishment – I can’t win a WS every week, but I can survive a bunch of cuts!

2. Expanding our user base – To grow the game, we need better ways to bring in new people and get them into the game quickly, plus ways to welcome back former players. Weekly contests help in both directions: newcomers see results immediately instead of waiting months to understand if their team building strategies are working, and former players can jump back in without committing to a long-term league.

3. Learning – These contests are a way to see how other users build teams in the exact same environment and see what works and what doesn’t. Every week presents a different puzzle where you can experiment and adjust much faster than building teams one player at a time.

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That third point is what I am focusing on here – there is a group of users that are consistently performing well in contests, and I want to be one of them, and I’m not there yet! I want to dig into the data to see what those folks are doing differently so I can personally improve, and I’ll share anything I find because…I don’t know, I want people to get better at the game.

I don’t have any groundbreaking info to share yet, but one day maybe. Let’s start with focusing just on this last week’s contest – Salary Cap Survivor #4. I wanted to see how much of the salary cap teams are dedicating to pitchers vs. position players, and see how that translated to making it further in the week.

Pitchers vs. Position Players
How much of the salary cap goes to pitching, by round.

The trend is modest but it’s consistent – at least for this week, successful teams spent less on pitching. (If you haven’t played, reminder that as the week goes on there are fewer and fewer teams remaining, so the further down this chart you go, the better the teams have performed.)

Here’s a different look at the teams that I pulled, since averages can be skewed.

Overall Pitching/Position Player Balance, by Round

This chart shows a lot of people tried pitching heavy teams (>55% salary spent on pitchers), and they had a hard time surviving the week, and an especially hard time making it to the final round. My biggest takeaway from the two charts….

Finding #1: Extreme Strategies Don’t Survive, Balance Wins

• The teams that were extreme outliers (91.3% and 27.2% pitching) were eliminated early
• The range narrowed as teams got eliminated over the week.
• Balanced teams dominate by Round 5 (71.4% of finalists)

But wait, there is a plot twist!

The Outliers Who Made It To The Finals

The two biggest outliers from the final round were TokeyDokey, the eventual winner of the contest, who put 60.0% of his salary into pitching, and Cardboardtube, the winner of last week’s contest who put 43.7% of his salary into pitching. So revising my previous statement:

Finding #1: Extreme Strategies Don’t Survive, Balance Wins
Finding #2: The Most Extreme Strategies Don’t Survive, but There Are Multiple Ways to Win

One last thing I checked on before sitting down to make my team for the week, I wanted to go deeper than pitcher salary and check how innings were actually being divided up in teams, to get a sense of how much to focus on starters/relievers.

Amount of Innings Pitched by Top 5 Pitchers

Pitching Breakdown of Finalists

The first chart suggests no clear pattern on how many innings are being pitched by starters and relievers on teams that are surviving the week. The second chart shows that pitching staff usage varies WILDLY amongst the best teams of the week.

So…in conclusion, I didn’t find a smoking gun this week that tells me how to build my team.

But that is okay because…..

Finding #3: There are very different winning strategies among the most consistently successful contest competitors.

At least this week, there was not a single ‘winning formula’ that’s emerged, and that’s great news – it’s great to see that some people are finding ways to win consistently, and even better to find that they aren’t all doing it the same way. I’ll take it.

Questions for next week
How has this data changed as the contest format changed over the five weeks? I don’t know if this week was an outlier or typical.

How deep are successful teams going with bullpens and benches?

How much attention are the best teams paying to defense?