The History Man
This offseason, I was able to get my hands on all the raw data from ESPN pertaining to our fantasy league. I have gathered it, and using the help of a friend, sorted it and organized in ways never before thought possible. I have infinite data on streaks, records, milestones, droughts, drafts, trades, and head-to-head matchups spanning all 15 seasons.
I will be using this for writeups and can answer just about every question you have from across the years. Want a taste? Here’s how everyone in the league stacks up against each other:
Now, to the scrolls.
A brief note: When you see “blowout,” that means the winning team won by more than 40% of their opponent’s total. A “slim” win means they won by less than 2.5% of their opponent’s total. “All-play” is if you played every team every week. It essentially takes scheduling out of the equation, and determines your record and winning percentage if your weekly score went up against all 11 other scores.
No matter how bright the dawn or how eager the legs, one should never venture too far into the unknown without studying the histories. The concerns of the present are merely echoes of the past, triumphs and tribulations revisiting us in new clothing and serving to inform our future should we be wise enough to heed their words.
In my own search for fantasy wisdom, I turned first to the West. I sought information through technology, embracing spreadsheet and algorithm, consuming audio, video, and rankings until I saw the blinding light of modernity even when I closed my eyes. Then I fixed those tired eyes on the East, yearning for spiritual solace and mental fortitude through methods far more ancient than WiFi and analytics.
I remained lost. With the inevitability of another losing season growing with each passing day, I came to my final option. The histories.
With trembling hands, I gingerly lifted the weighty tome our annals, softly turning the dusty pages in hopes that the answer to my struggles lay buried within those 15 years. Reader, I cannot reveal if my quest was fruitful. Only time and the Universe can lay such things bare. But I can share with you some truly momentous findings, ones that even the most studied of our order would not know.
I am The History Man now. These are my discoveries.
Book 1: The Great Men
Over a decade and a half, it’s hard to hide much from data. After a while, numbers turn disputed notions into immutable facts. For example, once I looked at the totality of my failings in this league, I can no longer say “it’s been a few seasons since I was any good.” Now I say “I am undeniably bad,” but more on the why of that in a moment.
What is inarguable is two players in this league stand above the others, and one is rapidly chasing the pair of them down.
Will has long been the standard by which all fantasy things are measured. He is the winningest player (121 victories), is tied for the best win percentage (.617), has made the playoffs the most (12 times), and has the most medals of any player (3 titles, 4 silvers, 4 bronzes). From 2019-2022 he was in the championship game every year.
No one has more high scores (30) or top-3 scores (71). He was the fastest player to 20,000 points (174 Weeks), and 100 wins (160 Weeks).
But incredibly, he is not untouchable.
Steve, having turned in what is unquestionably the best season in the history of our league, has forced the pundits back into the booth for the GOAT debate once more.
Currently on a record 16-game win streak, Steve is coming off the only 2,000+ point season ever posted. He has had just as many winning seasons as Will (12), has the same amount of championships, and reached 20,000 points just three weeks after Will did. He holds the longest playoff appearance streak, making the postseason seven straight years from 2011-2017.
Critics may point to him having the most slim wins in the league ( 11), but supporters will point to his league-leading 46 blowout victories (11 more than the next closest player).
Steve is second in top scores, has the most wins against a single opponent (17) and four of the top five blowout wins ever. Will has the biggest win of all time at 118 points, but that’s his lone top-10 entry while Steve has half of the top 10.
His net margin of victory over Andres is 542.8 points, and he has beaten me by a total of 409.2 points, good for the top two margins of victory in any matchups across the league.
Crucially, he has a winning record against Will at 11-10. Jimmy is the only other person who can say that, and honestly, I have no fucking idea how that’s possible given the numbers I’m looking at (more on that below). Steve has won each of their last three matchups, and has the biggest blowout in their history, beating Will by 73 points in 2013. They are tied in the playoffs at 2-2.
All this is to say that where there once was a certainty about the league's top dog, there is now a healthy debate.
But neither of these great men can sleep well, as another rides with haste toward their towers.
DeWitt is charging like a madman up the ranks, having tied Will for best winning percentage and slotted into third in total medals behind Steve. He hasn’t been in the league as long as the other two, but his success is currently outpacing them. He reached the 50- win and 75-win thresholds faster than either Steve or Will, and hit 15,000 point mark quicker than both as well.
He has the longest playoff win streak, having won seven straight from 2019-2022. While he missed the postseason in 2020, if he made it, he won during that stretch. He is tied for second in playoff wins and has two titles, one off the shared lead.
DeWitt also boasts the highest percentage of points scored above the league average at 6.22%, and has a winning record against everyone but Lee and Will. His early career is red hot, and we’ll see if he burns down the record books or flames out on the edge of immortality.
Book Two: What Once Was
Because those three have largely dominated the discourse over the last five years, it’s easy to forget the greatness of yore.
For example: do you know who is tied for second in playoff wins? Did you guess Kyle? You did? Well, then you are dumb.
It’s Micah! He has 13 wins in the postseason and is fourth in medals. He’s also second in playoff points, and is one of only two people to have crossed the 3,000 postseason points threshold.
He’s a member of the four-team 100-win club, and has led the league in blowout wins in a season twice (6 both times). He also holds both the high score streak and the top-3 score streak, posting four straight top scores in 2014 and finishing in the top three seven straight times in 2010. And he was the fastest player to 5,000 points.
Look at all that! You didn’t know Micah was so accomplished.
“There was a time...”
You know who gets that reference? Lee! You know what else Lee gets? Points in the playoffs. He’s third behind Micah, and tied with him for second in playoff appearances (10).
Lee also has the record for highest score in a single game (229) and is tied for the best winning percentage against a single opponent (.813 against Kyle). He and Steve were the second-fastest to reach 100 wins, and Lee was the fastest scorer out the gate, reaching 1,000 and 2,500 points quicker than anyone else.
He’s fourth behind the Big Three in all-play winning percentage (.545) and has not been blown out in 19 straight games, the longest streak in the league. Pretty neat!
Neat? That sounds like something an old person would say. Hey, we have one of those!
Chris is in her 14th year in the league and finally returned to form last season, going 9-5 and finishing second in points. Did you know she has the fifth-most winning seasons? She’s fifth in all-play and winning percentage and has the best scoring season of all time relative to the league.
Steve may have the most points in a season, but in 2016, Chris scored 22.13% higher than the league average week-to-week, and had 12.22% of the point share. Both marks are unsurpassed.
She was the fastest to 25 wins and second-fastest to 75 until DeWitt knocked everyone down a spot when he got there last year. Despite years where the house took a beating, there’s a strong foundation under that weathered siding. Could a restoration be underway?
Book Three: The Land of Ruination
While there’s plenty to be happy about- proud, even, for many of our members, some of us look upon our works and see nothing but a bleak and barren expanse.
Come with me, won’t you? Come tour the dank and dimly-lit cellars of the record books.
Here you find JJ, who has a championship, but nothing else. He has made six playoffs and, save for his anomalous title, has nothing of note to show for it. Only Justin shares this dishonor, a lone silver medal from the league’s third year representing the peak of his achievements.
The two are fine cellmates, as JJ hasn’t had a blowout win in 19 matchups, and hasn’t suffered a blowout loss in… ZERO matchups. He also got blown out by 119 points in a playoff game, the most by 35 points. Justin has the fewest points ever posted in a regular season matchup at 40 and another historical low when he posted a score 63.19% lower than the league average in a completely different game. JJ ties Kyle as the the biggest punching bag for a single opponent, having lost 13 of 16 matchups with Will, and 13 of 18 with Steve. Justin is above .500 against only one team with a winning record. JJ couldn’t manage even that.
Here you find Munson, who hasn’t made the playoffs in seven years and hasn’t had a winning season in that period. Chris has the longest losing streak ever, 14 straight from Week 10 of 2021 to Week 9 of 2022, but Munson lost 11 straight in a season in 2019. He once posted 29 points in a playoff game. Like, with a full team and everything. 29 points.
But Munson isn’t just bad of late, he’s historically unlucky. He has the most points scored against him at more than 22,000, and opponents average 3.13 percent more than the league average when playing him, comfortably the highest number. He has been a part of the highest-scoring playoff game ever AND the highest-scoring regular season game ever, and he lost both. He put up 191.8 points in Week 5 of 2021 and lost by six. He put up 163 in the 2013 semifinals and lost by more than 10.
Both marks are the highest ever in a loss. He also holds the league record for most points ever by a team that missed the playoffs with 1,715.3. He had nearly 2,000 points scored on him that season (2021). Three of the playoff teams (Micah, Will, and Lee) would have been below .500 if they played Munson’s schedule that year. The same thing happened last season, where he had the most points scored against him by more than 200, and all but two teams would have had losing records with his schedule.
(Interestingly, had everyone traded schedules with JJ in 2023, only one person would have been even .500, and that’s Steve.)
He is tied for first in blowout losses with 37, and I bet he wishes you would all leave him alone. The body stopped looking like a body several seasons ago. Stop kicking it.
Lastly, here you find Jimmy and, to his right, Andres. It has been 61 regular season matchups since Jimmy posted the high score in the league. For Andres, that number is 53. For context, the third-longest stretch is 31, and the fourth-longest is 12. Andres has not medaled in 13 seasons, and Jimmy’s 75 wins are 11th out of 12. Kyle only has 65, but he has been in the league three years less than Jimmy has.
Jimmy was the slowest to 10 wins, 50 wins, and 75 wins, but the fastest to reach every loss milestone save one (25 losses- that was me). He reached 100 losses in 175 weeks, one week faster than Andres.
Once he crossed 1,000-point mark, Jimmy was the slowest to every major scoring milestone as well. It took him 22 weeks longer to hit 15,000 points than DeWitt, and while he got there in 2021, he is still more than 1,000 points away from 20,000. He is on the same pace as Andres currently. Jimmy reached 15K in Week 8 of 2021, Andres reached it in Week 8 of 2020. It took both of them 149 weeks. Andres hit 20K in 194 weeks, crossing the barrier in Week 12 last season. Will Jimmy break the pattern by getting there one week earlier? Or will he firmly control the role of scoring tortoise?
Go now. Be free of this place. Return to the light of winning seasons and championship hopes. Us people of this wretched nether realm can offer you nothing but an ever-darkening hallway to nowhere.
So now you know more than you did before. For some, it will be leavening. For others, motivating. For a few, it will be dispiriting beyond measure. But that is what histories are for. We labor to understand them so that we may contextualize our present and improve the prospects of our future. Take what you will from this lesson. Hopefully the histories can guide each of us toward something great before claiming us for themselves.
