Yahoo fantasy baseball does a great job in organizing the different types of data and concepts in fantasy sports. Owners must navigate through drafts, waiver wire picks, trades, projections, injuries and lineup settings. Yahoo has this almost down to a science and rely on their years of user experience not only in baseball but the other sports as well such as football, basketball and hockey.
Picking players from the draft, free agency, and trades was intuitive. Player information was also readily available in terms of player update status and stats. Mid season, Yahoo updated the way they alert owners of the newest updates to player. This makes it easier to spot which players have an update to the status.
Yahoo generates its revenue from ads and I didn't find them too obtrusive in the desktop web experience as well as the mobile experience. I wonder what the click through and engagement rate advertisers are getting from the ads on fantasy sports versus other website averages.
The mobile experience was also complementary to the web experience. You couldn't do everything in the app. I used primary the Android Yahoo Fantasy app. I believe the only thing I couldn't do on the app was to keep track of other owners free agent pickups. In addition, I didn't do trades on the mobile app as I found that I really dig into the stats before make a trade. Overall I made 7 trades that involved 19 players for the season.
As to improvements to the site and experience and would list the following below:
Remove the day ahead free agent requirement. Picking up free agents requires that you do it a day in advance to be able to put FA in your lineup. I always found this too restrictive for a fantasy sport that does require constant maintenance because baseball is played almost everyday. Fantasy football even allows you to add free agents up the minute of kickoff.
Lineup status needs to be up to date. I found that I can find official lineups for teams posted on others site before they are updated on Yahoo. If the players aren't marked as playing for today in Yahoo, I go elsewhere for the info.
Allow automatic replacement of player option. Sometimes I just can't follow every single lineup posting and I do miss players that don't play.There should be option for positions to allow other players to substitute if they really aren't going to play that day.
Projected player stats are meaningless. Perhaps I am used to projected player stats in football where the numbers actually mean something. But in baseball, a projected player stat of .4 RBI doesn't make it worth it to me to even pay attention. I longer range player projection perhaps for the week where it takes in consideration pitching match ups, home games, and player streak maybe usable.
Better way to track trending players. Yahoo give you a great way to track adds/drops for the leagues. However as part of their research feature they do provide "Who's Hot." However, again the time length for that is too short and it is hard to believe that a pitcher that pitchs one game or a batter than has batted a handful of times is on a streak. It would also be nice if they provided yesterday's results as a leaderboard to see who did well overnight. ESPN does that.
Overall though, it was still a great season in Yahoo fantasy baseball so kudos to a game provider and the community. Now its own to fantasy hockey!
