The scouting reports, the Pitch board and League trends are built on tests against real leagues: 13 dynasty leagues (four to build the rules on, nine more to check them), up to 145 owners and seven seasons, with every claim checked against what chance alone would produce. These are the findings that shaped them. Treat them as good bets, not laws.
Habits that last
- How active an owner is lasts: trades and waiver pickups a season in an owner’s earlier seasons predicted their later ones best (rank correlation 0.50 and 0.59).
- So do hands-on habits: how often they change their lineup, how often they start someone with no game, how fast they cut pickups, how much FAAB they spend, bidding in round numbers, whether they propose their own trades or wait for offers, dealing in the offseason, and keeping their own draftees.
- Trade partners last too: two owners who traded twice or more traded together about 1.5 times as often later as their activity alone would predict. That’s why the Pitch board adds points for an owner you’ve traded with twice or more in the last two years (older deals don’t count: a partnership that ended isn’t one that carries over).
What doesn’t last
- Whether they buy young or old flips: owners who bought youth in earlier seasons tended to buy veterans later, and the other way round (“Can flip”). Read their last six months, not their career. Whether they buy or sell picks didn’t last either way (“Changes year to year”).
- Winning trades doesn’t carry over. How much value an owner’s trades won (at today’s values) in earlier seasons said nothing about later ones, and the side that came out ahead between two owners flipped as often as not. Those angles say “Past result, may not repeat”.
- Draft preferences and when they spend FAAB didn’t carry over either (“Changes year to year”), and an owner’s one-word style rarely survived from one set of seasons to the next, so cards say “Lately”.
What moves the market
- Deadline week is mixed: in the four leagues we studied first more owners dealt that week (21% against about 11%), in the nine others barely (15% against 14%). The Pitch board gives it a small nudge.
- The week after a trade: an owner who just dealt is nearly twice as likely to deal again (21% against 12%).
- Opposite ends of the standings: from week 4 on, a third of in-season trades paired a top-third team with a bottom-third one, against a quarter if owners picked partners at random. Contenders buy from sellers.
- A loss doesn’t: owners traded just as often after a loss as after a win (13% either way), even owners who had dealt after losses before. Don’t wait for a bad week to pitch.
- The calendar: in the four leagues we studied first October, November and August were the busy months and December to April nearly dead; every league has its own. The 30-day trade chance on each Pitch board card reads your league’s calendar from the same weeks in earlier years.
- League trends → What moves this league shows deadline week, the week after a trade and after a loss for your own league, marked “within chance” where your league’s history is too short to tell.
How sure is the 30-day chance?
Tested every two weeks (each date predicted from earlier history only) on the four leagues it was tuned on and on nine it never saw, the chances matched what happened: owners given about 30–35% traded 29% of the time on the first four and 32% on the nine; the lowest group, given 2–3%, traded 4–5%, so the card says “under 5%” there. In mid-November, around most deadlines, it runs a few points low (20% given, 23% traded on the nine).