Methodology

We score start/sit calls — when a publisher explicitly recommends starting or sitting a specific player in a specific week.

Scored today:

• Start / sit recommendations

Captured but not yet scored:

• Rankings
• Trades
• Waivers
• Flex calls
• Comparative recommendations ("I'd rather have A than B")

A call enters the scored record only when it's an unambiguous start or sit recommendation. A credibility rating is only as trustworthy as the calls underneath it — so we keep the scored scope narrow on purpose, and show everything else honestly as captured-but-unscored rather than counting calls a publisher didn't clearly make. Scoring the rest is on our roadmap.

Every rating is backed by receipts: the individual calls that produced it, each showing the player, the week, the recommendation, the actual points, and the result.

Nothing is hidden behind the score. If you want to know why a publisher is rated the way they are, the calls are right there to check. This is the whole point — a rating you can audit, call by call.

Each rating follows the same chain, from what was said to the number:

Every scored call is checked against the player's actual half-PPR fantasy points for that week:

• A start call is a hit if the player scored 10 or more half-PPR points.
• A sit call is a hit if the player scored fewer than 10 half-PPR points.
• Otherwise, it's a miss.

The 10-point line is a single, consistent threshold applied identically to every player and every publisher — a deliberately simple, defensible standard for "was this a startable week or not."

Voids. Some calls can't be scored — the player didn't play, there's no game data, or the recommendation wasn't a clean start/sit. These are marked void and excluded from accuracy. A void isn't a hit or a miss; it's a call that couldn't be verified, and it never counts for or against a publisher.

ScoutRank combines three things:

• Verified Accuracy — how often were they right?
• Evidence — how many verified calls support that accuracy?
• Confidence — how stable is the rating?

Why not just use raw accuracy?

Because accuracy alone is misleading on small samples. Consider two publishers:

Raw accuracy says Publisher A is better. ScoutRank says Publisher B — because 24 predictions don't prove as much as 500. A great record on a handful of calls hasn't yet earned the same trust as a strong record across hundreds.

This is the correction that makes that possible. ScoutRank pulls small-sample ratings toward the middle until enough evidence accumulates. A high accuracy on a few calls produces a strong raw number but a more cautious rating — because the rating reflects what's been proven, not just what's been observed. (Statistically, it's a shrinkage adjustment; in plain terms, it's evidence.)

ScoutRank is normalized to 0–100, where 50 is a coin flip — the line between better and worse than chance. Higher is better. Because real start/sit accuracy clusters in a relatively narrow band, the ratings are intentionally compressed: the differences between publishers are real, but not dramatic, and we don't inflate the spread to make them look bigger than they are.

Every rating shows a confidence level alongside it — Provisional, Low, Moderate, High, or Very High — reflecting how much verified evidence stands behind it. A high ScoutRank with low confidence means "promising, but not yet proven." Confidence never changes the rating itself; it tells you how much to trust its stability.

A credibility rating should be transparent about its own limits.

• Start/sit only. Today's rating reflects start/sit accuracy and nothing else. A publisher who excels at rankings or trades but makes few start/sit calls is rated only on the calls we score.
• Shows are rated as a whole. Many publishers are multi-host shows. When different hosts disagree on the same player in the same week, the show didn't take a single position — so we don't score that call rather than count both sides of a disagreement.
• Player matching. We resolve spoken player names to real players using a maintained matching layer. It's accurate but not perfect; when a name can't be confidently matched, the call is set aside rather than guessed.
• It's a measurement, not a verdict on the people. ScoutRank measures the accuracy of public start/sit calls. It isn't a judgment of a publisher's overall expertise, entertainment value, or worth — only of how their tracked start/sit predictions held up against outcomes.

ScoutRank evolves through versioned methodology updates. The current version is SR-2026.1.

When we improve it — adding new scored claim types, refining the calculation, incorporating new factors — we publish a new version and document what changed. We don't silently rewrite past ratings. Each version is a documented step, so the rating means something stable over time.

Future versions may include scoring for rankings, waivers, and trades — deepening the record from start/sit accuracy toward a fuller picture of publisher credibility.