Every number on your almanac, explained in plain English — how it’s calculated, and how to read it.
Fantasy Almanac turns a Sleeper league’s public history into a record book, and along the way it computes a lot of numbers that go beyond what the Sleeper app shows. This guide walks through each one so you know exactly what you’re looking at. Nothing here requires an account — it’s just reference material for anyone curious how the site works.
Raw projected points don’t tell you how valuable a player is, because every league starts a different number of each position. A player is only worth the points he scores above what you could get for free at his position — the “replacement level.” Fantasy Almanac calculates replacement level from your league’s own starting lineup: it counts how many of each position the league collectively starts, then treats the next player down as freely available. A player’s VOR is his projected points minus that replacement baseline. This is why a top tight end in a tight-end-premium league grades out higher than the same player would in a standard league — the math uses your settings, not a generic template.
Each pick is compared against consensus Average Draft Position (ADP) for your league’s format — PPR, half-PPR, standard, superflex/2QB, or dynasty are each matched to the right ADP baseline. A pick taken well after a player’s ADP is a value (💎); a pick taken well before it is a reach (🔥). A team’s overall grade blends two things: the total VOR it accumulated (60%) and its cumulative value-versus-ADP (40%), scored on a curve against the rest of the league. In keeper leagues, kept players are excluded from grades and from the steals/reaches lists so a star held in a late round doesn’t masquerade as a draft-day bargain.
Your head-to-head record depends heavily on who you were scheduled against each week. The all-play record removes that luck: it asks how you’d have done if, every week, you played every other team at once. Score the third-highest total in a 12-team week and your all-play record for that week is 9–2. The luck index is the gap between your real head-to-head win rate and your all-play win rate. A large positive number means the schedule has been kind; a large negative number means you’ve scored well but caught opponents’ big weeks. Leagues that use Sleeper’s median/“all-play” scoring setting bake a version of this directly into the standings.
Preseason, before any games are played, the ranking is a manager skill rating built mostly from all-play win percentage, points per game, and week-to-week consistency, recency-weighted and luck-adjusted, with past titles and finishes a minor factor. Once the draft happens, it blends that skill rating with the projected strength of the drafted roster. Once games begin, it shifts progressively toward live results. The “title odds” attached to each team are a lighthearted, Vegas-style translation of these strengths into American odds — for fun and bragging rights only, never real wagering.
The Playoff Machine simulates the rest of your season thousands of times. Each simulation plays out every remaining game by drawing each team’s weekly score from a model of its scoring mean and variance, tallies the standings, and records who made the bracket and at what seed. Run enough simulations and the share of them in which a team reaches the playoffs becomes its playoff probability. If your league uses median/all-play scoring, the simulator adds that weekly median game too — computed for your league’s exact team count. You can also force any remaining game to a chosen winner to see how a single result reshapes everyone’s odds.
Dynasty leagues care about the future, so player value is age-adjusted: a player’s projected points are scaled up for youth and down past his position’s typical decline age (running backs age out earliest, quarterbacks latest). A roster’s Asset score sums that age-adjusted value; its Now score sums raw current-season projections with no age adjustment. Plotting those two against core age produces a team’s contention window: Rising (young and already strong), Win-now (strong but aging), Rebuilding (young and still weak), or Retooling (aging and thin). These labels are relative to your league — half the league always lands on the stronger side and half on the younger side. Because the two axes are independent (current strength vs. age), all four windows can appear.
In keeper leagues, the round a player is kept at is his cost. Fantasy Almanac compares that cost to where the player would actually have gone in the draft (his ADP, converted to a round). A player kept several rounds later than his draft value is a steal; one kept earlier than his value is an overpay. The biggest bargains — cheap keepers on stars — are often the picks that quietly decide a season.
When a league is split into divisions, standings are shown per division with the leader marked. If the league uses Sleeper’s “division winners seeded first” setting, the almanac reflects it everywhere seeds matter: each division’s best team is guaranteed a top seed ahead of wildcards, even if a wildcard has a better overall record. That’s why a division leader with a middling record can still hold a high seed and strong playoff odds — the site mirrors exactly how your league will actually seed the bracket.