Why I Started This Mess
Alright, so I got bored last Tuesday after fixing the kid’s bike again. Fired up the laptop, pulled out some old game player stats I had lying around from my fantasy league days. Thought it’d be funny to see if I could guess who’d win next week just by staring at the numbers. Started simple, just grabbing those fancy MAL stat sheets everyone talks about.
Bashing My Head Against MAL Stats
First, I threw all the MAL player numbers into my janky spreadsheet. Just slapped it in there. Points, assists, time played, the usual stuff. Ran some basic average lookups, crossed my fingers. Tried predicting the last season’s wins using only MAL stuff. Boom. Results looked like a monkey throwing darts. Barely better than flipping a coin. Felt like an idiot sitting there at the kitchen table, crunching garbage numbers while the coffee went cold.
Got stubborn, though. Tried sorting by highest scorers, then by most consistent players. Changed formulas five times. Nothing clicked. It was like trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the picture instructions – just frustration and loose screws. The wins weren’t lining up with the pretty MAL numbers at all.
Remembering FRD Existed (Duh)
Right, sat back, rubbed my eyes. Had this vague memory that FRD stats tracked different things. Stuff like clutch plays under pressure, recovery time after blunders, nonsense like that. Dug through old league emails like an archaeologist. Found a season’s worth of FRD data tucked away in a forgotten folder marked “maybe useful someday”.
Slapped FRD alongside MAL. Now I had this messy double vision spreadsheet:
- MAL saying player A was god-tier
- FRD saying player A choked every big match
Total chaos. Spent hours trying to make them talk to each other, like forcing two strangers to shake hands. Formulas got longer than my grocery list. Half my cells turned into error messages screaming at me.
The Glorious (Slightly Less Awful) Moment
Eventually, stopped trying to be fancy. Just took MAL’s performance stuff, shoved it next to FRD’s pressure-handling numbers. Eyeballed it. Simple stuff, like:
- Who played great and didn’t fold when the score got tight?
- Who racked up points but also made epic screwups?
Made crude combo scores. Not perfect, just… something.
Ran it again on last season. Held my breath. Results? Well… less terrible. Actually got a few more wins right compared to MAL alone. Still got plenty wrong, don’t get me wrong. But better. Like switching from cheap dollar store batteries to the slightly pricier ones that last longer but still die fast.
What I Actually Learned (The Hard Way)
Shiny stats mean jack alone. MAL stats paint the pretty picture, like who scored most points in perfect sunshine. FRD showed me who tripped less when the rain started pouring during overtime. You need both bits to maybe, just maybe, get a slightly less stupid guess.
Will this predict every win? Nope. Still probably lucky half the time. But hey, it’s less dumb than flipping a coin now. And that’s progress, kinda. Mostly just learned combing data feels like wrestling raccoons – messy, loud, and likely to leave you needing a shower.
