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Eligible Positions?

I'm trying to wrap my head around how the "eligible_positions" tag works on players and how its different than "displayed_position."

For example, Pau Gasol (nba.p.3513) has only one elgiible_position listed: FC.  But his "displayed_position" is PF/C.  It would help if the "eligible_position" array actually returned a list of all the position types that Gasol was eligible to play (since that's what its name implies?).  For Gasol, it would be: "F, PF, C, FC".

Why are there two different types of positions returned, and why doesn't either one list all of the eligible positions for a player?

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  • Outside of a league context, eligible positions doesn't necessarily make much sense, because that's supposed to be listing which roster slots you can put a player into, and it's ambiguous how to interpret a roster slot without a league. If you want to see which positions a player can play in a league, ask for them in that league context, it,

    http://fantasysports.yahooapis.com/fantasy/v2/league/<league_key>/players;player_keys=<player_key>

    And that'll show all the roster slots they're eligible for, in relation to which roster slots the league uses.

    Display position is just a nice editorial value to display that more closely corresponds to what they actually play in real life. It should be used for display purposes only -- that's the value we show next to player names on the site.

    QUOTE(Kenny @ 13 Aug 2011 2:54 PM)
    I'm trying to wrap my head around how the "eligible_positions" tag works on players and how its different than "displayed_position."

    For example, Pau Gasol (nba.p.3513) has only one elgiible_position listed: FC.  But his "displayed_position" is PF/C.  It would help if the "eligible_position" array actually returned a list of all the position types that Gasol was eligible to play (since that's what its name implies?).  For Gasol, it would be: "F, PF, C, FC".

    Why are there two different types of positions returned, and why doesn't either one list all of the eligible positions for a player?
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  • Outside of a league context, eligible positions doesn't necessarily make much sense, because that's supposed to be listing which roster slots you can put a player into, and it's ambiguous how to interpret a roster slot without a league. If you want to see which positions a player can play in a league, ask for them in that league context, it,

    http://fantasysports.yahooapis.com/fantasy/v2/league/<league_key>/players;player_keys=<player_key>

    And that'll show all the roster slots they're eligible for, in relation to which roster slots the league uses.

    Display position is just a nice editorial value to display that more closely corresponds to what they actually play in real life. It should be used for display purposes only -- that's the value we show next to player names on the site.
    Report Abuse
    0
  • Outside of a league context, eligible positions doesn't necessarily make much sense, because that's supposed to be listing which roster slots you can put a player into, and it's ambiguous how to interpret a roster slot without a league. If you want to see which positions a player can play in a league, ask for them in that league context, it,

    http://fantasysports.yahooapis.com/fantasy/v2/league/<league_key>/players;player_keys=<player_key>

    And that'll show all the roster slots they're eligible for, in relation to which roster slots the league uses.

    Display position is just a nice editorial value to display that more closely corresponds to what they actually play in real life. It should be used for display purposes only -- that's the value we show next to player names on the site.

    QUOTE(Kenny @ 13 Aug 2011 2:54 PM)
    I'm trying to wrap my head around how the "eligible_positions" tag works on players and how its different than "displayed_position."

    For example, Pau Gasol (nba.p.3513) has only one elgiible_position listed: FC.  But his "displayed_position" is PF/C.  It would help if the "eligible_position" array actually returned a list of all the position types that Gasol was eligible to play (since that's what its name implies?).  For Gasol, it would be: "F, PF, C, FC".

    Why are there two different types of positions returned, and why doesn't either one list all of the eligible positions for a player?
    Report Abuse
    0
  • Outside of a league context, eligible positions doesn't necessarily make much sense, because that's supposed to be listing which roster slots you can put a player into, and it's ambiguous how to interpret a roster slot without a league. If you want to see which positions a player can play in a league, ask for them in that league context, it,

    http://fantasysports.yahooapis.com/fantasy/v2/league/<league_key>/players;player_keys=<player_key>

    And that'll show all the roster slots they're eligible for, in relation to which roster slots the league uses.

    Display position is just a nice editorial value to display that more closely corresponds to what they actually play in real life. It should be used for display purposes only -- that's the value we show next to player names on the site.
    Report Abuse
    0
  • Outside of a league context, eligible positions doesn't necessarily make much sense, because that's supposed to be listing which roster slots you can put a player into, and it's ambiguous how to interpret a roster slot without a league. If you want to see which positions a player can play in a league, ask for them in that league context, it,

    http://fantasysports.yahooapis.com/fantasy/v2/league/257.l.blah/players;player_keys=257.p.blah

    And that'll show all the roster slots they're eligible for, in relation to which roster slots the league uses.

    Display position is just a nice editorial value to display that more closely corresponds to what they actually play in real life. It should be used for display purposes only -- that's the value we show next to player names on the site.

    QUOTE(Kenny @ 13 Aug 2011 2:54 PM)
    I'm trying to wrap my head around how the "eligible_positions" tag works on players and how its different than "displayed_position."

    For example, Pau Gasol (nba.p.3513) has only one elgiible_position listed: FC.  But his "displayed_position" is PF/C.  It would help if the "eligible_position" array actually returned a list of all the position types that Gasol was eligible to play (since that's what its name implies?).  For Gasol, it would be: "F, PF, C, FC".

    Why are there two different types of positions returned, and why doesn't either one list all of the eligible positions for a player?
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  • One sec, trying to post a test reply.
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  • Alright, so: Outside of a league context, eligible positions doesn't necessarily make much sense, because that's supposed to be listing which roster slots you can put a player into, and it's ambiguous how to interpret a roster slot without a league. If you want to see which positions a player can play in a league, ask for them in that league context, ie,

    http://fantasysports.yahooapis.com/fantasy/v2/league/257.l.blah/players;player_keys=257.p.blah

    And that'll show all the roster slots they're eligible for, in relation to which roster slots the league uses.

    Display position is just a nice editorial value to display that more closely corresponds to what they actually play in real life. It should be used for display purposes only -- that's the value we show next to player names on the site.
    Report Abuse
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  • Yep, that's a fair point, just happens it's now how we present things. It does get somewhat cumbersome in the edge cases and it would definitely increase the weight of a standard player call for data that many people wouldn't use. For instance, Martin Prado has the following eligibilities: 2B, 3B, CI, IF, LF, MI, OF. We could add it, but I'm just not sure that the information is relevant to most people.

    What are you trying to do where you need to know the positional eligibilities for all players at once? Are you trying to reverse the mapping to know all players that are eligible at each position? Because it does seem like the common case would be the other way around, where given a player, you just need to know his eligible positions, which shouldn't be difficult to simply query for in one call.
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