---
title: Model player availability in the season forecast
type: task
status: cancelled
description: >-
  Draw per-player availability each simulated week and promote bench players when a starter is out,
  so depth and injury cover carry value. Consumes the positional injury distributions.
base_uri: user:task/league/model-player-availability-in-the-season-forecast.md
created_at: '2026-09-27T00:27:26.905Z'
entity_id: 99294643-5fa8-4f2f-be2b-87568258d974
finished_at: '2026-09-30T15:19:52.262Z'
observations:
  - ████████████████████████████████████████████████
owner_identity_uri: █████████████████████████
priority: Low
public_read: true
relations:
  - blocked_by [[█████████████████████████-██████-██████████-██████████████]]
  - blocked_by [[user:task/league/simulate-positional-injury-distributions.md]]
  - relates [[user:task/league/carry-player-outcomes-across-simulated-weeks.md]]
  - blocked_by [[█████████████████████████-██████-████████-████-██-█████-██-███████]]
  - relates [[█████████████████████-██████████-█████████-████-███████]]
tags:
  - user:tag/league-xo-football.md
updated_at: '2026-09-30T15:19:52.262Z'
visibility_analyzed_at: '2026-11-05T23:49:43.550Z'
---

# Model player availability in the season forecast

## Problem

The forecast prices a starting lineup, not a roster: starters are fixed per week, bench players are never sampled, and nobody can miss a game. [[user:text/league/season-forecast-modeling-contract.md]] "What the forecast does not model" documents the consequences — a backup is worth exactly zero.

## Intent

- Draw availability per player per simulated week from positional injury rates and absence-length distributions.
- When a starter is out in a draw, promote the best available bench player (a greedy next-best-at-position rule is likely sufficient; full re-optimization per draw is the cost to avoid).
- Once availability exists, availability must persist across weeks within one simulated season, which depends on the week-persistence task's index alignment.

## Inputs

- [[user:task/league/simulate-positional-injury-distributions.md]] supplies the rate and absence distributions.

Gate: must beat the baseline from the calibration backtest.