Part V: Final Player Pricing
by Sam Waters
This is the fifth and last section of our guide to calculating player value in fantasy football. Each part lays out a different aspect of the process. Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV are up at these links.
After a little bit of a layoff, the Fantasy Value Handbook is back to finish what it started. Earlier in this series, we wound our way through the many steps for calculating fantasy player value. Now that we’ve made that calculation, it’s time to put a price on every player. We can use these prices to analyze trade offers this year and draft decisions next year.
Right now we have our value measure, Draft Points Above Replacement, which is enough to compare the value of players across positions. But with the popularity of auctions growing, it would be helpful to convert points above replacement to dollar values.
We want our pricing system to assign each player an auction price commensurate to his actual value. In order to uphold this concept, each player should receive a share of the total auction dollars equal to his share of the total points above replacement. If Adrian Peterson holds 5% of the player universe’s value, for example, he gets 5% of the money. In equation form, this would read:
Player Auction Price = Total Auction Dollars * (Player Draft PAR/Total Draft PAR)
In a ten-team standard league with $200 per team budgets, there is a total of $2,000 available to spend in the auction, so we take each player’s share of Draft PAR and multiply by $2,000 to get his auction price. (In leagues that don’t allow zero dollar bids, we adjust this slightly to account for the price floor of $1.) Now we have projected prices for each positional ranking:
|
Overall Ranking |
Positional Rank |
Price |
|
1 |
RB1 |
112 |
|
2 |
RB2 |
90 |
|
3 |
RB3 |
77 |
|
4 |
RB4 |
68 |
|
5 |
QB1 |
62 |
|
6 |
RB5 |
61 |
|
7 |
RB6 |
55 |
|
8 |
RB7 |
50 |
|
9 |
RB8 |
46 |
|
10 |
QB2 |
45 |
|
11 |
RB9 |
42 |
|
12 |
WR1 |
39 |
|
13 |
RB10 |
39 |
|
14 |
WR2 |
37 |
|
15 |
TE1 |
37 |
|
16 |
RB11 |
36 |
|
17 |
QB3 |
36 |
|
18 |
WR3 |
35 |
|
19 |
WR4 |
34 |
|
20 |
RB12 |
33 |
|
21 |
WR5 |
32 |
|
22 |
RB13 |
31 |
|
23 |
WR6 |
30 |
|
24 |
QB4 |
29 |
|
25 |
RB14 |
28 |
|
26 |
WR7 |
28 |
|
27 |
TE2 |
27 |
|
28 |
WR8 |
27 |
|
29 |
RB15 |
26 |
|
30 |
WR9 |
25 |
|
31 |
RB16 |
24 |
|
32 |
WR10 |
23 |
|
33 |
QB5 |
23 |
|
34 |
RB17 |
22 |
|
35 |
WR11 |
22 |
|
36 |
TE3 |
21 |
|
37 |
RB18 |
20 |
|
38 |
WR12 |
20 |
|
39 |
WR13 |
19 |
|
40 |
QB6 |
19 |
|
41 |
RB19 |
19 |
|
42 |
WR14 |
17 |
|
43 |
RB20 |
17 |
|
44 |
TE4 |
16 |
|
45 |
WR15 |
16 |
|
46 |
RB21 |
16 |
|
47 |
QB7 |
15 |
|
48 |
WR16 |
15 |
|
49 |
RB22 |
14 |
|
50 |
WR17 |
14 |
|
51 |
TE5 |
13 |
|
52 |
RB23 |
13 |
|
53 |
WR18 |
12 |
|
54 |
QB8 |
12 |
|
55 |
RB24 |
11 |
|
56 |
WR19 |
11 |
|
57 |
TE6 |
10 |
|
58 |
RB25 |
10 |
|
59 |
WR20 |
10 |
|
60 |
QB9 |
9 |
|
61 |
WR21 |
9 |
|
62 |
RB26 |
9 |
|
63 |
TE7 |
8 |
|
64 |
WR22 |
8 |
|
65 |
RB27 |
8 |
|
66 |
WR23 |
7 |
|
67 |
RB28 |
7 |
|
68 |
QB10 |
6 |
|
69 |
TE8 |
6 |
|
70 |
WR24 |
6 |
|
71 |
RB29 |
5 |
|
72 |
WR25 |
5 |
|
73 |
RB30 |
4 |
|
74 |
WR26 |
4 |
|
75 |
TE9 |
4 |
|
76 |
QB11 |
4 |
|
77 |
WR27 |
4 |
|
78 |
RB31 |
3 |
|
79 |
K1 |
3 |
|
80 |
WR28 |
3 |
|
81 |
DEF1 |
3 |
|
82 |
TE10 |
3 |
|
83 |
RB32 |
2 |
|
84 |
K2 |
2 |
|
85 |
WR29 |
2 |
|
86 |
QB12 |
2 |
|
87 |
WR30 |
1 |
|
88 |
DEF2 |
1 |
|
89 |
RB33 |
1 |
|
90 |
TE11 |
1 |
|
91 |
K3 |
1 |
|
92 |
WR31 |
1 |
|
93 |
RB34 |
1 |
|
94 |
WR32 |
1 |
|
95 |
K4 |
1 |
|
96 |
QB13 |
1 |
|
97 |
DEF3 |
1 |
|
98 |
DEF4 |
1 |
|
99 |
DEF5 |
1 |
|
100 |
DEF6 |
1 |
|
101 |
DEF7 |
1 |
|
102 |
DEF8 |
1 |
|
103 |
DEF9 |
1 |
|
104 |
DEF10 |
1 |
|
105 |
K5 |
1 |
|
106 |
K6 |
1 |
|
107 |
K7 |
1 |
|
108 |
K8 |
1 |
|
109 |
K9 |
1 |
|
110 |
K10 |
1 |
|
111 |
QB14 |
1 |
|
112 |
QB15 |
1 |
|
113 |
QB16 |
1 |
|
114 |
QB17 |
1 |
|
115 |
QB18 |
1 |
|
116 |
QB19 |
1 |
|
117 |
QB20 |
1 |
|
118 |
RB35 |
1 |
|
119 |
RB36 |
1 |
|
120 |
RB37 |
1 |
|
121 |
RB38 |
1 |
|
122 |
RB39 |
1 |
|
123 |
RB40 |
1 |
|
124 |
RB41 |
1 |
|
125 |
RB42 |
1 |
|
126 |
RB43 |
1 |
|
127 |
RB44 |
1 |
|
128 |
RB45 |
1 |
|
129 |
RB46 |
1 |
|
130 |
RB47 |
1 |
|
131 |
RB48 |
1 |
|
132 |
RB49 |
1 |
|
133 |
RB50 |
1 |
|
134 |
TE12 |
1 |
|
135 |
TE13 |
1 |
|
136 |
TE14 |
1 |
|
137 |
TE15 |
1 |
|
138 |
TE16 |
1 |
|
139 |
WR33 |
1 |
|
140 |
WR34 |
1 |
|
141 |
WR35 |
1 |
|
142 |
WR36 |
1 |
|
143 |
WR37 |
1 |
|
144 |
WR38 |
1 |
|
145 |
WR39 |
1 |
|
146 |
WR40 |
1 |
|
147 |
WR41 |
1 |
|
148 |
WR42 |
1 |
|
149 |
WR43 |
1 |
|
150 |
WR44 |
1 |
More meaningful than the placement of certain positional rankings in the overall rankings is the shape of the overall value distribution itself. We can compare our new overall distribution to the prevailing one by looking at the difference between HSAC auction prices and ESPN auction prices for each ranking slot. If the difference is positive at a given slot, the player at that ranking tends to be undervalued by ESPN. If the difference is negative, the player at that ranking tends to be overvalued by ESPN.
You can see that the first twenty picks or so are undervalued, with part of their deserved salaries being appropriated to mid-tier players. As a result, the players from about twenty to seventy-five in the rankings are overpaid. Since the market inefficiency in fantasy football is its elite players, smart owners should pounce on them through the auction or through trades. As you allocate more of your budget to top-ten guys, you rack up more of a surplus in value while avoiding a deficit in value on good to mediocre players.
This advice is even more important for owners who are more attentive and skilled than average. If you are a hawk on the waiver wire and in the draft room who gets more out of your free agent pick-ups and late round draft picks than your league mates, your personal draft replacement level is higher. This gives you, the exceptional fantasy owner, a different value curve than other owners, where mediocre players are devalued and elite players lap up an even larger share of the league’s production. With a value curve that differs even more from the mainstream’s curve, you are in an even better position to exploit the market and acquire even more value for you team.
That was the goal of this series from the beginning: putting your team in position to win by helping you to accumulate value. The system outlined here helps you to become that value-hoarding owner because its price-generating system better reflects reality and gives you a better idea of what players are actually worth. Going forward, you can use this series to get a better sense of your players’ actual values in this season’s trade negotiations and next season’s draft decisions.
Over the next few months I plan to build on the groundwork laid out here with some more narrowly focused articles on fantasy strategy. Good luck to everyone with their fantasy seasons- even if this article was a little too delayed to help with your fantasy team this year, I hope you at least enjoyed reading the methodology. And if you just read thirty pages of fantasy football methodology without enjoying the methodology, I am sincerely very, very, very sorry and I hope you get better soon. As for the rest of the readership, the only thing more fun than reading a five-part, thirty-page manifesto on the theoretical underpinnings of fantasy football value is reading a five-part, thirty-page manifesto on the theoretical underpinnings of fantasy football value twice. Luckily I know just the place to get started on this.
