The 22/23 WAR Disappointments of the Year
It's not easy to be drafted, survive on a roster and be below replacement level. But some names do manage it. Here are eleven names who had Fantrax seasons managers would rather forget.
In a normal 12-team Fantrax league, 192 players get drafted. And in a given Fantrax year, maybe a quarter of that number are “undroppable” names. About another quarter turn out to be droppable disappointments, and then there are always a bunch of injuries.
But then there are the players who get drafted, often at fairly high cost, make it to a reasonable number of appearances, but nevertheless negatively impact a roster. It takes something truly special to be a high drafted player and achieve a negative Wins Above Replacement (WAR) score, but every year there are some names that do it.
At the start of the week, we looked at players that lit up the season. Today we focus in on eleven players who we believe let their Fantrax sides down the most. Some of them could be seen coming, some of them are still confusing to us even now. Some of them are confusingly from players who had quite good actual football seasons. And as hinted at earlier, this isn’t just a list of the eleven lowest WAR scores, either. This is about players who were drafted as if they would perform and then didn’t.
So who are the WAR duds of 22/23?
Goalkeeper - Ederson (Manchester City)
ADP: 69.36, 98.81% drafted
It’s fair to say that we are not fans of drafting the GK position early around these parts. For some reason, Ederson has consistently been drafted high. This season he was going 7th-round high. Even if we set aside the opportunity cost associated with spending that high a price on Ederson (sandwiched as he was between Aleksander Mitrovic and Declan Rice in ADP), the problem with the City goalkeeper this year is that he was bad.
His best ever season was 2020 when he was worth 6.9 PPG. This season he is at 3.8. He costs his managers .02 wins every time he’s rostered over a waiver goalkeeper. Over the course of the season, starting Ederson would be almost worth an entire loss by himself (-0.831). That’s hard to do when you’re playing for comfortably the best team in the league. Ederson managed it. Even if you’re convinced he’s going to have a career best year next year, take him in the 15th round.
Defender 1 - Lucas Digne (Aston Villa)
ADP: 45, 100% drafted
This is a sad fall from grace for Lucas. It’s a story with a lot of moving parts. Steven Gerrard turned out not to be the messiah (who could have predicted that . . .). His Villa side struggled and very few of the Villa players were putting out star numbers. Then a combo of Alex Moreno and Unai Emery have relegated him to an afterthought in the second half of the season.
But that’s not to say that his output was any good when he did play. He cost a 4th round pick and in exchange, provided a negative WAR output (-0.228) over the 17 games that he did play. He won our ‘Logan Roy’ award in our end-of-season Superlatives article as the player whose time has passed. Goodbye old friend, you served many of us well!
Defender 2 - Joel Matip (Liverpool)
ADP: 46.53, 100% drafted
Once again, there’s a bit of a story to Joel’s place in this team. He didn’t play a lot. And honestly, this is a common theme with Matip that we should probably have seen coming. In 7 Premier League seasons, Matip has started over 30 games only once (last season). His availability is a problem and in his position, teams like to try to build partnerships for chemistry.
But in the 11 games Matip did play, Liverpool were a mess. Were it not for a big performance against West Ham in April, his numbers would be even worse. As it is, he was basically neutral in the 11 games he did start. And at the very worst, the draft capital that managers spent on him might’ve led to them holding him long periods. This one was a big miss.
Defender 3 - Marc Cucurella (Chelsea)
ADP: 52.69, 100% drafted
Researching this list, I was a little surprised how few Chelsea players actually made this eleven. Their season seemed so awful that when I started, I half wondered whether I’d end up writing a Chelsea retrospective (again). But actually, perhaps due to high rotation, very few players ended up with negative WAR. Cucurella did (just) with a WAR score of -0.066. But once again, this is a WAR output versus draft position selection.
Just a few picks ahead of Cucurella was a top 10 WAR name in Gabriel Martinelli who added 3.023 wins. At the same ADP you could’ve picked up the 30th overall name (Ollie Watkins) worth 1.417 wins added. Instead, managers who gambled on the ex-Brighton man got 20 games of replacement level output. He’s clearly behind Chilwell in the pecking order and it’s not even a guarantee he can see off the competition of Lewis Hall and Ian Maatsen based on this season. He will be considerably lower in ADP next year.
Defender 4 - Matty Cash (Aston Villa)
ADP: 54.74, 100% drafted
You would be forgiven for wondering what Stevie G did to Villa. Both of his first choice full backs are on this list. You’d also be forgiven for wondering how the 5th round went so badly wrong when it came to defenders for Fantrax managers. It seems none of them managed to lock down full-time starting gigs (Cash also only played 18 games) and none of them were able to do a lot when they were on the field (-0.003 WAR per game for Cash).
The RB position for Villa was uninspiring all season-long, with Ashley Young also failing to put up good Fantrax point totals. It’s probable that Emery can get more out of them next season, but Cash has a distance to go to recover the reputation he had coming into this season!
Defender 5 - Kyle Walker (Manchester City)
ADP: 78.59, 100% drafted
It says something that two of the Champions elect have made this roster. And I think it mostly says “Manchester City basically don’t have to actively defend much.” Kyle Walker has been a remarkable part of the Manchester City experience under Pep Guardiola. There has been a bit of a changing of the guard in the second half of the season, with Pep eschewing the full-back position altogether in his preferred starting lineup. But Walker has still put up 16 starts for Manchester City this campaign.
Despite City clearly being fantastic, Walker’s Fantrax output has been really really bad. He has a total WAR of -0.386 this year. This shouldn’t really have been a surprise. His WAR last season was 0.03 in 20 starts. He’s selected on name value for the most part once the draft list starts to look a little barren. But do yourself a favour and take someone else next time out.
Midfielder 1 - Raheem Sterling (Chelsea)
ADP: 14.44, 100% drafted
Raheem Sterling has a positive WAR (just). I should start with that. He’s also been one of the better Chelsea attackers in real terms. But in Fantrax, he’s really not delivered. I really liked the match of Sterling and Chelsea when the signing was made in the Summer. In particular the idea of Reece James crossing it to the back post for Sterling runs seemed like it was sure to work. As it is, James never stayed healthy and Sterling has had a stop start campaign.
In better circumstances we’ve seen Sterling be very productive for Fantrax. Last season he was worth 1.39 wins added in just 21 starts. So that’s the main reason he’s made this list. He’s played the exact same number of games, yet dropped to 0.122 wins added over the entire year. That’s not a second round return by any measure. We will see if the incoming manager at Chelsea is enough to revitalize Sterling but it feels tough to project Sterling as a bounce back with any confidence until we see more.
Midfielder 2 - Jesse Lingard (Nottingham Forest)
ADP: 63.23, 100% drafted
As stories go, Jesse Lingard’s brief resurgence at West Ham in 2020 was fun. It’s often a little uncomfortable when a footballer becomes too intertwined with meme culture and from interviews he’s given, it negatively affected Jesse to have that level of attention. So 9 games and 4 assists in 16 games in East London was nice to see. The only real issue was that it was a bit of a mirage. Propped up from an OK number by penalties and xG and xGA overperformances, it was sadly fairly predictable that he would not be able to repeat that level.
What was less predictable was that he’d struggle to hold down a starting spot at all in Nottingham this season. But 12 starts, 0 goals and 0 assists later, his spot has been well and truly lost to Morgan Gibbs-White, who has performed so well in that spot that it seems very unlikely that Jesse will recover it. This one was too big a gamble on draft day and that sixth round pick would’ve cost you -0.313 wins over Jesse’s 12 starts for the same cost as Marcus Rashford or Ilkay Gundogan.
Midfielder 3 - Fabinho (Liverpool)
ADP: 123.01, 65% drafted
At this point, you could accuse me of clutching at straws. And I would accept it. I had to go a long way down the ADP list to find someone who we might reasonably have expected some level of return from who played a significant number of games, but also underperformed at the midfield position. Fabinho is one such name. Cause and effect is difficult to separate here, but Liverpool’s struggles hit Fabinho hard in Fantrax. He went from a 0.33 wins added number in 21/22 to a -0.323 wins added this year over 25 games started.
He came cheap in drafts, so hopefully teams had the option to pivot away from him once it was clear that he wasn’t going to produce, but last year’s vaguely positive output looks like the anomaly at this point. Whatever your feelings about Liverpool, be sure to leave Fabinho undrafted next year.
Forward 1 - Jamie Vardy (Leicester)
ADP: 40.74, 100% drafted
Turns out, he does age. Jamie Vardy turned 36 this season and the cracks that started to form last year (year-on-year drops in Fantrax points, xFpts and WAR) turned into something of a chasm. He’s started less games and he’s been way less effective when he has played. His historical performances resulted in a fourth round price and, despite a minor late season resurgence, he’s returned close to nothing for his managers. His total season WAR across 18 games was -0.163.
Leicester’s time in the division could be coming to an end and it’s hard to see long queues to keep Vardy in the league if they were to go down. There’s no shame in ageing out. He can retire from Fantrax relevance as one of the most consistent forwards we’ve had in the game.
Forward 2 - Diego Costa (Wolves)
ADP: N/A
Since Raul Jimenez’s head injury, Wolves have had a procession of not particularly effective attempts to solve their centre forward problem. Their summer link with Diego Costa was not intuitively an obvious solve to this riddle. And it’s played out pretty much as we’d expect (except that perhaps this older Diego is a little more mellow). In 15 games, he was worth -0.273 wins added in Fantrax this season. No one on Wolves has been particularly special but Diego proved far from the missing piece.
Back to the drawing board you go, Wolves. As draft managers, we may all want to think twice before buying into this attack too early next season. It needs work.
So that’s your WAR disappointment team of the season. And if there’s any clear takeaway, it’s probably to beware of the early GK, mid-round defender and ageing forward.
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