Discussing Roster management & "Value"
Draft Fantasy Sports are hard. Much like normal sports, the optimal strategy changes regularly and in-season shifts can drastically change player values and impact your team.
I feel lucky that with another International Break, I was given the chance to catch up again with two of my favourite Fantrax analysts @drafterthoughts and Chris, one of the minds behind @ovrthnkFootball, both of whom can be found on Twitter and on their respective blogs (as if anyone reading this doesn’t know who they are…). There was lots to talk about, with the majority of the conversation focused around these three points:
Team management / season long roster management strategy
What to do with a player that is playing but not performing at the same level as they were last season?
What to do with a player that is not getting onto the pitch?
I always leave these discussions having really enjoyed the chat and being really disappointed that time and real lives have dragged me away as there is always so much more to be discussed… I hope you enjoy it too!
FantraxGJL: It's the International break and I can't think of a better way to spend the downtime than back in discussion with you both. The theme we've agreed to talk around today is, I think, best summed up by the theme of "value" and in particular how we understand, manage and plan for changes in value of teams and players.
So to start us off, are there specific philosophies or strategies you bring to the management of your Fantrax teams when it comes to team / roster management that you swear by?
Drafterthoughts: Well something I've realised I should be doing this season is try to avoid rostering players who tend to play in the late fixtures. I'm in a GMT +8 timezone so if I have rotational players playing on a Monday night I'm not going to be awake to check if they're playing!
With the staggered kick offs this season it's also been a bit of a struggle trying to work out whether to start a reliable low scorer in an early game or wait to see if your more explosive rotational risk will start later.
OverthinkingFootball: Speaking of starters, our two guiding principles are to (1) make sure we have a full contingent of starters in our lineup whenever possible, and (2) when in doubt look for high WAR (more specifically pWAS) guys. We prefer guys who have shown the ability to have huge point outbursts, even if infrequently, over guys who consistently score a middling 6 or 7 points a pop.
FantraxGJL: Ouch. GMT+8 is a brutal timezone for the Premier League this year. It’s also pretty interesting as last season, I would’ve classed the roster challenge you described as “the Man City” problem. Where they’d play late in a Gameweek seemingly every week and you never quite knew what Pep was going to do with his lineup. This year it seems that European competition and the compact schedule is forcing all the teams in those competitions into actually quite friendly slots in the GW. It would be worth celebrating, if some member of the Twitter community hadn’t just pointed out some pretty notable flaws in big-team roster bias this week!
A concept that seems to be pretty popular on Twitter to deal with this is the idea of a floating spot on the roster that you basically just use to have someone available as a backup for a late window game. Do either of you employ it? And if you do, have you found it useful?
OverthinkingFootball: I don't explicitly employ that strategy -- I will always round out my rosters with the best players possible -- but especially in deeper leagues I try and make sure I'm not falling into the trap of overvaluing my fringe players too much. If you recognize you have a purely depth player or a major punt who you think will rarely crack your starting lineup, their value is probably better utilized as a free roster spot to give you that extra flexibility.
Drafterthoughts: Yeah I'm similar. I've been compiling stats for the 5 divisions of the Twitter Community League and while I'm 2nd overall for FPts scored, I'm 54th (out of 60) for number of transactions so I really haven't streamed much at all. I do think it can be a sensible strategy but in this league I've just aimed to assemble the best possible squad for the long term. Someone like @draftgenie is always chopping and changing and that's been a very successful approach for him so I think there's more than one way to skin a cat!
FantraxGJL: That's a hat-trick then. As I also don't particularly employ it, though I do do what you referenced earlier and I weight players that are in an earlier game and definitely on a team-sheet more highly over anyone with any level of uncertainty that are playing in later fixtures.
I guess if I had a single underlying philosophy to pretty much any draft-based Fantasy sports league I'm in, it would be to remember that it's far easier to lose season-long roster value than to gain it.
I love a transaction, don't me wrong - there's a reason I write Transaction columns. But if we think of the draft as the biggest value accumulation event of the year, and drops are pretty clearly the highest risk way to drop value from your roster... it's the adds and trades that become fascinating for me.
Drafterthoughts: Absolutely. In my first season doing draft I was very impatient and dropped players far too quickly. I've learnt to be a little more patient, although I did drop Cancelo after two GWs this season...
OverthinkingFootball: Say it ain't so!
FantraxGJL: I guess there's a sweet spot in there, though, where if a player has a significant change in output / circumstance, their value declines with a bit of a lag. So timing can be everything.
OverthinkingFootball: Yeah that's right, everyone wants to be just ahead of the trend, but it's always a big risk. That's what makes this game so interesting!
Drafterthoughts: It's one of the key elements of the game. To shoehorn in a Kenny Rogers lyric, you've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em...
FantraxGJL: Love that. Especially as I'd love to talk about knowing when to walk away...
Probably the hardest thing to assess each season is what to do with a player that has put out really good output (enough to justify a high ADP) but that suddenly isn't doing it anymore. @DraftAnswers on Twitter has been running a fascinating "devalued player" tournament all week that I know we've all been involved in voting in and I found some of the results really really interesting.
But if I'm a manager who has drafted Aubameyang, for example, surely trying to sell him now (or God forbid) cutting him means that I remove my potential ticket to that explosive high WAR (to go back to the earlier comment) potential that he output last year as you'd have to be extremely lucky to find anyone willing to give you someone with that same explosive potential back in a trade. So what do you do? Do either of you have him on your teams?
OverthinkingFootball: Auba's WAR was actually surprisingly mediocre, slotting in at rank #32 (forward #16). He's got the potential to go off, but even last season wasn't really doing it on a consistent basis (2 games with >30 points, 4 games in the 20s). We weren't particularly high on him going into the season, and Arteta ball has both proven us right and depressed his value even more. If I were an Auba-owner, I'd rely on the power of name-recognition, wait for his next goal-scoring week (he's still supremely talented), and try to offload him selling him with dreams of potential. Otherwise, you're stuck praying Arteta changes his tactics to suit his talents better...
Drafterthoughts: I tend to avoid those really goal dependent players (Auba had a GACS reliance of 55% last season) but I did draft Jimenez, who has been underwhelming as a first round pick (9.2 points per start, 49% GACS). Wolves, like Arsenal, have struggled to create chances and in this situation I'm just going to hold and hope Nuno gives Adama a run of starts.
OverthinkingFootball: Adama is another really interesting player, but in some ways the opposite conundrum as Auba. We all know that when Adama does start, he's points incarnate, so there's still just too much value to give away cheaply. Even if raw ability doesn't force him into the lineup, COVID could force Nuno's hand.
FantraxGJL: We definitely do need to do a dive into Adama, for sure (could be a whole article in itself!). Before we do go there though... You've both hinted at something there in your answers. And I think that it's a really key part of effective Fantrax management and particularly for anyone that is creating Fantrax analysis content, so I'm going to say it explicitly: the "job" (if I can call it that) of a team manager (or analyst) is not to get fixated on what has happened. It's to use the data available to forecast potential future outcomes and then to make a judgement call on what the "most likely" outcome is. And this has to take in so many factors. Will a player hold their PPG value from 2019/20? Has a run of kind fixtures inflated their early season value? Is something likely to change in the way the team is set up / the other players around them?
And I know from our talks on Twitter @Drafterthoughts that there is a player that we disagree on that falls into this bucket for me. So... Jarrod Bowen. Discuss.
Drafterthoughts: So Bowen has been a strange case. As mentioned on Twitter a few times already, his ghost points have dried up (9.3 gPP90 last season down to 3.4 this season). He's shooting at roughly the same frequency (2.35 vs 2.19 per 90) but his key passes have fallen off a cliff. He's only made 2 this season; 9 West Ham players have made more. He's also not doing nearly as much defensive work; interceptions (1.57 to 0.27 per 90) and tackles won (1.27 to 0.55 per 90) are way down. I haven't watched enough of him to truly understand why this is (perhaps due to shift to back 3?) but if I'm buying low on someone, there's usually an underlying metric that offers a glimmer of hope. I can't see anything there for Bowen.
FantraxGJL: I do think there has been a role change for Jarrod from last year. And the fact that Cresswell is now splitting set pieces with him is a bit annoying. But fundamentally, this is one where I just don't trust the sample. He's had tough fixtures, he's performed pretty well in terms of actual play but it just seems that the chances were falling at the feet of Pablo Fornals a bit more often than variance suggests they should.
My optimism for him is that, even if this new ghost point-less version is the new Jarrod, if Antonio is back and Benrahma comes in on the left, West Ham might actually be good (I don't like myself for writing that) and if they're good, he's going to get goals. I can only assume his performances against Wolves / Leicester would have him pretty high up on explosiveness ratings too. I'd still buy him in leagues where I didn't have him. But I accept that's based on forecasting, not on his current output.
OTF, you may have to be the referee / deciding vote in this one...
OverthinkingFootball: Sincerely apologize for all those looking for a definitive vote; you're not getting one. To put this debate into context: West Ham's first 8 games this season were against - Newcastle Utd, Arsenal, Wolves, Leicester City, Tottenham, Manchester City, Liverpool, Fulham. Minus Newcastle and Fulham, that's, uhh, an insanely hard schedule and you can rationalize reasons for Bowen's underperformance in a surprisingly competent West Ham side. It's important to remember that Bowen's performance last season was very impressive (13.7 xFpts), so there's clearly plenty of upside there. While this season hasn't gone according to plan (5.68 xFpts), there's enough upside to justify keeping him for a few more game weeks now that the schedule has eased up.
FantraxGJL: The perfect answer to keep us both happy, I'd imagine.
Ok, we referenced Adama above and I think in many ways he represents an entirely different problem for managers. It's not that he's not performing as expected from the previous sample we have of him, it's that he's not getting on the pitch.
Is there a right answer for what to do with players like this?
With Adama, it feels like this is an area where we are having to deal with imperfect information, as the 90 minute glimpse we get into a club on gameday doesn't seem to capture what is going on there.
OverthinkingFootball: It's incredibly frustrating to watch your stars ride the pine (trust me I own Adama in two leagues), but what's important to remember here is even a minimal number of starts can provide incredible value. If our WAR analysis taught us anything, it's that even as few as 15-20 starts can be enough to launch a player into the top 20 value tier. Gabriel Jesus finished 8th overall in our WAR ranks with only 20 starts; Michail Antonio 17th with 19 starts; Reece James 31st with 16 starts. This goes to show that superstars will shine for your team even with minimal starts. If their points per start output reaches this tier of player ability, you should definitely hold tight or sell high.
FantraxGJL: That's such a key thing to remember, isn't it. WAR is the optimist’s best friend when it comes to Adama and co!
Drafterthoughts: Trying to get inside the minds of Premier League managers is particularly difficult. We can predict with a reasonable degree of accuracy how well players will score based on previous seasons, but it's much harder to understand why a star player has sat on the bench for the last 5 GWs, and even harder to predict if and when that will change! As you mentioned earlier GJL, it's much easier to lose squad value than it is to gain it, so as long as your squad isn't filled with Adamas and you can still get a full starting eleven out, waiting it out is the best approach to me.
FantraxGJL: That's so true. I guess the hard part, tying it back to overall roster management, is that for some players, it was predictable that they were a WAR play. You mentioned Jesus. If you took him, you knew he was likely going to split time and you probably planned your roster accordingly. Surprise bench names like Adama probably hurt you more because of their unpredictability. The more I look at it, the more I think that there isn't really a "lesson" in the Adama example. You couldn't really have done much differently on draft day.
I think of him very differently to some of the players whose decline was perhaps a little more predictable. Azpilicueta, for example, is a really good Fantrax contributor but Chelsea are on a project to build a new youthful attacking identity and he didn't really fit that. Or someone like Nicolas Pepe who seemed like a case of willfull denial by the draft community. He didn't play much last year even when fit, Arsenal then signed a player in his position on big wages and it just mostly got written off when looking at his ADP / draft day price. But it turns out those signs were worth taking at face value.
Regretfully, I think that's going to be all we've got time to fit in in this discussion. But as ever, I've really enjoyed this and I hope we can get chatting again soon as there's one topic I really want to touch on with you both and to force you into the uncomfortable zone of public forecasting... and that's the topic of Breakouts.
(I also note that in our one shared league together, it's me versus the OverthinkingFootball team in the next GW, so lets hope we're still on good terms after that!)
OverthinkingFootball: A battle at the top of the table no less! Here's hoping Adama gets one of those elusive starts... Thanks for organizing and had a blast chatting with you two, as always!
That’s all for this chat. Hopefully you enjoyed it as much as I did. And I’m very hopeful diaries can align again sometime soon to talk about breakouts, as I know this is a topic that has a lot of interest around it.
You can find us all on Twitter and, if you haven’t already saved them as your homepages, you can find the excellent blogs by OverthinkingFootball and Drafterthoughts by clicking the links there.
I will be back with the regular content soon and it’s Transactions up next! If you’re not a subscriber, hit the button below to make sure that makes it into your inbox.