Fantasy: A Value-Based Drafting Retrospective of 2011, Part 1

Pretend you knew, in advance of the season, how many fantasy points every player would score. It would make the game pretty easy, right?  You could just draft Aaron Rodgers and be done with it. As it turns out, Aaron Rodgers would not have been the correct first pick in 2011, even though he scored the most points.

The value of a drafted player is determined not just by his fantasy points but also by his relative worth versus the best available alternative. It is the same concept that sabermetrics applies to baseball players to determine WAR, wins above replacement. When it is applied to fantasy, it is called value-based drafting (VBD), and it is the methodology I use to evaluate my selections.

The replacement player at any position exists in the context of your specific league, which means that the value of any player will change because of differences in the number of teams in your league, the roster sizes and requirements of those teams, and your scoring system. For my purposes, I will use a 10-team league with the following roster allocations:

The starters/team and total starters columns are self-explanatory. The VBD total column represents the number of players above replacement-level value. There is as much art as science to it. The simplest way to find those numbers in your league is to count how many players were drafted at each position. For example, many teams will draft 2 quarterbacks, but often teams with elite quarterbacks like Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees will just have one. I estimated that 16 QBs would be owned in this type of league.

I took it a step further. Bench slots are filled by some number of QBs, RBs, WRs, and TEs—I am assuming that no one will own multiple defenses or kickers—but you’ll notice that I did not allocate 16 bench slots in my VBD roster numbers. I did that because teams will draft some players worse than replacement level to protect their roster. The easiest example is handcuffed running backs. The team that has Michael Turner will likely also have Jason Snelling, but that does not mean that if you needed another RB, you would have to pick up one worse than Snelling. Those below-replacement-level players are most often running backs, which is why the VBD total for RBs might seem low.

I used a typical scoring system where 25 passing yards is a point, 10 rushing or receiving yards is a point, a passing TD is 4 points, a rushing or receiving TD is 6 points, and an interception is -2 points. I included a separate column for PPR. For my own sanity, I excluded rushing yards for WRs, so I have slightly undervalued players like Percy Harvin.

I will begin with the VBD table from 2010, which set the draft expectations for 2011. The table is sorted by standard-scoring VBD, which is calculated by subtracting the replacement player’s fantasy points—Kyle Orton, Chris Ivory, Ben Obomanu, and Ben Watson, in this case—from another player’s fantasy points. A few of the TE values are negative in the PPR column because the points from receptions dropped those players below Watson in value. The auction prices are based on a $200 per team budget.

The 2010 season told the same story we have always heard. The top player, Arian Foster, was a running back, as were six of the top ten by value. Michael Vick had an incredible year, but he should have been no more than the 20th overall selection behind 13 RBs and 6 WRs. The best TE, Jason Witten, had only the 42nd most value.

Continued in part 2.