StratPinion Week 1

This week, I introduced my rankings on the site. You can visit them on the main navigation bar above. Right now, it is manually updated and not dynamic - it is only explicitly updated for 8-category and 9-category leagues. I think the majority of people play in these leagues; half of my leagues are standard-category leagues. In this week's edition of StratPinion, I'll talk about how to use these ranks and how your league might be different from the standard (Points, Rebounds, Assists, Three-Pointers Made, Field Goal Percentage, Free Throw Percentage, Steals, and Blocks - with Turnovers as the 9th category, standard in Yahoo leagues) league settings.

First of all, a basic explanation of the ranks. The players are listed by rank with a name and a numerical score. The rank and player name are obvious, and included in all ranks. The number following the rank is what makes MRiS ranks easier to use. The idea isn't complicated, but it might not be obvious - the team with the most FPE (that's the number following the player's name!) has the best chance to win each week. This gives an easy way to compare value in trades.

If Player A is giving up the #10 player, who averages 100 FPE/game, and is getting the #20 and #23 players in return, who average 75 and 70 FPE each, he wins the trade (from an average production standpoint) if the player he has to drop averages less than 45 FPE. Obviously, I'm not recommending using my rankings in exclusion of everything else, but it is a great tool to use when looking at players for trade or for waiver-wire pickups.

One big thing that will affect the relative value of players is your league's depth. The first thing that changes is the relative value of a waiver-wire pickup. If only 100 players are rostered in your league, that means the 101st best player (the guy you are picking up) is your "zero" for value. The deeper your league, the slimmer the pickings become on the waivers.

This makes the most-valuable players even more valuable. This is intuitive, since the deeper your league is, the worse the "available" players become. However, this also makes the middle-of-the-road players more valuable. This is less intuitive, and is the dominant factor in the changing relative values when league sizes increase. To demonstrate, I'll use the current 9-cat ranks:

1. 162.5 FPE
50. 63.4 FPE
100. 47.3 FPE
150. 34.6 FPE

In a 50-player league, the top player is worth 100 FPE compared to an available player. Basically, he is worth 256% of the next available player. But in a 150 player league, he is worth 470% of the next available player - double the value! While this might make you think top players are more valuable in deeper leagues, remember I'm making this point to show that this is not so clearly the case as you might think.

The #50 player, in this league, is now worth 183% of the first available player - almost as much as the #1 player was in the first shallow-league example! In a 150-player league, there are 20 players more valuable than the #1 player is in a 50 player league. (feel free to read that three times, I can't think of a better way to write that!). Here are some numbers from my draft-value calculator, which doesn't have actual statistics, but uses the best projections I could find on the internet:

Shallow League: 8 teams, 13 players per team, $200 budget
* 1 Anthony Davis $65
* 9 Damian Lillard $41
* 30 Kenneth Faried $18
* 60 Markieff Morris $9
* 101 Danny Green $1
Anthony Davis + Danny Green for Lillard + Faried: $66 for $59

Normal League: 10 teams, 13 players per team, $200 budget
* 1 Anthony Davis $64
* 9 Damian Lillard $43
* 30 Kenneth Faried $21
* 60 Markieff Morris $13
* 101 Danny Green $5
Anthony Davis + Danny Green for Lillard + Faried: $69 for $63

Deep league: 14 teams, 13 players per team, $200 budget
* 1 Anthony Davis $61
* 9 Damian Lillard $43
* 30 Kenneth Faried $25
* 60 Markieff Morris $18
* 101 Danny Green $11
Anthony Davis + Danny Green for Lillard + Faried: $72 for $68

 (Note: These values were calculated using Rotowire's preseason projections and my MRiS ranking system)

The message is pretty muddled in the numbers here. The basic points are that as a league gets deeper:
1) The most valuable players get even more valuable.
2) The solid contributing players add even more value than the top players.
3) While the relative values change, a lot of trades (like the one I used as an example) will still be relatively balanced.
4) If you use my numbers, you'll never make a bad trade in fantasy basketball.

OK, point 4 isn't entirely true. But, using a ranking system like MRiS will help you out! Thanks for all the feedback so far this season, please don't be shy in leaving your comments, suggestions, constructive criticism, and ideas here, emailing me, on twitter (@statdance), or on reddit (/u/statdance).

Thanks for reading, be sure to stop by for new rankings features, hopefully coming soon!