Week 13: Draft Analysis and Picks

Week 13: Draft Analysis and Picks

The final week of the season is upon us and the playoff field is rounding into shape (as Petronius Arbiter has helpfully detailed here). As we descend into winter, we have nearly an entire season's worth of data that we can use to take stock of this year's fantasy draft. To that end, the Nauts analytics division has scraped the Yahoo site for data on the top performing RBs, WRs, TEs, and QBs of 2017 and their corresponding draft prices, if any, to see what the best values were in the draft.

To get at value, I calculated two measures for each player based on their total fantasy points for the season and their draft prices (if a player wasn't drafted, they were assigned a draft price of $0.99--punting on issues of waiver wire strategy).

The first measure, which I'll call premium-adjusted fantasy points, involved the following steps:

1) Define a premium as any amount over $1 paid for a player.

2) Calculate the maximum premium paid for any player (in this case, $75-$1 = $74 for Hanging with Hooper's draft of Le'Veon Bell).

3) For each player, calculate their premium, then calculate the proportion of the maximum premium that was paid. For example, the Trichs took Todd Gurley for $46, so here the $45 premium was $45/$74 = 0.61 of the maximum possible premium.

4) Add the proportion of the maximum premium to 1, then divide that player's total fantasy points by the resulting value. So for Todd Gurley, this comes out to 196/1.61 = 122, which is his premium adjusted fantasy point value for the season.

The idea here: premium adjusted fantasy points factor in the opportunity cost of paying big money for a player, by reducing his fantasy points in proportion to the premium he fetched in the draft.

Distribution of premium-adjusted fantasy points by position

Now, let's look at the distributions of premium-adjusted fantasy points by position for the top W/R/Ts and QBs currently owned in PSAS (technically, the top 90 W/R/Ts and top 19 QBs by raw total fantasy points). The below graph shows the distribution of premium-adjusted FP by position; the dark line in the middle of each box represents the median premium-adjusted FP for that position, the box itself represents the middle 50% of values, and the whiskers represent values outside the middle 50% that fall into a relatively normal range. Isolated points represent outliers for that position--for example, the point right under the 200 point line for the RB category represents Alvin Kamara, the runaway best value in the draft among RBs at 167 premium-adjusted FP (170 total FP, $2 draft price).

Quick patterns of note: QBs have been better values by a whopping margin--but of course, most of that is due to the limited number of slots, and thus looser market for that position. Meanwhile, TEs this season have been a low value, low variance proposition this season, with the best value players (Zach Ertz and Jimmy Graham) barely cracking the 75th percentile of WRs or RBs. Speaking of which, there hasn't been much to tell between WRs and RBs in terms of draft value this season; the distributions for each position are remarkably similar, as evidenced by the graph.

Top players by premium-adjusted fantasy points at each position (no keepers or waiver pickups)

Now that we've taken a look at the big picture, let's take a look at each position and see what the savviest picks were in hindsight. We'll look at the top 6 players by premium adjusted FP for each position, excluding keepers and undrafted players (for now). First, the RBs:

Player	Current Owner	Drafted By	Draft Price	Total FP	Premium Adjusted FP
A. Kamara NO - RB	TakingTigerMountain	TakingTigerMountain	2	169.8	167.54
M. Ingram NO - RB	ThePelicanBrief	ThePelicanBrief	13	149.1	128.30
T. Gurley II LAR - RB	Trichotillomaniacs	Trichotillomaniacs	46	196.4	122.13
K. Hunt KC - RB	AEthernauts	AEthernauts	40	163.6	107.14
J. McKinnon Min - RB	HomeSpunNeckBloodz	HomeSpunNeckBloodz	2	101.78	100.42
E. Elliott Dal - RB	psych dog	psych dog	43	152.3	97.16

Alvin Kamara leads the pack here, with the highest adjusted FP by a whopping margin and the second highest FP for a running back overall. Mark Ingram and Todd Gurley come in a solid second and third before things begin to drop off more.

Moving on to WRs:

Player	Current Owner	Drafted By	Draft Price	Total FP	Premium Adjusted FP
A. Thielen Min - WR	Trichotillomaniacs	Trichotillomaniacs	1	118.6	118.60
D. Funchess Car - WR	AEthernauts	Trichotillomaniacs	1	94.3	94.30
A. Brown Pit - WR	AEthernauts	AEthernauts	65	174.94	93.81
L. Fitzgerald Ari - WR	ThePelicanBrief	ThePelicanBrief	11	102	89.86
K. Allen LAC - WR	TakingTigerMountain	TakingTigerMountain	27	121	89.54
J. Landry Mia - WR	Polk High Panthers	Polk High Panthers	12	102.68	89.39

The Trichs have the magic touch here, having drafted the best two WRs by value and breakout receiver of the year Adam Thielen. Of note: Antonio Brown still comes in third in adjusted FP, even with the second highest premium of any player...he's just that good.

On to TEs:

Player	Current Owner	Drafted By	Draft Price	Total FP	Premium Adjusted FP
Z. Ertz Phi - TE	SanFranciscoFerries	SanFranciscoFerries	7	106.3	98.33
T. Kelce KC - TE	Dijonnaise All-Stars	Dijonnaise All-Stars	36	107.4	72.91
K. Rudolph Min - TE	TakingTigerMountain	AEthernauts	3	73.7	71.76
C. Brate TB - TE	Polk High Panthers	Polk High Panthers	1	68	68.00
D. Walker Ten - TE	AEthernauts	AEthernauts	11	73.7	64.93

As it shakes out, only five non-keeper, non-waiver wire TEs scored enough to even sneak into this dataset. Translation: tight end is a garbage fantasy position. But among TEs, Zach Ertz paced the field this year, beneficiary of Wentz's dramatic rise (about which more below).

And finally, QBs:

Player	Current Owner	Drafted By	Draft Price	Total FP	Premium Adjusted FP
C. Wentz Phi - QB	psych dog	psych dog	4	237.98	228.71
R. Wilson Sea - QB	SanFranciscoFerries	SanFranciscoFerries	20	257.21	204.66
C. Newton Car - QB	ThePelicanBrief	ThePelicanBrief	4	204.9	196.92
K. Cousins Was - QB	Hanging w Mr Hooper	Hanging w Mr Hooper	6	205.17	192.18
M. Stafford Det - QB	AEthernauts	AEthernauts	3	187.85	182.91
P. Rivers LAC - QB	Dijonnaise All-Stars	Dijonnaise All-Stars	1	182.82	182.82

The Wentz Wagon leads the pack, coming in second in raw FP with a healthy lead in adjusted FP. Russell Wilson, the overall leader in total FP for QBs, is shaping up to be worth the $20 shelled out by the Ferries.

Top keepers and waiver pickups

To round things out, here are the top keepers by adjusted FP:

Player	Current Owner/Drafted By	Draft Price	Total FP	Premium Adjusted FP
D. Freeman Atl - RB	ThePelicanBrief	2	97.2	95.90
D. Hopkins Hou - WR	TakingTigerMountain	2	156.4	154.31
M. Thomas NO - WR	AEthernauts	1	94.1	94.10
S. Diggs Min - WR	Trichotillomaniacs	2	93.8	92.55
J. Graham Sea - TE	Trichotillomaniacs	2	94.7	93.44
R. Gronkowski NE - TE	ThePelicanBrief	50	114.2	68.71
T. Brady NE - QB	BldgDW3LL1NGTh1nk1ng	10	233.86	208.50

And the top waiver wire pickups by raw FP:

Player	Current Owner	Total FP
C. Thompson Was - RB	AEthernauts	125
D. Lewis NE - RB	Phat Girlz	104.66
T. Cohen Chi - RB	ThePelicanBrief	97.71
M. Jones Jr. Det - WR	ThePelicanBrief	123.1
R. Anderson NYJ - WR	ThePelicanBrief	117.7
R. Woods LAR - WR	Phat Girlz	95.5
E. Engram NYG - TE	Trichotillomaniacs	77
J. Goff LAR - QB	TakingTigerMountain	192.36

Hopkins and Brady stand out as great keeper values here, while Marvin Jones, Robby Anderson (of all people), and Jared Goff stand out among waiver pickups (pour one out for Chris Thompson after his season-ending broken leg).

That's all for now on the data front; after the playoffs we'll revisit things to see how the draft shook out in the fullness of time. Now for the picks, presented sans commentary given that TTM laid out the state of the league nicely earlier this week:

Nauts vs. Pelicans

Trichs vs. BDT

Hanging w Hooper vs. TTM [insert Zeus's thunderbolt here]

Dijonnaise vs. Ferries

Bloodz vs. psych dog

Girlz vs. Polk High

Picks record to date: 22-14 (with a heavy asterisk)