Studs, RBs, and inflation auction values

[bigmark3333 11]

I'm using your draft buddy spreadsheet as well as a few others that I've gotten from different sources to determine maximum player auction values. One thing that I've noticed is that you guys seems to place a heavier emphasis on studs and rb's than the other sources. Once keepers are inputted and inflation is taken into account, the auction values on stud rb's start to get very high. For instance, Arian Foster, Ray Rice, and LeSean McCoy are listed at $122, $107, and $99 respectively (out of $300 total budget) with my league rules and keepers inputted. My other sources have these guys at an average of $85, $69, and $67 respectively with my league rules and keepers inputted.

 

I'm a big proponent of going after studs (especially RBs) in an auction and I understand that inflation needs to be taken into account with keepers and as players are drafted, but I don't think I've ever seen a guy go for over $100 in my league (let alone for $122). Maybe people aren't valuing players correctly in my league, but it still seems a bit overkill to spend 33% of your budget on McCoy this year. There's also a trickle down effect where I would be able to get any of the top 20 RBs if I used the prices on the spreadsheet as a maximum bid during my draft (but feel like I would be overpaying). I know that I can tweak these ratings by adjusting baseline factors to get these prices down to what I think are reasonable prices ceilings, but I am curious in the process behind your projections.

 

So, my questions are:

 

1) Have you guys noticed that your suggested auction values are skewed more towards studs and rbs and is this intended? A brief explanation of your calculation method and/or rationale (if possible) would be appreciated as well (e.g. do you use value based drafting versus a baseline player or above replacement?)

 

and

 

2) What's your general method for determining inflation and might it start to skew results at the upper end of the spectrum?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Edit - Thought I should mention that this is using the Compiler Auction Recommended setting.

[Mike MacGregor 20]

Hi Mark. Someone emailed me earlier saying the auction values are way higher than expected, but he didn't have the overall ranking method switched to Auction Recommended, so that made a big difference. You did hit Compile Cheatsheets after changing that, I presume. Here is some explanation of the methodology to get the auction values.

 

1. Draft Buddy basically figures out the overall rankings - calculates player values - as if it wasn't an auction league, and then distributes the available dollars for the whole league across those players relative to their calculated value after deducting the minimum bid for additional players that must be purchased who are below the baseline. The baseline is fairly far down for auction recommended, to create a good spread of dollars across many players who will be bid on instead of concentrating too much at the top and a lot of min values. At least, that is the intention. Hard to say why that doesn't seem to be the case for your particular league, although maybe there is a lot of inflation going on.

 

2. Inflation is pretty simple calculation. Buddy sums the initial expected price of the players already owned (keepers, players as won at auction) and compares that to the sum of what is actually being paid for them. The difference represented as a percentage - the inflation or deflation - is added or subtracted against the remaining draftable players.

 

If you want to look at the detailed original auction values, and perhaps even adjust them manually, you can unhide a tab called "calcs". In that you'll see a long list of all players sorted by overall value / dollar values. The yellow highlighted column is text, not a formula, so you can edit those and not worry about messing anything up. After hitting Compile Cheatsheets, this column gets updated. I had to keep the pre-inflation adjusted values somewhere for the inflation calculation, so that is where they are.

[bigmark3333 11]

Hi Mike, thank you for the detailed response - that helps a lot in making sense of this. I've gone back and taken a closer look at values across spreadsheets. One big discrepancy that I noticed is that you guys place your baseline for WR's much higher than my other sources (at least for my league settings). Additionally, there's a much larger deviation between the top tiers and lower tiers (say 4 and 5) for WR's. This extra money is then mostly funneled into RB's and players at the top of the rankings. When inflation is then taken into account, the higher initial prices for the top guys (a lot of high ranked players are kept for pretty cheap in my league this year) create a higher inflation and this top heavy weighting for prices is compounded, creating the blowup in prices (especially for RBs). When I drop the baseline for WRs down a bit the prices level out a lot, even with the inflation for the keepers. Thanks for noting the calcs tab - I'll go ahead and play with that as well.

 

For anyone else noticing something like this though, I would recommend starting with the auction compiler recommended baselines and then adjusting these until you hit values that you feel are reasonable.

[Mike MacGregor 20]

Thanks for the feedback Mark. Good information there. I'll have to look at the WR baseline going forward. It is possible we still lag a bit overvaluing RB versus other positions from prior years, but I've tried to keep on top of that as the NFL is more pass happy. Problem is the more I adjust the more the NFL continues to devalue RB and push up the need/value of QB and WR.