Stats Corner

There are three types of owners in our league:

  1. The owner who is plotting his keepers before the end of the previous regular season (Regan, Ready, Harrington, Olson, D’Skae).

  2. The owner who starts thinking sometime during the summer who he’s going to keep (Kane, McShane, Hartman, Higdon).

  3. The owner who decides the morning of the draft who he’s keeping (Thieneman, Matovina).

Whoops, I’m sorry four types:

  1. The owner who thinks he’s pulling a fast one on everyone by lying about who he’s keeping as if everyone has organized their draft strategy around Teddy Bridgewater being off the board, then ends up up paying a late fee for switching it after the deadline passes (Ola).

I bring this up because I have come to believe that keeper selection is the most important decision you will make as an owner in any given year. As a preview to the rest of the post consider this: Russell Wilson cost D’Skae \$22 this year. My estimates for his draft value was somewhere around \$58. Jeremy Hill cost him \$8, whereas my estimate for what Jeremy Hill would have gone for was \$73. So D’Skae saved \$101 using his keepers this year. Effectively his draft cash was \$401, not \$300. What was yours?

Things to keep in mind:

I will not give away too much of my methodology apart from saying I used a slightly more sophisticated technique than you would have seen in your stats class.

Best and Worst Keeper Selections

The Top 10 Best Keeper Selections, Based on Dollars Saved

Owner Year Player Position Estimated Cost Kept Value Savings
Shokunbi 2012 Arian Foster RB 107 16 91
Hartman 2011 Michael Vick QB 99 8 91
Shokunbi 2011 Arian Foster RB 94 9 85
Thieneman 2013 Doug Martin RB 101 17 84
Shokunbi 2013 Arian Foster RB 88 23 65
Skrzyskewski 2015 Jeremy Hill RB 73 8 65
Regan 2014 Demaryius Thomas WR 82 21 61
Higdon 2012 Julio Jones WR 82 23 59
Shokunbi 2015 Eddie Lacy RB 101 44 57
Harrington 2012 Cam Newton QB 64 8 56

Lot’s of Arian Foster in here. Ola certainly rode that \$2 pickup for a long time. Also, shout out to Mike Vick.

The Top 10 Worst Keeper Selections, Based on Dollars Saved

Owner Year Player Position Estimated Cost Kept Value Savings
Regan 2013 Josh Freeman QB 7 26 -19
Thieneman 2012 Maurice Jones-Drew RB 68 86 -18
Higdon 2015 Philip Rivers QB 32 49 -17
Matovina 2013 Ben Roethlisberger QB 14 28 -14
Matovina 2015 Rob Gronkowski TE 42 48 -6
Matovina 2013 Andre Johnson WR 49 54 -5
Thieneman 2011 Wes Welker WR 28 33 -5
Harrington 2015 Cam Newton QB 26 29 -3
Ready 2015 LeSean McCoy RB 60 63 -3
Regan 2012 Aaron Rodgers QB 99 100 -1

Yuck. Josh Freeman. Interesting and important to note that with the exception of Freeman these picks are bad because the owners kept them at values close to market rate. It’s an easy way to ensure you retain that player, but in many cases you could get them for close to what it would have cost to keep.

Cumulative Player Savings

Especially with the best selections, we see a few players show up time and again. We can guess at this point which player has resulted in the most cumulative savings for their owners, but what about the rest of the field?

Highest Cumulative Savings by Player

Player Total Savings Times Kept # of Different Owners
Arian Foster 266 4 2
LeSean McCoy 167 5 1
Demaryius Thomas 163 4 1
Julio Jones 152 4 1
Michael Vick 152 3 1
Jamaal Charles 150 4 2
Marshawn Lynch 148 4 2
Cam Newton 127 4 1
Eddie Lacy 103 2 1
Randall Cobb 95 3 1

What I find the most interesting here is that our #2 cumulative savings player, LeSean McCoy, also ranks as the 9th worth individual keeper selection of all time. This year Ready paid \$3 above what he could have expected to pay on the open market.

Lowest Cumulative Savings by Player

Player Total Savings Times Kept # of Different Owners
Maurice Jones-Drew -18 1 1
Philip Rivers -17 1 1
Andre Johnson -5 1 1
Wes Welker 1 2 1
Aaron Rodgers 4 2 1
Julius Thomas 5 1 1
Cecil Shorts 6 1 1
Malcom Floyd 6 1 1
Matt Cassel 6 1 1
Steve Smith 6 1 1

What I like about this table is that it has a lot of good players on it. They just aren’t good keeper selections. It is kind of strange that Josh Freeman, by far the worst one-time keeper selection of all time, isn’t in the bottom 10 of cumulative savings. That’s because back in 2011 D’Skae kept him for \$7 when I have him estimated to go for \$44 (a \$37 savings). This means ol’ Josh Freeman has a lifetime cumulative keeper savings of \$18.

Cumulative Owner Rankings

Owners Ranked by Total Savings

Owner Cumulative Savings
Shokunbi 509
Skrzyskewski 362
Ready 301
Hartman 273
McShane 270
Higdon 269
Kane 235
Regan 213
Harrington 211
Olson 200
Thieneman 155
Matovina 97

Ola leads the list here. Fueled by years of keeping Arain Foster and Eddie Lacy.

Looking at Effective Draft Cash

As I touched on at the top of this post, D’Skae effectively had \$401 to work with for this year’s draft. How does that stack up to other guys this year, or any team from the past four years? To attempt to give some context for the ultimate performance of these teams I’ve included their year-end ranking in proportional wins.

Most Effective Draft Cash

Owner Year Effective Draft Cash PW Rank
Shokunbi 2012 430 8
Hartman 2011 426 6
Shokunbi 2013 415 5
Shokunbi 2011 405 1
Skrzyskewski 2015 401 NA
Higdon 2012 396 5
Thieneman 2013 394 9
McShane 2013 393 8
Shokunbi 2014 392 7
Hartman 2012 390 2

Note D’Skae coming in that fifth spot. His PW Rank is TBD.

Least Effective Draft Cash

Owner Year Effective Draft Cash PW Rank
Matovina 2013 281 12
Thieneman 2012 288 6
Thieneman 2011 295 11
Harrington 2015 297 NA
Hartman 2015 311 NA
Harrington 2011 313 2
Higdon 2015 314 NA
Matovina 2012 316 12
Olson 2012 318 3
Higdon 2011 319 9

Note here how three 2015 teams are on the list. Only time will tell how they fare.

The Relationship between Effective Draft Cash and PW

I included PW Rank in each of the above tables because I thought there would be some relationship between the two. Neither of those tables seem to indicate that there is. In fact, the correlation between Effective Draft Cash and Season Ending PW Rank is rather weak, just about -0.2. So just having the draft cash is one thing, knowing how to use it something else entirely…

Oh Well. 2015 Effective Draft Cash Rankings

Owner Effective Draft Cash
Skrzyskewski 401
Shokunbi 367
Regan 360
Kane 357
Thieneman 350
McShane 343
Olson 330
Matovina 329
Ready 320
Higdon 314
Hartman 311
Harrington 297