#### 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 have adjusted keeper values to reflect what they actually cost the owner. This means: • Any alterations based on draft cash swapped in trades is not applied. • Even if Hartman didn’t properly account for them in the final salary selection I will have done so here. • As the council-of-draft-attenders can attest, my predictions for QBs, especially the top ones, were underestimated. I haven’t (yet) corrected my model. • These values reflect what I think the players would have been drafted for, not what I think they’re actually worth. • Estimated draft values don’t take into account the “Desperation Factor” that goes into drafting guys, particularly QBs as the last of the top tier guys go off the board. How else do you explain Eli going for \$60 this year?

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

#### 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
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