A couple of My MoneyBall-esque Takes

In MoneyBall, there’s a famous soliloquy where Jonah Hill’s character Peter Brandt explains to Billy Beane that Major League Baseball teams should be trying to buy wins by buying runs. And that Baseball thinking is medieval and scouts judge all the wrong things about players and ignore productive players because of very human biases.

Moneyball is one of my favorite movies. I don’t have the direct translation of this to fantasy football terms. But one rough equivalency is that fantasy football managers should be trying to buy matchup wins via players that produce the most fantasy points.

Everyone knows this and it’s not rocket science but depending on how your league is structured there are some pitfalls to avoid and some conventional thinking should be questioned. I’ll discuss a few techniques to buy fantasy points and wins more effectively.

Trade Delay for Contenders Costs you Wins and likely Seeding

In most of the leagues that I participate in there are first round byes for the 1st and 2nd place teams. This week off shields you from volatility for the first week of the playoffs and gives you a better chance of winning your league. Every year I strive to make it to the top two of the regular season.

There is some really solid data that I came across after watching Pure Potential on youtube. Check out his content if you haven’t yet!

Seed represents playoff seed on the Y axis and it corresponds to Rank on the X which is the final place that a team finished. Number 1 seeds won their leagues 31.91% of the time or a little less than 1/3 of the time. I’m assuming this analysis looked at teams in standard playoff formats, 6 teams making the playoffs with the top 2 receiving byes.

Essentially, if you make it to the 2 seed you have a greater than 25% chance of winning your league. That’s significantly higher than the 3-6 seeds (14.43%, 11.05%, 8.23%, 7.89%).

In the spirit of that, if you are a contending team you should look to make your contending moves earlier. There is a line of thinking that contenders should wait until their league’s trade deadline and then make the move for a healthy and producing piece to put them over-the-top. But this thinking is misguided. Overpaying and making the move earlier would likely lead to more wins this season and thus have a bigger impact toward getting the team a bye week. You want the extra juice added by a contending asset early on so that you can win more matchups than you would have if you waited.

As an example I traded for David Montgomery in week 4 after it was clear Travis Etienne sucked and none of my other runningbacks picked up the slack. Until Monty got injured himself, he propped up my team and helped me make the playoffs. Yes, you run the risk of having your star asset get injured the earlier you grab him but that inherent injury risk is present for every player on your roster and I think the increased points early outweighs the risk.

Don’t wait until the trade deadline to get that impact player. Get him sooner and win more matchups.

Have Some Redundancy at the QB Position in Superflex

The stupidest thing that I see in superflex leagues is teams that only roster 2 starting QBS and then completely ignore the position otherwise. QBs are a hot commodity, you have to at least roster a Jameis Winston or a Joe Flacco or some other guy on the fringe of starting in addition to two starting options. Ideally, you have a strong QB1 like Lamar Jackson, a serviceable QB2 like Dak Prescott and a fringe QB2/QB3 in Geno Smith. The best case scenario for a 2 QB rostering team is winning a FAAB war with the rest of your league the week after your stud QB goes down with an injury…. it’s totally unnecessary, at least roster their backups if you are going to deploy this insane strategy.

At best, you waste significant FAAB and have a bottom tier starter to plug and play… The lost FAAB limits your waiver wire activities going forward. Obviously, this kind of planning applies to other positions too. I like having at least 2 starting quality TEs on my roster so I don’t have to scrounge the waiver wire there.

Golden RB Handcuffs

Rostering RB handcuffs, or backups is also usually wise given the amount of severe injuries we see yearly at the RB position. If you have Kyren Williams and can trade for Jarquez Hunter I would strongly consider that. Backup runningbacks are one injury away from being league winners. In year’s past Alexander Mattison was a golden handcuff for Dalvin Cook, but nowadays I think Tyler Algeier is the golden handcuff for Bijan Robinson. You can roster one of these handcuffs on your roster without having the main guy, but having both all but assures you of production and gives you piece-of-mind.

I think through a combination of proactive trading and smart roster construction that is not fragile to injury then you can build a contender and have a good shot at winning your league!

Stay Amped,

John

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