In mid-September I wrote a column about auction-draft prices, in which I listed actual prices for Yahoo! 9-cat leagues and highlighted some over-valued and under-valued players.
Today’s column builds on those numbers by comparing actual Yahoo! auction prices with the ‘expected’ price each player should theoretically be worth. To arrive at ‘expected’ auction prices, I used the statistical projections found in Rotoworld’s exhaustive Draft Guide. I used these to calculate means and standard deviations for every category, then tallied up each player’s z-scores to build ‘projected rankings’ for the upcoming season.
You can find Rotoworld’s full projected numbers and ranks in the Draft Guide, but in this column they’re the invisible basis of my auction values. While compiling the numbers, it became clear that the ‘expected’ values for elite players is almost always lower than what they command at auction, and that late-round players are relatively undervalued. The trend is unmistakable in this following table:
My ‘approximate $ value’ is what a player should be worth in a vacuum, based upon cumulative z-scores in 9-cat leagues (with FG and FT percentages weighted). There’s about $5.06 available per z-score ‘point’, so Kevin Durant (with an adjusted z-score of 13.53) would be worth about $69.50. However, owners in 12-team Yahoo! auctions have been spending an average of $7.03 per z-score ‘point’ on first-round picks, and about $8.26 in the second round. I dub this a player’s ‘realistic’ value, and it bumps Durant up to a league-leading $95.14 valuation. Anthony Davis is the second-priciest option at $82.91, followed by LeBron James ($75.55), Chris Paul ($73.85) and Stephen Curry ($73.83).
Using $5.06 as the baseline for expected value per ‘point’, we once again see the premium paid for elite options in the first few rounds:
Round |
Actual average $ per ‘point’ |
1 | $7.03 |
2 | $8.26 |
3 | $6.55 |
4 | $5.18 |
5 | $4.11 |
6 | $3.42 |
7 | $2.40 |
8 | $1.38 |
9 | $1.03 |
10 | $1.08 |
11 | $1.30 |
12 | $1.86 |
13 | $5.54 |
I should emphasize that this doesn’t mean Kevin Durant and other elite players are being overvalued! Their escalating prices are a function of supply and demand -- there are plenty of mediocre players available in the $2-$5 range, but only a handful of guys who can carry your team on a weekly basis. I’m one of many owners who is comfortable paying top-dollar to land Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, James Harden, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, etc. (The jump to $5.54 in the final round is because, while you can’t spend less than $1, these players’ z-score values were a fraction of a point, right around 0.18.)
However, this does once again highlight the potential to routinely steal undervalued players in the middle and late rounds of your draft. If you draft conservatively in the early rounds, refusing to spend half of your budget on a superstar, you could easily scoop up guys like Mike Conley, Derrick Favors, Marcin Gortat, Thaddeus Young and Gordon Hayward -- all known quantities in fantasy leagues, but unlikely to command a premium in auctions (I would have included Kenneth Faried, Terrence Jones and Markieff Morris, but their draft stocks have all soared over the past few months).
I showed last week, in my ‘Means and Z-scores’ column, that shooting guards as a group are the least valuable position in standard fantasy leagues. I was curious if that conclusion would hold up during today’s auction-draft analysis (based as it is on projected stats, not last season’s results). Using the top-156 players as my population, I tallied players by their positions to determine average auction prices and z-scores, which I used to create an overall picture of their ‘value’ (or lack thereof). After assigning a single position (PG, SG, SF, PF or C) to each player, there were 33 point guards, 29 shooting guards, 29 small forwards, 32 power forwards and 33 centers.
Sure enough, shooting guards were once again the least-valuable category on an aggregate basis, with an adjusted z-score of 0.95. They were also dirt-cheap to obtain with an average cost of $9.50, and that low price-tag helped make them a relative bargain -- their price of $9.99 per z-score ‘point’ is the best value of any position. While James Harden, Klay Thompson, Victor Oladipo and Bradley Beal may get all the fantasy attention, there’s tremendous value to be found in guys like Wes Matthews, Danny Green, Jimmy Butler, Jodie Meeks and my personal favorite sleeper-SG, Kyle Korver.
Centers are the next-cheapest, but they prove to be the worst value of any position -- you’re paying a premium here for position eligibility (Yahoo! leagues require two starting Cs) as well as category-specific production (blocks, FG% and to a lesser extent rebounds are all heavily concentrated in the pool of available Cs). Anderson Varejao is typically available for a buck at the end of drafts, which erases the risk of his potential backup role and DNPs, and guys like Marcin Gortat, Jordan Hill and Gorgui Dieng seem perpetually undervalued in auctions.
The $16.30 average for small forwards isn’t unreasonable given their solid fantasy production. They were the most productive fantasy category in my analysis last week, but ranked third based upon this week’s numbers (because I’m basing this on projections of next year’s top-156 fantasy players, while last week’s rankings were the top-175 from the 2013-14 season). Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Kawhi Leonard form an elite SF core that raises the category mean, but there’s no shortage of solid options after the first few rounds -- Nicolas Batum is a sneaky 9-cat player, toward the middle rounds you can pick between Rudy Gay, Chandler Parsons, Gordon Hayward and Trevor Ariza...and there are plenty of undervalued options (Terrence Ross, Matt Barnes, P.J. Tucker, Jeff Green) available later on.
Power forwards were middle-of-the-pack, averaging $15.60 with a solid z-score value of 1.55, but it’s the point guards who emerged as clear-cut ‘value picks’ in this analysis. Yes, they came at an absolute premium (the average PG price of $21.71 was 33% more expensive than an average SF, and a whopping 128% more expensive than an average SG!). Even those high prices didn’t prevent PGs from being solid values, however, as (despite the 9-cat settings) their average '$ value’ was second-best behind shooting guards. We’re living in a golden age for NBA point guards. CP3, Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook, John Wall are all first-round picks, the second and third rounds features Kyrie Irving, Kyle Lowry, Damian Lillard, Ty Lawson, Goran Dragic and Mike Conley. The quality picks don’t stop there, either, continuing with Michael Carter-Williams, Derrick Rose, Deron Williams, Kemba Walker, Ricky Rubio, Jeff Teague, Isaiah Thomas, and many more. I typically try to acquire a PG in the first few rounds, but there are enough fallback options that it’s not the end of the world if you miss out on the elite options.
Note: I occasionally refer to ‘adjusted z-scores’ in this column...if you’re curious what I mean by that, such as how I adjusted them and why, you can email me or (better yet) send me a Direct Message on Twitter! I’ll be tweaking this column throughout the week, as there are some minor details I haven’t yet had time to address. Also, if you missed Mike Gallagher’s live chat on Monday, you can replay it here. We’ll be alternating chats every Monday at 2pm this season, so mark your calendars.
Here’s one more table for those who are interested…it’s one of four which I created, showing relative auction values in 9-cat and 8-cat for both 12-team/13-player and 12-team/15-player leagues. If you’re interested in seeing the other tables, which I used as a stepping-stone for what you’ve just read, send me a message and I’ll send them your way!
