391: Keeper League Strategy

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ zacker Retha Jay Jake Zacher reefon What's up Everyone. It's JJ Zacharyesen, the editor in chief at fandel and at Number five dot com in this episode three hundred and ninety one of the Late Round podcast on many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. So last week I went to Twitter and I asked listeners what they'd want me to cover on this show before the season starts. I want to see if there was something that I was missing. A lot of you responded and talked about Keeper League Strategy, which is a show that I did before, but one that probably needs a little refresher. The other response that seemed pretty common was auction draft strategy. I did an episode on auction drafts years ago, but that also should probably be redone and updated. So I'm going to cover both of those topics over the next two weeks. Today's we're obviously talking about keeper leak strategy, as you saw before you hit play, and then next week I'll dig in to the auction stuff. With these two episodes, I want to put myself in your shoes and I want to walk through step by step how I make decisions when I'm selecting keepers, and then step by step how I make decisions before and during an auction draft. Today's show on keeper selection has a pretty basic process, but I hope it helps you with your own decisions. But before getting into things, I want to remind you guys that with the NBA coming back, Fandle has you covered. Just head to Fandel dot com and check out the NBA tab and join the three million dollar NBA Return Shot contest, which has a one million dollar first place prize. So just head to Fandel dot com or download the app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. So the first thing I do when I'm figuring out my keepers is that I check out the value of all players on my roster. Every league will handle keepers in a different way. Maybe there's no cost for your keepers at all. You just keep whoever you want, regardless of where you once drafted them. A lot of leagues will take the previous year round that you drafted that keeper, and you just keep that player in the same round the following year. Sometimes there's inflation involved too, so if you got Chris Godwin in round four last year, you can keep him in round four this year, and then maybe you're in an auction league where the cost per keeper is what you paid for that player the previous season. There are lots of variations to this, but it just goes to show that it's really really hard to give accurate advice when talking keepers, which is why I'd much rather talk about process. So take your roster and get the price for each player what would it cost to keep them? Now, your job is to ask yourself if you've got any clear and obvious values on your team. So let's just go back to Chris Godwin, where you can keep him for a fourth round price tag. Is he worth it there? Most likely yes, especially since the fourth round and a keeper league is actually more like the fifth, sixth, or maybe even the seventh round in a regular redraft league, given the number of keepers in your league. For example, if you're in a twelve team league where everyone's keeping two players, then that's twenty four players who are now off the board. That means the typical fourth round isn't really filled with typical fourth round players. There are probably a lot of fifth and sixth round players in that round. So when you're doing your evaluation on player value. What you can do is take every potential keeper on your roster, look at their keeper cost, and then compare that cost to what type of player would hypothetically be available at that cost. So with Chris Godwin, he's a fourth round keeper in this hypothetical league, you can keep him with your fourth round pick. That's obviously a value given he's a second rounder in regular leagues. So you know that there's some value being extracted there, but the value being extracted may not be as big as other keepers on your team. To figure that out, see who you'd potentially be drafting instead of Godwin in that spot. Maybe in the fourth round you can get someone like Jarvis Landry, and that's based on all the other players being kept in your league. Maybe you could get Kareem Hunt. But do that for all of your potential key take your consideration set, maybe it's three or four players, and compare them to the alternative of who you would pick in that round. Whichever players are giving you the best cost savings, or whichever players are showing the biggest gap in projection, those are likely the players that you want to keep. There's definitely a more scientific way to do this. Like I said at the top, I'm coming at this from the perspective that the majority of you aren't sitting there building projections, and you're not easily able to say I'm saving x amount of points by keeping this player at this cost. Instead, this is a very easy and intuitive way to just do things. So to recap so far, you should be figuring out the cost of your entire roster. Then you should start getting rid of and crossing off players who you know that you won't keep. Then with a handful of players that you might keep, lists some guys that you could hypothetically be getting at that cost. Whichever player seems to have the weakest alternatives versus what that player is providing, he's probably a front runner to be your keeper. And for the record, this is completely translatable to auction drafts too. If you're in a keeper league for an auction draft, then you should have historical drafts to look at. Use that to your advantage. Look back at drafts and find trends on how people spent at certain positions and on certain players. That's easily the best way to find values in an auction format like this. And keep in mind too that in an auction keeper league, prices are going to be inflated for the non keepers. It's no different than in a snake draft. Like I said before, the fourth round in a keeper league is going to be filled with players who are typically drafted after the fourth round. There's a natural inflation that's no different in an auction a fifteen dollars player and a typical two hundred dollars budget auction draft, he's going to be more expensive in a keeper format since teams are getting cost savings on their keepers, that means they have more money to spend. That drives up prices, just like it drives up prices in a snake draft. This very simple process should help with one of the most common questions that I get on keepers, which is a pretty high level one. It's a pretty general question, but it's along the lines of how do I know I should keep a really high scoring player at a slight discount versus one who's not as high scoring but appears to have a bigger discount, Or for example, how do you know if you should keep let's say, Dereck Henry for a first round pick versus me Cole Hardman for a sixteenth round pick. Henry gets drafted in the first round, so may not appear to be a huge value. Me Cole Hardman might go in round ten or something so to clear multiple round savings. And I think these are super valid questions, but they're also very very difficult to answer. But that's why we've got the process that I just talked through, so you can figure it out without having to ask a fantasy analyst. You're looking at two very different players with very different outlooks. But see what the alternative would be for your first round pick. If instead of keeping Derrick Henry, you know that you have the one o two in your Snake draft, and you know that Christian McCaffrey and Saquon Barkley are both going to be in the player pool, then by keeping Dereck Henry, you're foregoing an opportunity to get Saquon Barkley, who's better. So it wouldn't make any sense to keep Derek Henry in that scenario. No matter what. If that one oh two is someone like Josh Jacobs, then there's a gap in projection. Derek Henry is giving you x more points or has x better of an outlook than Josh Jacobs with me Cole Hardman, that sixteenth rounder might be someone like Robbie Anderson or something. You have to then ask yourself, is it better to get the advantage of Hardman versus Anderson or Henry versus Jacobs? And that's going to depend entirely on how bollish you are on both players. Now, a lot of you are going to have a keeper league decision that doesn't involve cost at all. You just keep players they're on your team, and the draft starts normally in round one with no keepers in that draft. It's a pretty common way of doing things. Realistically. I could say, just check out my rankings in whichever player I have ranked higher, you should keep that guy. But it's not that simple, and don't let a fantasy analyst tell you that it's that simple. Let's say that you're between Tyreek Hill and Josh Jacobs. Again, there's no cost related to these players. My rankings may have Tyreek Hill ranked ahead of Josh Jacobs, but you shouldn't automatically keep Tyreek Hill because what happens if a whole bunch of running backs are being kept, which would leave you without one of the potential true workhorse backs. What if there are a ton of wide receivers available, making Tyreek Hill a little bit more replaceable in this new player pool. This is where all the stuff that I've talked about on League Winners, which is back on episode three hundred and seventy nine, this is where that really comes into play. If you know that the typical RB two type running backs the guy's drafted at the end of round three and into round four, if you know they're typically not players that you want to bet on, then you shouldn't bet on them. So if you're in a scenario where Josh Jacobs, who's part of this group of running backs with true top ten upside, if you know that he'd be by far the best available running back if you didn't keep him, even though Tyreek Hill is ranked ahead of him, you should still likely be keeping Josh Jacobs. You can then fill your wide receiver spots with non Tyreek Hill players unless you just draft Tyreek Hill, But you're then creating a lineup that at least has a higher probability to hit at all positions rather than just the wide receiver position. That's why these questions are so difficult to answer. You guys, people will hit my mentions asking me should I keep Tyreek Hill or Josh Jacobs, And the answer is I need way more information. I need to know who else is being kept. I need to know what the landscape looks like. Because it's not like every other player in the player pool is going to be available to draft. Everything changes and if you have more than one keeper, if that's just one of the many decisions that you're making for that league, then it all just becomes even more convoluted. That's why having a general, easy to understand and implement process is so important. That's why I wanted to bring back this topic and this episode. And maybe this short podcast today didn't help you at all. Maybe I just stated the obvious. Maybe I even missed some things to consider. After all, there are tons and tons of keeper league structures. But hopefully after you listen to this you feel more confident in your own ability to make that keeper choice. That's really what this is all about. That's going to do it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you've yet subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you later in the week with the Mailbag episode.