As a Finance major in college I spent a lot of time studying concepts that often seemed so abstract and ridiculous that I constantly questioned the validity of their use in the “real world” – I mean, I haven’t had to delve too deeply into the world of advanced calculus since being in the “real world,” though apparently it was important enough to waste spend four semesters of college learning it.
Though I must admit, I did pick up a few things while I was there that have served me well. The concept of opportunity cost is one that has stuck with me over the years, as it applies to much of what we do throughout our daily lives.
Should I drive to work or bike? If I bike I save money on gas and get some exercise, but it will cost me the additional time it takes me to travel via bike. Pretty simple, right?
Though on the surface it is certainly a very basic premise, many of us tend to push the notion aside when making decisions. This might be as small as not factoring in the extra time needed on the treadmill to account for the dessert you had with lunch or as extensive as accepting a job offer in a new city without factoring in the cost of living there.
I’d like to think that we all devote more attention to our DFS lineups while we’re constructing them each week, but the allure of the shiny, expensive players always play a factor. Running a stars-and-scrubs lineup can certainly work when the prices are right, but when your star players fail to perform it can be disastrous.
Looking specifically at the wide receiver position, over the past weekend we witnessed a number of mid-tier wide receivers prove they’re more than capable of producing elite production. If you rostered Julio Jones only to see your teams decimated by Allen Robinson in head-to-head matchups this weekend, you know exactly what I’m talking about. With all of this in mind, are these premium price wide receivers even worth their prohibitive price?
Showing their worth
Expensive players just score more – it’s not that unique of a concept. But even more than that, we want the consistency that an expensive player will generally bring to our lineups.
As we can see, not only do wide receivers priced at $8,500 or more on DraftKings score a good deal more points, they also meet their value at a more consistent rate than any other pricing tier. Additionally, they provide us with that big-game potential we crave.
While you are obviously paying for it, 27% of these top-tier wide receivers produced 30-plus point games over the past year and a half. These big games can help cover for weaker spots in your cash lineups or vault you to the top of tournament leaderboards.
Looking deeper sheds some light on when it makes more sense to roster these top-shelf wide-outs though.
During the first half of the season, the gap between the $7,500-$8,400 group and the top-tier players shrinks quite a bit. What’s even more telling is the gap between the $6,500-$7,400 wide receivers and the top-tiered guys. During the first half of the season, on average, you were only gaining a little over three DK points by rostering a player that costs thousands more. That’s a big opportunity cost, as it’s likely the difference between having Adrian Peterson or Danny Woodhead.
You’ll notice that while the consistency decreases by 6% over the yearly average, the ability to produce big, 30-plus point games remains. This, combined with the increased consistency of the mid-tiers, speaks to the potential viability of a more balanced wide receiver lineup in cash games, while paying up for the big names still has merit in tournaments.
Taking a look at the second half of the season, we see the top-priced wide-outs begin to pull away. As the season progresses, DraftKings pricing seems to tighten up at the top. Players like Calvin Johnson, Dez Bryant, and A.J. Green all spent time in the top tier last season, but largely settled in at the tier below. While these three players possess immense upside, they are prime examples of players that possess an amount of risk and variability that make them overpriced near the top of the board.
We also saw some interesting movement between the mid-tiers, as many young players or players facing turmoil found themselves underpriced in the $5,500-$6,400 category – think Allen Robinson, Amari Cooper or Brandon Marshall. By the end of the year, this caliber of player will move up into the higher echelons. With these pricing discrepancies proving quite common early on – Alshon Jeffery, Eric Decker, and Emmanuel Sanders are just a few of the other players who’ve found themselves in this tier at the beginning of the season in the past – it makes it even tougher to pay up for these players early on.
What to look for when you do pay up
There will always be weeks when we can find enough value – whether due to a rash of injuries like has happened recently, role changes, etc. – to warrant using one of the premium guys in our lineups. So other than the usual things we’d look for in a wide receiver – matchup, implied point total, etc – one thing that has a decent correlation to this top group of wide-outs is a price decrease over the previous month.
While this is generally a good thing for most players, it has proven especially fruitful for these high-priced players (with one player excluded – Calvin Johnson’s “decoy” game from last year was removed).
So if you’re like me and had Julio Jones in all of your lineups this week, it might seem like a great idea to never pay up for a wide receiver again. Just take a deep breath and remember, two of the four top-tier guys met value this week – meaning things went about how you’d expect them to go based on averages from the past couple of years. Anytime you can afford the cost of one of the premium receivers without breaking the bank – or starting Matt Hasselbeck to find enough savings – it’s never a bad idea to add them to your lineup.
