In this week’s volume of Monitoring the Minutes I thought we’d change it up a bit. After doing my usual research for this week’s column, it became clear that there weren’t any major meaningful changes to the minute allocations of fantasy relevant players. So I figured what better time to take a broader overview of how minutes can affect a player’s potential fantasy output on a night to night basis.
Every week in the intro, we make a point to remind you that all minutes aren’t created equal – pace, playing style and many other variables can play just as large of a role. But at the end of the day, extra playing time is a good thing for a player’s value. To give you a visual, let’s turn to our Trends tool. We’re going to query our database for players that have averaged less than 20 minutes per game on the season and are projected to play at least 30 minutes.
Not a bad Plus/Minus at just over +4.6. You might be wondering why we would start here – why look for players under 20 minutes a game and why are we only looking at player’s projected for at least 30 minutes per game? What I’m trying to capture with this query is how players that are receiving minutes associated with a reserve role are functioning when we project them to receive a large boost in playing time. Essentially, we’re looking at how the average backup player performs when they receive a spot start.
To take it a bit further and attempt to get a better representation of this type of player, I’m going to reduce the field to only those priced between $3,000 and $4,500 – the type of player we generally see staring right at us when we’re tinkering with our lineups right before lineup lock when injury news hits.
Here we see a nice bump in terms of the Plus/Minus and a little boost to consistency as well. We’re presented with this situation almost every night around lineup lock time and there’s a reason why everyone is trying to cram these value plays into their lineup. The pricing is just not reflective of the projected court time and production we’re anticipating from such players. Now, does that mean we should throw anyone promoted to starting status into our lineups? Here’s where I think our tools can really help give you an edge.
We want to attempt to determine what the profile of a successful spot starter is, so that when faced with a decision and little time near lineup lock, we can make the necessary adjustments. What do we know are some of the key ingredients to a successful fantasy night? Playing time and usage rate.
One thing we provide along with both minute and fantasy point projections for subscribers on our Player Models page is a projected usage rate. Luckily, this field is also something we can include as a part of a query within our Trends tool. Let’s look at how players that we’ve projected a usage rate of 15% and above have performed.
Now let’s compare that to those that we’ve projected to have a usage rate of lower than 15%.
The bump in Plus/Minus isn’t huge, but the consistency you’re gaining certainly is.
So, we’re targeting cheap options with a projected bump in usage rate and playing time … not rocket science, I know. Stay with me though.
Each week in this column we preach that minutes aren’t created equal, as factors such as how fast a team plays can affect their value and I think the trend below is a perfect visualization of this.
We’re going to look at how a team’s pace affects the players we’ve identified above, in particular the two extremes of the spectrum. First we have the players from our sample population that are members of a team with a pace of at least 100.
Next, we have the players from our same sample population that are members of a team that has a pace of 97 or less.
Not huge sample sizes to work with, but a good visualization of just how important other factors can have on impacting a player’s potential production, even when we project them to receive additional court time.
Hopefully this overview proves helpful next time you’re faced with a last minute lineup decision; particularly if you’re considering blowing up a lineup you’ve spent all day perfecting to fit in that last minute value. Utilizing our tools you’ll have an edge on your opponents in identifying which late-arriving value option may be worth that last minute tinkering.
