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With this in mind, we’ve begun a “Trend of the Day” series. Every weekday we’ll walk our subscribers through an important trend for that day’s slate of games.
I noticed in our Player Models today that we’ve had several players who have seen a really big increase in their salaries on DraftKings lately. We’ll get to them specifically in a moment, but this often happens late in the season — between injuries and a variety of factors, we see roles changes and players quickly gain or lose value. Two of the biggest examples lately of this have been the Grizzlies and Heat; the latter is playing today.
Now, I’m not necessarily expecting players with big increases in salary to be great values throughout that whole change. Instead, what I’m hoping to find is whether we’re overrating their hit in value as their salary increases. I know I’ve read and even said myself at times, “His salary has gone up way too much now; he’s no longer playable.” Often, these claims aren’t based on any data, and our biases or misconceptions can possibly get in the way. So, let’s check it out — do these players lose their value?
Trend: Players with a Large Increase (+$1,000) in Salary in the Last Month
Step 1: Projections > Proj Minutes > Set “25 to 48”
We, of course, want only fantasy-relevant players in our trend. As you can see, it’s valuable simply just getting players who are going to play. That’s obvious, but it also shows some pricing inefficiencies. We’ll use the +2.04 as a control of sorts and see how far it goes down once we add in the salary increase. But first…
Step 2: Projections > Proj Usage > Set “17 to 40”
Not much change in Plus/Minus, but it’s just another quick filter to make sure our current matches will be ones we want.
And now the salary increase filter…
Step 3: Fantasy Month Filters > Month Salary Change > Set “1000 to 4200”
This is very actionable — the Plus/Minus dips a full point, but it is still net positive and actually a lot better than I hypothesized it would be before doing this trend. I think this may point to the idea that we are possibly (probably) overrating salary increases and our biases are likely getting in the way. Should they theoretically lose value? Sure, but the salary change is happening for a reason — they were crushing value in the first place. And the data says, the salary increase isn’t enough to lose that value completely.
Okay, before we leave, the current matches for tonight:
