Finding Value at Each Price Tier

This article was created by /r/MLS moderator and veteran MLS Fantasy blogger Andrew Crollard (@crollaa).

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This post will combine two ideas: PP90 and finding players who were underpriced this year based on last season’s production. PP90 is simply a player’s total points divided by the total minutes they played last season. I only included players who played at least 25% of last season’s minutes, which was 765 minutes.

Looking at undervalued players is the bulk of this post, as I believe it is more important than looking at raw PP90 because of salary cap restrictions. I ran a regression that looked to see what PP90 a player with a given price is expected to get (e.g a player priced at 11.0 should get about 6.55 PP90). The column labeled “difference between expected and actual” is the important one for these purposes. The larger the number, the more undervalued the player is.

There’s a catch. PP90 assumes that the player played every minute and that their rate of return remained the same. We know this is absolutely untrue for a few reasons: players get subbed in/out so don’t play 90 minutes, and maintaining a constant rate of return is basically so improbable that we know that assumption is wrong. However, this is the best way to compare players because it normalizes our measure of comparison so we are comparing apples to apples. We must couple this knowledge with our knowledge of who is starting (Higuain), who is a backup that will get starts when someone else is injured or away on national team duty (Cooper), and who comes on (Gordon) and off (Rosales) as substitutes.

If a cell is highlighted in red, it is within the top 20% for all players for that category. So, Clint Dempsey is in the top 20% for PP90 and total points whereas Diego Valeri is in the top 20% for all 5 categories listed.

FIRST TIER – priced 10.5 to 11.0

This is where most people start to build their team. Find the big guns who are likely to get the captains armband more often because they’re most likely to consistently produce big points. BWP comes in atop this list after tying the single season goal scoring record. I’m completely avoiding him this year as New York retooled everything behind him and I’ll eat my hat if he’s anywhere near as productive this year. Keane (in my team), Dempsey, Jorales (Javier Morales), Porales (Pedro Morales and also in my team), and Martins should all produce decent enough returns again this year. I also expect Zusi to bounce back from post world cup wariness and prove that he’s not over-priced as this analysis suggests.

I’m not a fan of forwards who mainly just score goals as their main fantasy points, this includes BWP, Dwyer, Wondo, and to a lesser extent Nguyen. It is just too boom or bust for my style of play which is all about minimizing variance while maximizing value. I do expect Higuain to bounce back this season and return close to the expected 6.26 PP90.

SECOND TIER – priced 9.5 to 10.0

Michael Bradley is the most overpriced player in the game (he should be priced at about $7.5). Castillo is a player that the MLS media has so incredibly overhyped his ability that it is carrying over into the fantasy game and tons of people are buying him despite being WAY over-priced. Valeri and Plata are injured for a while, but the rest of the guys should be solid picks. Brad Davis is currently in my team as Houston has a great schedule to start the season. I’d expect Espindola, Zardes, and Saborio to produce about the same as last year.

THIRD TIER – priced 8.5 to 9.0

Kendall Waston is the most under-priced player in the game and also had the highest PP90 last season of any player in this analysis. I don’t think he’ll be quite as dominant in fantasy as the numbers suggest, but I think he’ll still be a great fantasy pick and is definitely worth owning. Maidana is a player who could see an uptick in production this year if their new striker can finish some of the big chances he creates. Fernandez, Adi, Perez, Marshall, Hedges, Neagle, Silva, and Diaz are all guys I’m considering. As is true every year, the high-priced defensive midfielders like Beckerman, Alonso, and Feilhaber this year are players to avoid.

FOURTH TIER – priced 7.5 to 8.0

There’s not much I like at this price point. A lot of overpriced defenders and defensive midfielders are littered throughout. Ishizaki is a guy I expect to reproduce similar returns as last year and I like Shipp if he locks down the starting job. A couple high-risk high-reward guys I’m considering are Duka, Gil, Wenger, and Powers. Again, whoever prices defensive midfielders has no idea what they’re doing and avoid all the D-mids in this group; Teibert, Caldwell, Okugo, Pierazzi, Laba, Chara, Juninho, McCarty, and Kitchen.

FIFTH TIER – priced 6.5 to 7.0

This is where a lot of our filler players will come from. Make sure the guy you pick is a regular starter for his team before signing him. There’s lots of subs and spot-starters here that can be disappointing for fantasy. Not much I like from this tier. I might roll with Powell, Torres, Taylor, O’Neil, or Kah.

SIXTH TIER – priced 6.0 and below

Here’s the budget starters we want (if we can identify them). Most of them will be defenders, and that is fine since defenders’ main source of fantasy points are clean sheets so we are just trying to buy access to a team’s overall backline. There’s virtually no correlation from year to year about how many clean sheets a team will keep, so outside of the obviously good defensive teams like LA and SKC, we don’t really care about how many clean sheets the team got last year. Zimmerman, Palmer, and Jewsbury, are the ones I’m most interested in at this price point. A good way to keep up with these potential bargain basement finds is to read and participate on reddit.