How to Create League-Winning Scenarios in the MFL10 of Death

#1 By: RotoViz, May 24th, 2018 14:20

Originally published at: http://rotoviz.com/2018/05/create-league-winning-scenarios-mfl10-of-death/
The 2018 MFL10 of Death took place last week. The brainchild of Pat Thorman, it features a Who’s Who of the top fantasy experts, including Charles Kleinheksel, Denny Carter, J.J. Zachariason, Mike Clay, Rumford Johnny, Ryan Forbes, Rich Hribar, Sigmund Bloom, Raymond Summerlin, and Scott Barrett. Fortune has favored RotoViz, with Charlie taking down the…

#2 By: Dennis, July 31st, 2018 20:35

this was sooo good @FF_Contrarian thanks a lot. i appreciated that you got into the writing itself as well as the great analysis with poetry like:

The sheer volume of players rostered at the position creates a heat shimmer with the promise of an optimized-lineup oasis. But this isn’t the case.

I'm in a few redraft leagues that are 0.5ppr. u recommended in the past that one even with .5ppr if u can start two flex youd essentially go zeroRB to start 4 WRs. and i did the last 2 seasons with really shockingly good results.
so i was soo surprised when u and Dave essentially advocate starting 4 RBS in 0.5ppr this season. do u think u can still create this type of league winning upside stocking ur starting team this way?

#3 By: Alex, August 1st, 2018 13:12

best ball leagues lend themselves to CBD even more than redraft formats.

Sorry if common knowledge, but what does CBD mean here?

#4 By: devinmci, August 1st, 2018 21:19

Usually it stands for cannibidiol, but in this case it means contingency-based drafting, as used earlier in the paragraph.

#5 By: Shawn Siegele , August 3rd, 2018 14:03

Thanks, @JollyG804. It's certainly not that you can't win .5 PPR with Zero RB. I've had plenty of success with Zero RB in multiple formats over 2016 and 2017, two seasons where you supposedly couldn't win with it.

Part of what Dave and I were doing was making sure that our draft assumptions across teams would account for some of this year's ADP trends, and part of our plan was to make sure we were keeping an open mind on draft strategy.

For example, a lot of what we do with Zero RB is target RB options in the middle and late rounds who are likely to destroy ADP. This tends to be a plan that is deployed in concert with Zero RB, but it's also viable in a situation where you start with RBs early.

Using the target list that I publish every year, I usually end up with one and often multiple Top 10 RBs. If you marry that with Zero RB in a PPR format, you tend to dominate your league. If you do it with a balanced start in a .5 PPR, then you have potentially elite flex options.

#6 By: dkpsports, August 3rd, 2018 20:30

Thank you for the response @FF_Contrarian, I also heard the podcast and was a little confused.

Since the FFDraftPrep software (also paging @dcaban) doesn't explicitly make recommendations for scoring settings, team size, or # of starters, is it possible to get some recommendations on how to setup our positional preference?

I know zero RB is particularly strong in 2 RB, 3 WR + 1 flex formats with PPR. 2+2+2 and 0.5 PPR leans more RB? Or was that just as an exercise, not an overall recommendation?

#7 By: Shawn Siegele , August 4th, 2018 13:42

Exactly. I really like Zero RB for 2-RB, 3-WR, 1-Flex in PPR. Most drafters underestimate the importance of that 3rd WR on overall roster construction. I also prefer Zero RB in almost any other PPR league. (I tend to play these leagues at 65-70% Zero RB.)

Half-PPR with 2-2-2 is more balanced, which isn't to say that a WR-heavy approach won't work - I've had a lot of success with it in these formats and while watching RB-heavy drafters really struggle under the weight of RB injuries - but you can have success with a balanced or RB-heavy approach as well. In these leagues, I like to focus on upside and individual-player scenarios. And opposed to seeing this as a swing-for-the-fences approach, I see it as a safe approach. (For example, if you draft low-upside RBs based on early-season opportunity, you really have nowhere to go but down. Even the floor you're hoping for isn't really there, because the starter can get hurt and he can lose significant touches to a talented backup.)

Very few total players should be on your board as legitimate options, so in a balanced league, you don't necessarily have to make difficult choices each round. (Or it will be a difficult choice because you have 2 players as screaming values and everyone else as Do Not Draft, so the choice between those two guys might be tricky.)

In terms of how this relates to the tools, I always like to use the Sim Scores and season-level similarity projections to get a sense of which players are the most flex-viable in each round.

You can go to the "Scoring" tab in the Fantasy Stat Explorer to select PPR, .5, or Standard, and the player projections will use that scoring system.

If you change your settings to Half-PPR (the above is full), then you can compare across positions and make decisions about what positions you like in the Flex and what individual players you like in the Flex.

That helps give you a big picture look at roster construction, but you also want to go beyond that and see how current opportunity influences the decisions. So, if you have 2-3 guys in Round 5, 2-3 in Round 6, 2-3, in Round 7, you can go to the Projection Machine and project the teams with those players. (You can also refer to the Team Projection articles we have coming out now and over the next several weeks.) Investigating your target players in a little more depth should help you understand the key decisions you'll make in your draft. And you'll want to project those players using a variety of different assumptions, so you get a full picture of how small changes in how a team operates (or deals with injuries) can have a big influence on final fantasy scoring.

I strongly recommend doing these projections yourself as opposed to relying on a rankings/projection sheet from a random expert. You don't know what assumptions they've made - for example, a lot of projections are "most likely scenario" which is almost worthless - and if those assumptions are relevant to the type of roster you're trying to create.

You can test the potential for creating different roster constructions in the Draft Dashboard as well, drafting from different positions and creating different league assumptions. I'll bring @dcaban in to discuss those a little more...

#8 By: Dennis, August 4th, 2018 18:20

i especially loved the part on the podcast about Tevin's built in upside. ive changed my avatar off of kamara who i dont anticipate winding up with much this year. luckily he was my most owned player last year cuz of some random expert's redraft rankings i used. thanks Shawn. hope you're doing that ranking again.

but for now im gonna try to do this myself. its daunting

#9 By: Ginoooooobliii, August 4th, 2018 21:52

Thanks for this wonderful write up Shawn. I am in a 12 team PPR league (1pt PPR) with 2 RB 2 WR and 2 FLEX. This time I know I am picking from #7. League usually tends to be pretty RB heavy. Even in trades, RBs are valued very high.

Based on STAT Explorer, and following your instructions.. I see that RBs 13-24 in general seem very shaky. There are of course exceptions e.g. CMC. Based on this when I draft, I find it best to get 2 of the top 12 RBs if I can, and then pound WRs until Rd 6. Essentially skipping the entire 13-24 tier of RBs. A few high upside choices there are Tevin Coleman, Burkhead, Kerryon Johnson etc. I will try to do my own projections on these choices over the coming days.

I usually end up with Barkley/CMC or Kamara/Freeman combo in Rd1/2. Diggs/ Coop/Sanders/Watkins as WRs in Rds 3-6.

I guess my question is how would you approach a roster with 2 2 2 in 1 pt PPR?

Second, one challenge in our league is that we only 6 BN spots. This kind of limits stashing very many upside picks.

I was curios in your MFL 10 of death, what your pick would have been if you hadn't taken AB in Rd1. Also, what you would have done in Rd 4 (since you already took a TE in Rd 3) assuming it weren't TE premium.

#10 By: DaveCabanFF, August 4th, 2018 22:18

@dkpsports @FF_Contrarian

Though it's hard to contextualize visually, the Dashboard is taking into account all of the items you mentioned such as scoring settings, team size, and # of starters. (The ADP source is informing the scoring settings). In fact, those are three of the most significant components that it's looking at. Behind the scenes, the tool is factoring in those items and a couple of others (like players remaining in each tier vs starters at each position, players already taken by teams) as well as the positional preferences into the Weighted Preferences portion of the tool.

So in a STD league with 12 teams that starts 4 RBs, you'd get different percentages in the graph (even with the same preferences set on the settings tab) than you would in a 10 team PPR league that started only 2. So there's math going on in the background that helps to steer the user in a direction that makes sense given those factors while still allowing them to indicate their personal preferences.

I approach it like this: If I think that one position needs to be the cornerstone of my team and is imperative to build around, I set that one for 60 - 70%. If there are two positions that are equally important, but should be my focus, I pop those to around 35% each. If I'm cool with punting on a position, I'll set it to 5 or so percent. This way, it can still let me know if there's something crazy going on like a Tier 1 TE being available in the sixth.

Hope that helps. It's kind of hard to explain exactly how everything is going on cause all of the math is dependent on so many variables. Its kind of like a humongous spider web where all these different strands are connected and pulling on one reshapes the web a little bit.