Keeper Analysis

There are three types of owners in our league:

The owner who is plotting his keepers before the end of the previous regular season (Regan, Ready, Harrington, Olson, D’Skae).
The owner who starts thinking sometime during the summer who he’s going to keep (Kane, McShane, Hartman, Higdon).
The owner who decides the morning of the draft who he’s keeping (Thieneman, Matovina).

Whoops, I’m sorry four types:

The owner who thinks he’s pulling a fast one on everyone by lying about who he’s keeping as if everyone has organized their draft strategy around Teddy Bridgewater being off the board, then ends up up paying a late fee for switching it after the deadline passes (Ola).

I bring this up because I have come to believe that keeper selection is the most important decision you will make as an owner in any given year. As a preview to the rest of the post consider this: Russell Wilson cost D’Skae $22 this year. My estimates for his draft value was somewhere around $58. Jeremy Hill cost him $8, whereas my estimate for what Jeremy Hill would have gone for was $73. So D’Skae saved $101 using his keepers this year. Effectively his draft cash was $401, not $300. What was yours?

Things to keep in mind:

I have adjusted keeper values to reflect what they actually cost the owner. This means:
- Any alterations based on draft cash swapped in trades is not applied.
- Even if Hartman didn’t properly account for them in the final salary selection I will have done so here.
As the council-of-draft-attenders can attest, my predictions for QBs, especially the top ones, were underestimated. I haven’t (yet) corrected my model.
These values reflect what I think the players would have been drafted for, not what I think they’re actually worth.
Estimated draft values don’t take into account the “Desperation Factor” that goes into drafting guys, particularly QBs as the last of the top tier guys go off the board. How else do you explain Eli going for $60 this year?

I will not give away too much of my methodology apart from saying I used a slightly more sophisticated technique than you would have seen in your stats class.

Best and Worst Keeper Selections

The Top 10 Best Keeper Selections, Based on Dollars Saved

Owner	Year	Player	Position	Estimated Cost	Kept Value	Savings
Shokunbi	2012	Arian Foster	RB	107	16	91
Hartman	2011	Michael Vick	QB	99	8	91
Shokunbi	2011	Arian Foster	RB	94	9	85
Thieneman	2013	Doug Martin	RB	101	17	84
Shokunbi	2013	Arian Foster	RB	88	23	65
Skrzyskewski	2015	Jeremy Hill	RB	73	8	65
Regan	2014	Demaryius Thomas	WR	82	21	61
Higdon	2012	Julio Jones	WR	82	23	59
Shokunbi	2015	Eddie Lacy	RB	101	44	57
Harrington	2012	Cam Newton	QB	64	8	56

Lot’s of Arian Foster in here. Ola certainly rode that $2 pickup for a long time. Also, shout out to Mike Vick.

The Top 10 Worst Keeper Selections, Based on Dollars Saved

Owner	Year	Player	Position	Estimated Cost	Kept Value	Savings
Regan	2013	Josh Freeman	QB	7	26	-19
Thieneman	2012	Maurice Jones-Drew	RB	68	86	-18
Higdon	2015	Philip Rivers	QB	32	49	-17
Matovina	2013	Ben Roethlisberger	QB	14	28	-14
Matovina	2015	Rob Gronkowski	TE	42	48	-6
Matovina	2013	Andre Johnson	WR	49	54	-5
Thieneman	2011	Wes Welker	WR	28	33	-5
Harrington	2015	Cam Newton	QB	26	29	-3
Ready	2015	LeSean McCoy	RB	60	63	-3
Regan	2012	Aaron Rodgers	QB	99	100	-1

Yuck. Josh Freeman. Interesting and important to note that with the exception of Freeman these picks are bad because the owners kept them at values close to market rate. It’s an easy way to ensure you retain that player, but in many cases you could get them for close to what it would have cost to keep.

Cumulative Player Savings

Especially with the best selections, we see a few players show up time and again. We can guess at this point which player has resulted in the most cumulative savings for their owners, but what about the rest of the field?

Highest Cumulative Savings by Player

Player	Total Savings	Times Kept	# of Different Owners
Arian Foster	266	4	2
LeSean McCoy	167	5	1
Demaryius Thomas	163	4	1
Julio Jones	152	4	1
Michael Vick	152	3	1
Jamaal Charles	150	4	2
Marshawn Lynch	148	4	2
Cam Newton	127	4	1
Eddie Lacy	103	2	1
Randall Cobb	95	3	1

What I find the most interesting here is that our #2 cumulative savings player, LeSean McCoy, also ranks as the 9th worth individual keeper selection of all time. This year Ready paid $3 above what he could have expected to pay on the open market.

Lowest Cumulative Savings by Player

Player	Total Savings	Times Kept	# of Different Owners
Maurice Jones-Drew	-18	1	1
Philip Rivers	-17	1	1
Andre Johnson	-5	1	1
Wes Welker	1	2	1
Aaron Rodgers	4	2	1
Julius Thomas	5	1	1
Cecil Shorts	6	1	1
Malcom Floyd	6	1	1
Matt Cassel	6	1	1
Steve Smith	6	1	1

What I like about this table is that it has a lot of good players on it. They just aren’t good keeper selections. It is kind of strange that Josh Freeman, by far the worst one-time keeper selection of all time, isn’t in the bottom 10 of cumulative savings. That’s because back in 2011 D’Skae kept him for $7 when I have him estimated to go for $44 (a $37 savings). This means ol’ Josh Freeman has a lifetime cumulative keeper savings of $18.

Cumulative Owner Rankings

Owners Ranked by Total Savings

Owner	Cumulative Savings
Shokunbi	509
Skrzyskewski	362
Ready	301
Hartman	273
McShane	270
Higdon	269
Kane	235
Regan	213
Harrington	211
Olson	200
Thieneman	155
Matovina	97

Ola leads the list here. Fueled by years of keeping Arain Foster and Eddie Lacy.

Looking at Effective Draft Cash

As I touched on at the top of this post, D’Skae effectively had $401 to work with for this year’s draft. How does that stack up to other guys this year, or any team from the past four years? To attempt to give some context for the ultimate performance of these teams I’ve included their year-end ranking in proportional wins.

Most Effective Draft Cash

Owner	Year	Effective Draft Cash	PW Rank
Shokunbi	2012	430	8
Hartman	2011	426	6
Shokunbi	2013	415	5
Shokunbi	2011	405	1
Skrzyskewski	2015	401	NA
Higdon	2012	396	5
Thieneman	2013	394	9
McShane	2013	393	8
Shokunbi	2014	392	7
Hartman	2012	390	2

Note D’Skae coming in that fifth spot. His PW Rank is TBD.

Least Effective Draft Cash

Owner	Year	Effective Draft Cash	PW Rank
Matovina	2013	281	12
Thieneman	2012	288	6
Thieneman	2011	295	11
Harrington	2015	297	NA
Hartman	2015	311	NA
Harrington	2011	313	2
Higdon	2015	314	NA
Matovina	2012	316	12
Olson	2012	318	3
Higdon	2011	319	9

Note here how three 2015 teams are on the list. Only time will tell how they fare.

The Relationship between Effective Draft Cash and PW

I included PW Rank in each of the above tables because I thought there would be some relationship between the two. Neither of those tables seem to indicate that there is. In fact, the correlation between Effective Draft Cash and Season Ending PW Rank is rather weak, just about -0.2. So just having the draft cash is one thing, knowing how to use it something else entirely…

Oh Well. 2015 Effective Draft Cash Rankings

Owner	Effective Draft Cash
Skrzyskewski	401
Shokunbi	367
Regan	360
Kane	357
Thieneman	350
McShane	343
Olson	330
Matovina	329
Ready	320
Higdon	314
Hartman	311
Harrington	297