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Fantasy Football and Actuaries
Fantasy Football and Actuaries
Pure risk
Consider a thought experiment. Which RB would you choose in the first round?
Steady, Eddie
Mystery, ToMe
Avg Points
200
200
Real-world risk
The problem, however, is that we dont know what will happen. Lets consider our two running backs
again:
Steady, Eddie
Mystery, ToMe
Avg Points
200
?
How good does ToMe have to be in his good season to be comparable to Eddie? You already know that
he has to have 300 points to have the same average. Weve already seen that 300 points makes him
more valuable. Lets say 270 points.
Thats a crap ton of points of upside difference. Say that rather than both being RBs, Eddie is a wideout.
A low floor has to have a huge upside to make up for consistency.
Application
Does this mean we should take a wideout or a runner with our first pick next year? Youre the expert,
you tell me. This isnt an easy decision, and it is one of the most important ones. Heres a suggestion for
a method to guide you in your decision.
1. For each player, come up with a good season score and a bad season score, assuming they stay
healthy.
2. Put down a percentage that they have a good season, again assuming they stay healthy.
3. Based on historical data, look at the probability that a player of that position gets injured. You
can adjust the injury probability a little bit for each player, but not too much. We havent gotten
into it here, but there is so much recency bias as to who is injury prone. A player is basically
considered a high risk if they missed a significant time last year, particularly held them on your
team. (How are R Jennings/D Murray/J Maclin/Gronk holding up compared to the safe guys
like J Charles/every TE not named Gronk/Marshall doing?)
4. You can calculate the average (expected) number of points then as:
+
=
+ +
2
(This assumes an injured guy will miss half the year on average, including the game they were
hurt and the games they are questionable and dont play.)
5. Is the variance of risky players worth the lower expected value? Youre the expert.