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And you've missed my point. I know PPR raises the scoring for ALL players and I didn't say it benefits the low end player more. I said it benefits more low end players. Guys who aren't rosterable in SS are suddenly viable bye week starters or injury fill ins. So if you are a bad manager and you don't have proper depth, no problem in PPR, just pick up a scrub who has a chance at 5 rec for 40 yards.
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Let's stop and ask first if the statement about PPR benefiting more low end players and making more such players rosterable makes intuitive sense. After which we'll put it to the actual test.
Intuitively...
Any WR with receptions gains more fantasy points in PPR scoring than he does in standard. And a WR with more receptions has a bigger gain than does a WR with fewer receptions. Because of this, each WR will gain separation (i.e. value) relative to a WR that has fewer receptions.
Higher ranked WRs tend to have more receptions than lower ranked WRs even in standard scoring. It's not a universal truth, but it is a very widespread trend. And a trend that approaches a universal truth as the distance in the rankings separating the two particular players increases. That is, WR1 doesn't always have more receptions than WR2, but he probably always has more than WR30.
So applying what makes intuitive sense... the higher ranked WRs will tend to pick up more extra points from PPR than will lower ranked WRs since they tend to have more receptions. Starters will pick up more extra points from PPR than will the low end WRs that are the target of our statement. This would mean that in PPR, low end WRs would become worse replacements for starters since they are even further behind due to reception points. So intuition says the effect of PPR on low end WRs should be the opposite of the statement we're testing.
But there are some other factors, like that a lower ranked player can have more receptions than a higher, and just maybe there are enough such players actually moving up or down the rankings that the effect could drive our result. So, let's put it to the hard test then.
Checking actual results
I took the top 100 WRs in two scoring systems. Both are 1 per 10 decimal scoring for rush/rec, and -1 fumbles. The PPR league also has 1 pt PPR. I then sorted them by average fantasy points per game. Not perfect as you can have a guy like Kenny Britt who only played a few games, but easily good enough for our purposes. Then I used a VBD baseline of the 36th WR who would be the last starter in a normal league. Negative VBD for backups is fine, it's still able to express how far off the starters the player is, with more negative being a worse replacement.
VBD-S is the VBD versus WR 36 in standard scoring. VBD-PPR is the same for PPR scoring.
Rank VBD-S VBD-PPR1 8.9 10.92 8.0 9.43 5.8 9.34 5.8 6.45 5.2 6.16 4.2 5.77 4.1 5.68 3.9 5.29 3.9 5.010 3.8 4.911 3.7 4.912 3.4 4.013 3.2 4.014 3.2 3.615 3.2 3.416 2.9 3.117 2.7 2.918 2.3 2.719 2.2 2.720 2.2 2.621 2.2 2.422 1.7 2.323 1.6 2.124 1.3 2.025 1.3 2.026 1.1 1.627 0.7 1.528 0.6 1.029 0.5 0.730 0.5 0.731 0.4 0.632 0.4 0.633 0.4 0.534 0.1 0.435 0.1 0.136 0.0 0.037 -0.1 -0.438 -0.1 -0.739 -0.3 -0.940 -0.6 -1.041 -0.6 -1.142 -0.7 -1.243 -0.8 -1.544 -0.9 -1.545 -1.0 -1.746 -1.1 -1.847 -1.3 -2.048 -1.4 -2.049 -1.4 -2.050 -1.5 -2.051 -1.5 -2.152 -1.6 -2.153 -1.6 -2.554 -1.7 -2.555 -1.7 -2.556 -1.7 -2.557 -1.8 -2.758 -1.9 -2.759 -1.9 -2.960 -2.1 -3.061 -2.2 -3.562 -2.5 -3.763 -2.5 -3.964 -2.8 -3.965 -2.9 -4.066 -3.0 -4.267 -3.0 -4.368 -3.1 -4.469 -3.2 -4.770 -3.2 -4.771 -3.3 -4.772 -3.3 -4.873 -3.4 -5.074 -3.5 -5.075 -3.6 -5.176 -3.7 -5.177 -3.7 -5.378 -3.8 -5.479 -3.9 -5.480 -3.9 -5.581 -3.9 -5.682 -3.9 -5.683 -4.1 -5.784 -4.1 -5.785 -4.1 -5.786 -4.2 -5.887 -4.2 -5.888 -4.3 -5.889 -4.3 -5.890 -4.4 -5.891 -4.4 -6.692 -4.4 -6.693 -4.4 -6.794 -4.6 -6.795 -4.6 -7.196 -4.8 -7.197 -4.8 -7.298 -5.1 -7.399 -5.1 -7.4100 -5.3 -7.5The results match up with our intuition. The low end WRs suffer a bigger drop off in value in PPR leagues than in standard leagues. So the reality is the opposite of the statement, in PPR leagues a less skilled owner who didn't pay attention to receiver depth is going to be hurt worse by going to PPR than he was in standard scoring. If he has to go to waivers looking for a player to fill in on a bye or injury, the Expected Value of the points that player will score for him are a bigger drop off from his starter if the league is PPR.
What about RBs?
Now how does this apply to other positions? I'm not going to take the time to do the spreadsheet for RB, but intuitively, the trend that higher ranked RBs have more receptions than lower ranked RBs is probably weaker than for receivers. You have 3rd down backs who catch a lot of passes and you have starters who get pulled on passing downs who don't have many catches. I imagine there is still a trend there, but not as strong of one. I imagine PPR probably still favors higher ranked RBs generally, but there might be an area of the positional curve where it doesn't for awhile.
How does that affect us in the whole skill vs luck thing? We want to have a league setup where we want being able to determine value to win out over blindly following rules of thumb like the Stud RB Theory, we definitely want PPR if we want to favor luck.
However we possibly don't want to give PPR to RBs, or if we do give them less than WRs get. Because our biggest goal is to make there be more draft picks in early rounds where someone has to value all positions to correctly decide his correct pick, rather than just knowing one position is more valuable than the others the vast amount of time. Which in the case of standard scoring, that position is RB.
You can also accomplish much the same thing by adding more starting WR slots to your league. I do both. We actually start 4 WRs and 2 TEs, plus have a flex WR/TE, and we have staggered PPR of 1.0 for TE, .5 for WR and only .25 for RB. RBs are still valuable. But owners have to evaluate every position at every pick, and also judge what pockets of value are likely to be there in later rounds. I have leagues that I have gradually migrated away from standard setups, and I see the same thing every time... addition of a rule like PPR makes it obvious which owners were only being successful because they'd learned their concept of value from a rule of thumb or just from repeated exposure to a system. As soon as the system changed, they weren't able to correctly adjust their concept of value and it was obvious from results who the more skilled owners were.