mingusrude
Footballguy
My league has been doing an auction draft for a few years, and being a little bit of a nerd, I realized that figuring out who to draft/buy is really an applied "Knapsack problem", which is a combinatorial optimization problem. Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on these types of problems.
Essentially, if you trust your projections and your auction values going in, you can figure out a mathematically ideal roster, and just target those players. So what I've done is written a program in some stats software that will maximize the projected points you can score in a season with a given budget. I feed in an excel sheet of players, projections, and my auction values, and it spits out a roster. Its pretty neat. Here is an example just based on ESPN's suggested auction values and projected stats (and standard ESPN roster and scoring settings):
Perfect "Balanced" Roster ($200 spread across all 16 spots)
Projected Score 109.8 pts/game
Matthew Stafford
Tony Romo
Adrian Peterson
Reggie Bush
Eddie Lacy
BenJarvus Green-Ellis
Calvin Johnson
Mike Wallace
Torrey Smith
Danario Alexander
Steve Johnson
Rob Gronkowski
Tony Gonzalez
49ers D
Seahawks D
Stephen Gostkowski
Perfect Top-Heavy 3RB Roster ($193 spent on starters, $1 on each bench spot)
Projected Score 113.5 pts/game
Staters:
Matt Ryan
Adrian Peterson
Arian Foster
Eddie Lacy
Mike Wallace
Jordy Nelson
Rob Gronkowski
49ers D
Stephen Gostkowski
Perfect Top-Heavy 3WR Roster (ESPN has a flex position. $193 spent on starters, $1 on each bench spot)
Projected Score 113.5 pts/game (yes, exactly the same as the 3RB roster)
Staters:
Matt Ryan
Reggie Bush
Adrian Peterson
Mike Wallace
Randall Cobb
Calvin Johnson
Rob Gronkowski
49ers
Stephen Gostkowski
Perfect Top-Heavy 2TE Roster ($193 spent on starters, $1 on each bench spot)
Projected Score 112.7 pts/game
Staters:
Matt Ryan
Reggie Bush
Adrian Peterson
Torrey Smith
Calvin Johnson
Rob Gronkowski
Jimmy Graham
49ers
Stephen Gostkowski
A couple observations.
Essentially, if you trust your projections and your auction values going in, you can figure out a mathematically ideal roster, and just target those players. So what I've done is written a program in some stats software that will maximize the projected points you can score in a season with a given budget. I feed in an excel sheet of players, projections, and my auction values, and it spits out a roster. Its pretty neat. Here is an example just based on ESPN's suggested auction values and projected stats (and standard ESPN roster and scoring settings):
Perfect "Balanced" Roster ($200 spread across all 16 spots)
Projected Score 109.8 pts/game
Matthew Stafford
Tony Romo
Adrian Peterson
Reggie Bush
Eddie Lacy
BenJarvus Green-Ellis
Calvin Johnson
Mike Wallace
Torrey Smith
Danario Alexander
Steve Johnson
Rob Gronkowski
Tony Gonzalez
49ers D
Seahawks D
Stephen Gostkowski
Perfect Top-Heavy 3RB Roster ($193 spent on starters, $1 on each bench spot)
Projected Score 113.5 pts/game
Staters:
Matt Ryan
Adrian Peterson
Arian Foster
Eddie Lacy
Mike Wallace
Jordy Nelson
Rob Gronkowski
49ers D
Stephen Gostkowski
Perfect Top-Heavy 3WR Roster (ESPN has a flex position. $193 spent on starters, $1 on each bench spot)
Projected Score 113.5 pts/game (yes, exactly the same as the 3RB roster)
Staters:
Matt Ryan
Reggie Bush
Adrian Peterson
Mike Wallace
Randall Cobb
Calvin Johnson
Rob Gronkowski
49ers
Stephen Gostkowski
Perfect Top-Heavy 2TE Roster ($193 spent on starters, $1 on each bench spot)
Projected Score 112.7 pts/game
Staters:
Matt Ryan
Reggie Bush
Adrian Peterson
Torrey Smith
Calvin Johnson
Rob Gronkowski
Jimmy Graham
49ers
Stephen Gostkowski
A couple observations.
- Adrian Peterson shows up on every roster above, even the "balanced" one with a strong bench
- Calvin Johnson shows up on all but the 3-RB top-heavy roster
- Gronkowski is a great value at TE
- Mike Wallace and Torrey Smith show up multiple times (and probably represent good values at their prices
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