Maybe it is because I don't fully understand VBD, but if you have projections for every player at each position, and say it is a 12 team league - isn't the theory to compare each players projection to the projection for the 12th player at that position? So the 12th player would have a value of zero, 1-11 would be their projected value minus the point value of the 12th player?
If that is somewhat accurate, then could't you determine true value by looking at percentage difference to determine relative value? My question then is how do you account for position scarcity? Calvin Johnson may have the highest percentage difference of all players...but that doesn't mean I would take him 1st...but should I (disclaimer - do not have 1t pick, just asking the question).
Can someone provide insight on how to effectively use VBD or tips/tricks they have learned?
So from your second post, assuming you caught that the baseline player is more how many players at the posititon start league wide, not how just how many teams. So a 1 QB, 2 RB league, you might use 12 QBs and 24 RBs to start with.
VBD will give you a view of value based on combining the pool of players, how you think they will perform (projections), and your league's starting lineup requirements. That's a very good view of the data to have, very useful.
There are other things that also affect your final value and impact maximizing your team that it doesn't incorporate. Things like value created by how your league tends to draft, or the injury likelihood of players at one position versus another.
So for your question of positional scarcity, some of it is covered by a basic look with VBD, and some of it isn't. If we're talking about TE and how there are generally 2-4 elite ones and then a lot of drop off, it covers that for the most part because the baseline player is part of the drop off and he is the player all other TE are "tested" against in coming up with the VBD value.
But if we're talking about a position like RB where scarcity is as much the lack of backups, if that is taking place past your baseline player, then a "last starter" baseline isn't going to pick it up.
So there's a few ways you can use it. One is you can adjust your baselines to kind of be a fudge factor to make VBD's outcome be closer to if it did include that factor. That's what Joe's Baseline does. It was made in the golden age of fantasy football when leagues were 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 or 3 WR, 1 TE... and everyone went hard after RBs. So he increased the RB baseline to a deeper player to reflect their greater value that a strictly "last starter" baseline wouldn't show.
That's not a bad thing to do for creating a cheatsheet for someone to draft from. It's going to get someone a lot further who otherwise doesn't know what they are doing. There are other methods we have, including ones supported in Draft Dominator, that can probably do a better job though than just trying to build it into the baseline.
For example, the Best Value window does what ended up being dubbed Dynamic VBD or DVBD for short. DVBD is the same sort of thing, except instead of comparing every player to a single baseline player at his position.... you just worry about the players you think will be available at this pick and your next. You look to see which position drops off the most because of how you expect your league to draft between your picks, and that helps guide you into taking the overall combination of players that maximize your team.
Using VBD and comparing the results to ADP values in advance can help you locate players who should be good values, lasting longer than they should, and so are likely to be people your optimal team might include. I think the best draft strategy is to do your homework like that with VBD and ADP together in advance. Identify value players. Then do some mocks and see what decisions you are faced with as you try to build the best team, and often guiding your draft towards those players by not taking their position earlier, etc. Just run mock after mock and ask yourself, "Ok, what happens at this point if my value RB did not fall to the 4th round, how does that affect the entire rest of my draft as I have to overdraft backup RBs to compensate?"
You walk through things, and test in advance the choices you are likely to face, and see how good the team is each time, summing up your starter points and looking at backup quality. Then when it comes time for the real draft, you are making the choices for real (including DVBD in real time as you do), but you're very forewarned about the impact of your decisions.
