[mredskins]

Originally Posted by scowan

LOL Chico, kicker is my last pick every year, because there is a high probability that I will be dropping him anyway for another kicker by Week 2. Kickers=lottery ticket, a total crap shoot. Basically find a team that can move the ball, BUT not score TDs and you have found a team with your kicker. Many FGs.

True for the most part but I pick Sebastien in a late round over say Hankerson or some other reach player. Every potential starter on your team is a priority.

Plus why jeopardize your waiver position every week playing musical chairs with your kicker? Not to mention if you have a transaction fee as well.

DST and Kicker are always over looked and that is where ground can be made up if you draft intelligently. Especially DST.

I have always used a VBD system for calculating my players before the draft. It is a no joke system that literally takes several hours to forecast out. I have a excel sheet from 2011 if anyone wants to see it; I can email it to Matty; I don't know how to post a excel workbook on here.

It is a real eye opening experiencing that shows you exactly what a guy is worth to you in your league.

How the system works:

How does VBD work? It's all about establishing that "baseline" player. Calculating the difference between each player's absolute fantasy point total and the point total of a baseline player at the same position gives us a relative number, which can then be compared across positions. Logically, this allows us to look at past-year performances, determining which positions tended to justify higher draft slots. After all, if we only judged by absolute point totals, we'd all be drafting quarterbacks in the first round, since for example in 2011, eight of the top 10 highest raw fantasy point totals were scored by QBs.
Intelligent folks have different ways of thinking about how to determine baselines for each position. Some like to think of baseline as "replacement-level," as we sometimes do in baseball, and in a 10-team league, for example, that leads us to the No. 11 QB as our baseline (since the top 10 would presumably start for each of the 10 fantasy squads). Frank DuPont (who wrote this e-book) figures baseline players by adding up the total number of man-games your fantasy league requires to fill out a full season at each position, then calculating the average number of players at each position it usually takes to produce that many man-games. FootballGuys prefers a "Top 100" methodology, whereby we establish how many players at each position tend to get drafted in the overall top 100 of your draft, and use that number as our baseline for each position. And there are several other approaches, often created by smart fantasy owners who simply tinker with stats inside their own leagues.
Personally, I tend toward the "10 Round" theory (which, to be fair, is simply an offshoot of the "Top 100" methodology): I look at the number of players at each position that typically gets drafted in the first 10 rounds of any league's draft, and however many QBs that is, that's my baseline QB. However many RBs that is, that's my baseline RB. And so on. So if you're in a 10-team league, you'd look at the top 100 players drafted. If you're in a 12-teamer, you'd look at the top 120. Why do I feel 10 rounds works well? To some extent, it's simply trial and error (me Excel pretty good). But philosophically, for me 10 rounds is the point where fantasy starting lineups are set, the top rookies and hyped sleepers we hope could work their way into being fantasy starters have been drafted, and we're now looking for backup (or "replacement") type players. Hey, I said it's kludgy, right?
The truth is, though, that any infighting about establishing the best baseline methodology feels a bit like a Talmudic inquisition, where the principals spend time parsing semicolons. I've run most conceptions of VBD baselines for multiple years' worth of data, and the ranks that result usually look quite similar. No matter how you do your baseline, there's room for you under my big VBD tent, because our results are going to bear far more than a passing resemblance to one another.