When a 10-point hit actually pays for itself

Drafting was the easy part, the season is decided by what you do after it. 

You built a 12 player team with $100, somebody on that roster is going to get hurt, benched, or look like a potato when they step on the field in week 1. That feeling isn't your season tanking, it's the actual game starting.

The whole season is an economics problem, you're limited on moves, a hard cap, and just 17 weeks in a season. By the end of this article you'll know exactly how to handle your cap, what a move costs and when it's worth paying for.

You get one free move a week. Drop a player and add a player at no cost to your season point total. Each move is a 1 for 1 swap, you're always working with the same cap, so the player coming in has to fit the money the player going out frees up. 

One move per week over 17 weeks is not a lot when bye weeks and injuries compound. That's the point, scarcity is what give your decisions stakes.

An unused free move rolls over to the next week, the most you can hold at one time is 2. 

Have a great week 1 where all your players perform and nobody gets injured? Bank your move and use 2 free moves after week 2 when something goes wrong, this is fantasy football after all. Have 2 great weeks back to back and decide to hold your free move again? The third one doesn't accumulate, it's use it or lose it at that point.

Nothing happens on schedule in fantasy football, banking a move to help cover a tough week is a huge advantage.

Past your weekly free move(s), each additional move costs 10 points off your season total. That's a hit. 

Why would anybody take a 10 point hit? Great question, dear reader. A typical upgrade move that you make could net you 3 to 5 extra points per week. So, a hit costs 10 up front and if it returns 3 to 5 points per week, it will pay for itself in 2 to 3 weeks. 

Take a hit in week 4 for a player you'll hold through week 17 and it's obviously fine. Take the same hit in week 15 and you only have 2 weeks to earn it back.

Here's another way to look at it: a typical MTC week runs around 150 points, so a hit is roughly 6.5% of a week. It's a real cost, not a tap, but not a catastrophe either. The better hit calls you make earlier in the season, the less you'll feel the hit by the end.

A hit does not cost cap space, nor does it cost you the following week's free move.

A player who has gone up in price doesn't sell for full value, so upgrades cost more than the sticker difference suggests. When you drop a player who has risen since you added him, you get your purchase price plus half the gain, rounded down to 0.1.

As an example, you added Ja'Marr Chase at 12.0, he's now 13.4. You added him for 12.0 and he gained 1.4, so you get 12.0 plus 0.7, which is 12.7 added to your cap. Not 13.4.

A fall hits in full. Down is down, no half measures.

There are two situations hand you an extra free move, and they're spent before you ever take a hit.

A player going on NFL injured reserve gives you 1 extra free move for the week. 

Referring someone who signs up gives you 1 free move. One, for the season, not one per referral.

A note on Audibles: Rebuild gives you a whole week of unlimited free moves and Trick Play is a one-week, free, full team change that reverts itself the following week. More on that in a later article.

Here's a week where all of it fires at once. Every price below is made up, real ones don't exist until August 26, so don't screenshot this and quote it back to me in September.

It's week 6. Week 5 was quiet, nothing on your roster was worth touching, so you banked your free move. You come into this week with 2. Then Tuesday morning your TE lands on IR. That's a third free move.

You also have 0.3 of unspent cap sitting there from the draft, and your WR2's team is on bye.

Move 1, the TE. You added him at 9.0 and he's up to 9.8. He rose, so you get your purchase price plus half the gain: 9.0 plus 0.4, which is 9.4. With the 0.3 you were already sitting on, that's 9.7 to spend. The TE you want is 9.5. Done, and you have 0.2 left over.

Move 2, the bye. Your WR2 is off this week. You added him at 11.0 and he's slid to 10.6, and a fall hits in full, so you get 10.6 back. That plus your 0.2 is 10.8. The guy you actually want is 11.8. You're 1.0 short.

On paper you're rich, you've got two players worth over 20 combined. In practice the riser only gave you half his gain back and the faller gave you all of his loss, and now the move you want is a full point out of reach.

Move 3, finding the 1.0. You've still got a free move. So you go to the cheap end of your bench, where a guy you added at 6.0 has drifted up to 6.8. Dropping him gets you 6.0 plus 0.4, so 6.4, and you replace him with a 5.4 bench body who is going to sit there and do nothing either way. That frees exactly 1.0. Now the WR is affordable.

Three moves, three free moves, and the week cost you 0 points.

You don't have to manage the order any of that gets spent in, either. The game goes weekly move first, then anything you banked, then bonus moves like the IR one. A hit only happens after all of that is gone, so you'll never accidentally pay 10 while you're holding something free.

Now say you'd wanted a fourth. Your RB2 has a brutal matchup and there's a swap you like. That one costs 10 points, and it's week 6, so you've got 11 more weeks for a 3 to 5 point per week upgrade to earn it back. 

Prices drop Wednesday, August 26. Week 1 kicks off Wednesday, September 9.

Next one is captain math, and it's the article I have the most data behind, 3 seasons of it. Short version: captaincy skews a lot harder than people expect, and the position most managers assume is the safe, boring, can't-go-wrong captain is not the one winning weeks. I'll show the work.

If you missed them, Article 1 is the format in one page and Article 2 is the roster, the cap, and scoring.

If you know somebody who'd get a kick out of this, forward it to the group chat. Somebody has to finish last.

Rob
Move The Chains