Riff Raff Ramblings: Art of the Keep

The Ultimate Keeper Value

(Commissioner's Note: This article is nothing short of mission creep on the part of the Sausage King, fresh off his fantastic GMRRFFA vs Marvel columns and clearly out of content ideas. I chose to publish this article, largely because I encourage creativity from my interns, but please note my sincere apologies to all who were anticipating a column focused on the mission of Riff Raff Ramblings.)

So we’ve finally made it to the end of the 2018 regular season. It was a long and arduous season, but now we are only 3 weeks away from away from crowning a new GMRRFA champion!

With recent conversation centered around Dorne’s decision to move Mahomes and Chubb for Kamara and who's a better evaluator of talent, I thought it would be fun to do a quick analysis on the whole league’s keeper decisions this past season (Fun fact: putting this data together was neither fun nor quick, but until someone crowdfunds a realistic robot that can simulate pleasure in a timely, yet hygienic manner, we’ll just have to make due).

So for the purposes of this column, I’ve tallied everyone’s total keeper points and divided by total price to get us a value we can call Keeper Points Per Dollar (KPD). This should give us a measurable approximate value of each owner’s ability to assess keeper talent. In short, the higher the KPD, the better.

Also, because they skew the data heavily in their favor with their high points scored (and representing their value relative to the other positions would take me another hour, when I could be sleeping) I have left QB keepers out of the analysis.

Tier 0: The Zero’s

Makese and I are here for 2 very different reasons and for once, it has nothing to do with me giving him a hard time. I’m in the first tier, well, I don’t think I need to explain the Bell situation, considering it’s been discussed on sports media ad nausea. Makese, well, he’s in Tier 0, only because we’re not evaluating QB keepers here, as previously discussed. The only owner to rock dual shotgun, one of which was the 3rd ranked QB, Makes could have done a lot worse than keeping Roethlisberger. Next.

Tier 1 - The Ugly’s

Barely above Tier 0, the Unicorn is barely a blip on the radar with a KPD of 3.17. Nobody is going to argue with Zeke and Nuk as top notch talents, but the argument could be made that at $85 and $78, they were too expensive to keep. In fact, is it safe to deduce that with the Nuk trade for $75 draft dollars + a quickly-dropped Courtland Sutton, the Unicorn actually lost $3 along with his dignity and any hope of being a factor for the championship? Carlos and Coop are only ranked this low because of injuries to to Fournette/Cook who combine for roughly 80 bajillion games missed this season. This scenario probably suggests that KPD should be recalculated to include average points scored per game, but unfortunately I’m no good at taking suggestions. Instead, if we remove Fournette from the math entirely, Carlos’s KPD almost doubles to 7.27, and without Cook, Coops KPD absolutely skyrockets to over 13, putting him in elite keeper territory. Drake and Collins are underwhelming, but at least they were cheap. So it’s not all bad for Carlos and Coop. Meanwhile, the Commish? He absolutely deserves to be here, his homer Jordan Howard keep being an overall terrible decision following the coming-out-party this year for wheel route magician, Tarik Cohen.

Tier 2 = The Bad’s

With KPD’s hovering around the 6.37, it’s pretty interesting the range of teams we find in this mediocre tier level. We’ve got the #1 seed in the playoffs in FIL, the odds-on favorite for the losers bracket, Stabs, and the 14th best team in the league. These 3 teams didn't make any major mistakes, but also didn't do themselves any favors. Also, it’s worth pointing out that, like any stat, KPD is not the end-all, be-all determinant to what makes a good roster. At $12, Robert Woods is technically a better value than Gurley (17.44 vs 5.04), but I don’t think anyone is kicking Todd out of bed anytime soon (unless you can get the Ultimate Keeper of 2018, that is).

Tier 3 - The Good’s

FREDO SIGHTING! The only team to elect to keep a DEF (which was pretty controversial at the time), Gruden’s Manifesto makes a surprise appearance on the upper end of a ranking, which hasn’t happened since West Milford High School’s yearbook committee opened up voting for the Best Smile superlative. Meanwhile, with the highest KPD (24.56) out of all of the 2018 keepers, I hereby declare Kamara as The Ultimate Keeper. Being famous for the guy who dropped Kamara, there’s nothing I wish for more than that James Conner usurp Kamara’s Ultimate Keeper title next season. Interestingly, even with Kamara, Garcia doesn’t quite make Elite Status, as CMC turns out to be pretty pricey (especially in comparison to Kamara) and Hogan, well, let’s just say things didn’t work out as planned for Hogan.

Tier 4 - The Elite

Dorne and Big Gronkowski’s are no surprise here, as they are both strong competitors to win it all this year, but Toby!?!? Apparently by KPD standards, Toby was the best evaluator of keeper talent for 2018. Upon seeing this, I immediately turned to the clock to see just how late it is and if I should really believe my eyes. Believe me, when I tell you, this has me re-evaluating the merits of my KPD analysis (not to mention, the past 2 hours I’ve spent putting this together). Even more impressive, he beats out Tito Galen, who is often regarded as having the best keeper corps. Again, stats aren’t everything, at 23.27, I don’t think anyone is going to argue that JuJu is twice as valuable as Davante Adams (11.71). But after months of prattling on endlessly about his man-crush for Juju, turns out Toby wasn’t too far off declaring him one of the best deals of the draft.

Is 2018 the year of the man-crush for GMRRFA? Well, if KPD calculations and our recent groupchat conversations (not to mention those side chats, gentlemen) have anything to say about it, then yes.

Lessons Learned

Prices Matter: Yes, keeping big names and superstars is tempting, but at what cost to your budget’s bottom line? We have yet to see how next year's budget disparity between teams affects this for 2019, but should be interesting to say the least.

Be Wary of Injuries: Let's all learn a valuable lesson from the Fournette's, Dalvin Cook's and Jay Ajayi's of the league. Taking a risk on keeping an injury-prone player can dictate your whole season, ESPECIALLY if you don't make the transactions to hedge those bets. I'm looking at you, Coop.

KPD is Useless: Considering this is a stat I just made up, take it with a grain of salt. I may have to play with the recipe to better incorporate QB's and averages to better analyze players who miss games to injury (or suspensions for punching someone who has a helmet on). The biggest red flag has to be Toby topping out my rankings. There is a very short list of rankings that Toby should be considered a heavy favorite for (Superstar Used Car Lot Marketing Exec, Monday Night Football Injury Correspondent, and Sexiest Bachelor for Women Who Still Display Candy Dishes).

With that clear evidence that the system truly is broken, I'd like to say good luck to all the teams in their respective brackets! We'll catch up again next week after Team Motley bounces me out of the first round!