879: Mailbag 5/3/24

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up everyone, it's JJ Zachariason, and this episode, 879 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog Fantasy.

Thanks for tuning in.

Underdog Fantasy is the place to be this summer. Best Ball Mania 5 Drafts have already started, where there are $15 million in prizes. But there's so much more than just that. You've got Pick'em and Champions game modes, there are different best ball contests that you can join, and more. As I announced earlier this week, I've got a new show dropping soon in the podcast feed called Becoming a Best Ball Bro. I'll be interviewing the smartest best ball players on the planet to get their insights that I and you can crush our best ball drafts this year. So make sure you're signed up on Underdog by heading to underdogfantasy.com. You can also download the app. When you sign up, make sure to use promo code LATEROUND for a $100 deposit match. That's promo code LATEROUND. Also really quick, don't forget to check out The Late-Round Prospect Guide. It's all finished up, so you can go to LATEROUNDCOM, order it and get that finalized version. It'll help you out with not just your rookie drafts, but it'll help you with your general understanding of this class. I think it can even help for re-draft too. So check it out, LATEROUNDCOM. It's a mailbag show. Let's get to these questions.

The first question this week is an email. It says, Hey JJ, love the show. You helped me nail last year's draft with Jayden Reed. Thanks. I was going through the prospect guide and got to the Draft Capital Delta section. Even after reading, I found myself a bit confused on where the numbers come from and how we get the low, neutral, and high risk. Could you talk a little bit more about Draft Capital Delta and what it means for high level prospects like Marvin Harrison Jr., Malik Neighbors, and Roma Dunze? Thanks Dev.

So a couple of years ago, I decided to create a metric called Draft Capital Delta. I know a lot of you guys already know about this, but bear with me. In podcast form, this isn't the easiest thing in the world to explain.

Let's just talk Wide Receiver as our example, because there is Draft Capital Delta for running backs too. There are different inputs in the Wide Receiver model. Things like Breakout Score, Fantasy Point Score, Rushing Production, and Teammate Score. And then there's Draft Capital. Draft Capital gets a whole lot of weight, because Draft Capital matters.

Every player in the model gets some sort of score for Draft Capital. I don't call it Draft Capital Score, because that's just unnecessary. But Roma Dunze, who went 9th overall, doesn't get a 9 for his score. There's a Draft Capital formula where you plug in that 9 number. And the reason there's a formula is because early-round picks are more meaningful than late-round ones. A player getting drafted first overall vs. one getting picked 21st overall, that's a 20-spot difference. That same 20-spot difference can be seen from a guy getting picked 180th overall to one getting picked 200th overall. But the 20-spot difference in the first round is much more meaningful. That's why there's a formula for Draft Capital.

So when I get that Draft Capital score, that number, it gets fed into a Prospect's overall score. And that overall score is out of 100

Now I can also look at a player's Draft Capital and get that score out of 100 It's a hypothetical Draft Capital score. And then all I do is subtract the two to get Draft Capital Delta. So Draft Capital Delta is the difference between where a player was drafted, his Draft Capital, compared to his overall Prospect score. It essentially tells me if his profile was worthy of being drafted at that slot. It's really showing me his profile without Draft Capital.

Now here's the thing, and this is kind of hard to explain, but hopefully I do an okay job at explaining it. Like I said, later-round picks, Draft Capital matters a lot less, naturally. The score they get in the late rounds via Draft Capital is not nearly as significant as what's added to their score if they're a top 10 pick.

If you look at Brendan Rice vs. Roma Dunze, Roma Dunze is getting a lot of love from a score perspective because he was a top 10 pick. Brendan Rice was an afterthought. His Draft Capital portion of his Prospect score is not very large.

Now, think about what that means mathematically. That means that Brendan Rice's analytical profile, the stuff that we're always analyzing and talking about on this podcast, that now takes up a larger proportion of his overall score.