Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Raising and Lowering Inflation: A Misunderstood Concept

I was going through some old posts tonight, and I noticed a comment I should have responded to earlier:
say I have a guy at $34 who is worth $32. Inflated, his value is $40, so he should be kept.

But now since I'm keeping him, the inflation rate is lower.
In this example, the inflation rate would actually be higher.

This example is using a 25% inflation rate. For the sake of simplicity, let's pretend that my sample league has $2000 to spend on $1600 worth of players.

Player A is worth $32 and at a $34 salary. There is now $1966 to spend on $1568 worth of players. The inflation rate has gone up from 25% to 25.4%.

Why is this?

Once rosters are frozen, the inflation value is the new standard. The $32 player is now a $40 with inflation. If you had him at $34, you should have kept him, since even at $37 or $38 he would have been a relative bargain.

Owners get confused by this concept because they assume that any player kept over his non-inflation value is an overpay. That's true, but that is also separate from the concept of inflated value.

The only time an overpriced player brings inflation down is if his price divided by his value is higher than the league's inflation rate. Using the $2000 example again, a league with three percent inflation would have that same $2000 to spend on $1941 worth of talent. Add the $32 player at a $34 salary to this league, and you would not have $1966 to spend on $1909 worth of talent. This would leave you with a 2.99% inflation rate...slightly lowering the inflation.

The simple calculation, then, would be to take the player's salary divided by his value and figure out how much he is individually inflated. In this example, the $34 player is inflated by 6.25%. If you know your league's "typical" inflation rate, that should tell you whether or not keeping him will push inflation down or up. There are certainly other factors at play, but you most definitely want to know what your $32 valued player will go for in the auction if you throw him back, and knowing that he'll push inflation up makes for a good framework to begin the decision making process.

No comments: