There's a lot of really strong dynasty analysis out there, especially when compared to five or ten years ago. But most of it is so dang practical-- Player X is undervalued, Player Y's workload is troubling, the market at this position is irrational, take this specific action to win your league. Dynasty, in Theory is meant as a corrective, offering insights and takeaways into the strategic and structural nature of the game that might not lead to an immediate benefit, but which should help us become better players over time. (Additionally, it serves as a vehicle for me to make jokes like "theoretically, this column will help you out".)

Managing Your Imaginary Imaginary Football Teams

For the last two weeks we've discussed paradigms, ways of looking at things that don't change the underlying nature of reality (but might change how we respond to that reality). We'll return to the subject soon because I have several more paradigms that I find useful, but this week I want to change gears, inspired by a brief conversation I recently had with a friend of mine.

I am begging you not to trade a 1st for Christian Kirk pic.twitter.com/f1TpCo9BIy

— Cooper Adams (@CoopsFB) September 28, 2022

Counterpoint: Christian Kirk (25 years old) ranks 13th in FBGs’ rest-of-season rankings, ahead of Tee Higgins, CeeDee Lamb, Diontae Johnson, DeVonta Smith, DK Metcalf, Marquise Brown, Rashad Bateman, and many others.

Three spots behind ARSB.

— Adam Harstad (@AdamHarstad) September 29, 2022

I think the best reason not to trade a 1st for Kirk is simply that you probably don’t have to.

Even if you really buy the profile you could probably get 20-30% exposure with 2nds alone. “Don’t buy dudes where they’re most expensive” is just Dynasty 101.

— Adam Harstad (@AdamHarstad) September 29, 2022

I want to be clear up front that this isn't an exhortation to trade for Christian Kirk; remember, this isn't that kind of column. I was largely playing devil's advocate to Cooper, pointing out the well-established link between redraft production this year and dynasty value next year. (I'll be writing a lot more about that link in coming weeks.) But the last tweet is the one to focus on here.

Cooper is what is known as a "high-volume" dynasty manager. At last count he has 21 different dynasty teams, and he manages them like an investment portfolio. In theory, if players were randomly distributed, he would expect to have every player on 1/12th of his rosters. Instead, if he thinks a player is overpriced, he'll sell that player until he has a lower rostered percentage, and if he thinks a player is underpriced he'll trade for that player until he has a higher rostered percentage.

But, because he's managing his 21 teams as a portfolio, the question becomes less whether to trade those players and more where to trade those players. And the answer is "wherever they're cheapest". Let's say that Cooper believed Kirk was worth not just any 2023 first, but a high one. That doesn't mean he should go out and trade all of his high 2023 firsts until he has Christian Kirk on all 21 teams. Instead, he should start buying Kirk in whatever leagues Kirk is cheapest to acquire, which means starting with offers of a rookie 2nd-round pick.

High-volume managers think in terms of something called "exposure", or what percent of rosters a player is on (and therefore how "exposed" they are to risk). Again, neutral exposure is 1/12th, or 8.3%. That's how many rosters a player would be on if you were neither seeking them out nor avoiding them, if chance alone dictated your team.

Heavy exposure is anything over that. How heavy you want the exposure to be is a function of how wrong you think the market is. At the most extreme, if I believed a player was the best in the league and the market had him worth a rookie 4th round pick, I would expect to get near 100% "exposure" to that player. If I thought a player was worth a late 1st and the market thought he was worth an early 2nd, I might stop at 17-25% exposure.

This should be fairly self-evident. If you're going to buy Kirk on ten teams, it's better to have ten teams with Christian Kirk and a 1st (because they traded away their 2nd) than to have ten teams with Christian Kirk and a 2nd (because they traded away their 1st). The cheaper you acquire a player, the higher the margin of error becomes-- the more room you have to be wrong in your evaluation and still turn a profit on the trade.

Now maybe in one league you really need a receiver but the asking price for Kirk is well over the current market consensus rate; if Kirk is overvalued in a league, there must be other receivers who are undervalued who you could acquire instead to fill that hole. Because price is a relative phenomenon, if your league is relatively higher on some players, it must necessarily be relatively lower on others. (This point papers over the distinction between "your league" and "the other managers in your league"-- mostly because unpacking that distinction would be an entire column in itself-- but for our purposes here we can assume that the original statement is at least mostly correct.) If you're a high-volume fantasy football manager like Cooper, you should always be buying below market consensus prices and selling above market consensus prices.

In many respects, I am entirely the opposite of Cooper. I play in two dynasty leagues: a "home league" that's been running since 2007 and a Footballguys staff dynasty league that's been running since 2013. My style of playing dynasty is labor-intensive and does not scale; there's no way I could play in 21 leagues the same way I play in two.

Because my approach doesn't scale, if I realize I'm higher than market consensus on Christian Kirk, I don't have the luxury of shopping around across 20+ different leagues to try to find the places where he's available most cheaply. If the managers with Kirk in both of my leagues are above market consensus and the asking price in both leagues is a 1st rounder, then either I pay that price or I don't get Kirk.

Given that I can't shop around for a discount, how does my approach differ from Cooper's when I want to acquire a player? Here's a little secret: it doesn't. Nor do I think it should. I think all low-volume fantasy GMs should behave like high-volume fantasy GMs, only buying players when they're available at a discount, only selling players when you can do so above the predominant market rates.

Sometimes this means I'll genuinely like a guy and not get a chance to roster him just because I'm not in any leagues where he's available for below-market rates. And it can suck watching that guy later blow up, kicking myself and thinking I should have paid above-market rates to get the guy I wanted. There's a very real "fear of missing out", of having a good evaluation and not trusting it enough to act and watching it later confirmed when I'm not in a position to benefit. How do I guard against this fear? With difficulty. But one practice I've found helpful for maintaining trade discipline is creating imaginary teams.

I don't mean "imaginary teams" in the sense that all fantasy football is imaginary. I mean "imaginary teams" in the sense that they don't exist, they're convenient fictions, figments of my overactive imagination. I ask myself "Given this price differential, what kind of exposure should I be looking to get here?" And then I pretend that I have 100 dynasty rosters instead of just two, and I shop for the best offer I can in my two existing leagues, and I pretend I'm shopping for the best offer I can in my 98 imaginary leagues, and at the end of it I ask myself whether the deals in my two existing leagues would plausibly fall within the best X% of deals (where X% is my desired exposure rate).

Most of the time, they won't. Even if I wanted an imaginary 30% exposure rate, that would mean there's a 70% chance that the price isn't right on a player I want to acquire. And that's a bummer. Most of the players I like end up on my imaginary teams and not my real ones. So why do I manage like this?

Let's consider: say you were going to take over an abandoned team, or "orphan". And let's say the team was being abandoned by a high-volume fantasy manager, and let's say you don't know anything about that manager except that he or she either (A) consistently bought players at a discount and sold them at a premium or (B) consistently bought players at a premium and sold them at a discount. I'd really want to inherit a team from the first manager; whether a manager can recognize fantasy value better than the market is tough, it's largely a 50/50 affair, but turning a structural profit by consistently getting sweetheart deals, that's a very objective skill that adds value to a roster every time you practice it. Some of that high-volume GM's teams will undoubtedly be better than others, but if I know that a GM is a shrewd trader, I also know that it's more likely than not that a randomly-selected team of theirs is good.

Now consider: every year, your dynasty team is essentially an orphan that was handed to you by a past version of yourself. I want to stack the odds that Future Me is inheriting good teams, and the best way I know how to do that is the same way the high-volume manager does, by exploiting structural edges. It's no guarantee; high-volume managers have plenty of bad teams; they just have relatively more good ones. Market discipline is the gift I give to my future self. Hopefully, my future self appreciates it. (Sometimes he's a bit ungrateful.)

I also want to note that the goal here isn't "ripping off other owners". I'll be writing a lot of words about how to trade, especially in "dead" leagues that "don't trade", and one of the biggest tricks is looking out for positive-sum situations. In this case, I'm looking for the managers who like Christian Kirk the least and giving them something they like better, instead. Everyone has preferences, why wouldn't I want to buy from a manager who is more motivated to sell than one who is less motivated to sell?

Anyway, at the end of the day, it's not about getting or not getting Christian Kirk (and to reiterate: Christian Kirk is just a representative example, I'm not saying he's a guy I'm specifically looking to buy or not buy right now, he's an imaginary acquisition for my imaginary teams.) I know that good market discipline means I'm the kind of manager who is more likely to turn over good teams to my future self.

Buy below market rates. Sell above market rates. Even if you think the market rates are wrong. Whether you have one team or one hundred, manage like you have one hundred teams.