Cow Talk R3 –>R4

Hi Everybody!

 

I was going to make this week’s Cow Talk be an analysis of bringing in players after their first price rise and if it was worth it. But, there turned out to be a problem.

That the priest is an idiot?

That it took so long for him to realise he was an idiot?

It did in fact take me annoyingly long to realise that you evaluate players who have had a price rise exactly the same as players who have not. They may be less likely to be worth bringing in but their having had a price rise does not matter.  If they had had a price drop and somehow got to the same place, with the same last two round scores and price, it would not matter. So, good news everyone, all done with that. 

Bad news everyone, he plans to talk about something else instead. 

There’s some sort of rule about sermons, like people show up and they get mad if they travel all that way and then just go home after just a few minutes of “be nice.”  You have to take like an hour to say “be nice” or it doesn’t count.

Um, well, anyways, I was thinking it means I can talk about something else useful, like a two-for-one deal.  

I thought it was a three-in-one deal?  

Like the Pumpkin plant, the pumpkin seed, and the spirit of those seeds we have eaten?

Like the spirit of Cow Talks past, where I talk about something that I haven’t for a while that is currently relevant.  In this case Cow-Pound Interest. 

So, more points is the goal. That means the sooner you get players who score a lot of points the better. But, since the idea is more total points, you can end up getting more points by bringing in a less good player sooner. You pay for someone, and then you get points every round as a payment. Sort of. Well, you get points. 

Now he cut out a part trying to justify the term Cow-Pound interest because it was a waste of time and it’s a good cow reference and does not need explaining. The reference I mean. 

It would waste even less time if you stopped talking about when I cut parts out that don’t work to save time!

Anyways, I’m talking about this now because it might matter now, but more so that it can go into planning. Not much good if I write about something the week after it was relevant.  

The basic version is that how many points you get from a player is their average times the number of rounds they will be scoring. If you bring in a player round seven who will score 100 points a round, then he plays for sixteen rounds, for a total of 1600 points.  Not news to anyone.  But, what if you brought in a cheaper player sooner?  If there was someone available a round sooner who averages 95 a round, that is 95 times seventeen rounds for 1615 points.  Bring in someone who can score 90 a round two weeks sooner and you get 1620 points.  

Now, those numbers only work if you get zero from the player you are replacing.  If they were scoring 60, then you were better off waiting for the 100 average player. Their spot got 1720 points 120 for Rounds 5 & 6 plus the 1600 for the rest of the season. 

Cow scoring = 40 means 1680 for R5+ means a 93.4 average is just a bit better if brought in R5 verses waiting until R7 to bring in a 100 average player. 

Cow scoring = 50 means 1700 for R5+ means a 94.5 average is just a bit better if brought in R5 verses waiting. until R7 to bring in a 100 average player. 

Cow scoring = 60 means 1720 for R5+ means a 95.6 average is just a bit better if brought in R5 verses waiting until R7 to bring in a 100 average player. 

Cow scoring = 70 means 1740 for R5+ means a 96.7 average is just a bit better if brought in R5 verses waiting until R7 to bring in a 100 average player. 

Now in real life, players have different costs per point, which gets into grabbing players with a lower cost per point early can help extra. When a cheap player at a lower cost shows up, not only do you get the extra point but they might cost you less. 

Is that relevant for this week?

Why yes it is!  A lot of players have gone up, but not as far as they will, or have had bad starts and gone down in price. If you can get them in now vs waiting and keeping cash in the bank for bringing in a higher averaging player later, then you can get more points from the lower average player sooner.

Isn’t that another obvious thing that you didn’t need to say?

Not really. The reason it matters is that a lot of people only want to bring in “Top #” players. Like for defenders, if a guy isn’t going to be in the top eight average players they would wait to get someone who was.  Say you have 5 keeper defenders already.  Say you want the seagull.

That’s Jake Lloyd. I watch out for predatory birds!

Yes and let’s assume he will average 113 for the rest of the season. He is going at 112.7 now.  If you can’t afford him now and wait until you can, that means from R4 to say R7 you are playing a cow scoring, say 55.  That’s 1695 from Jake starting R8 and 220 from the cow for a total of 1915.  So, say you bring in some lesser defender right now. In order to be as good as the cow-Jake combo,  They only have to average 100.8.  There are a lot of guys who could do that, and they all cost less now than Lloyd will on R8.  

So, let’s say you bring in Jiath this round planning to keep him. His current average is 102. If he drops off to 100, you get the same points but for way less money. If he drops off to 90, you get 1710 points for way less money, which is a shortage of 205 points.  To be conservative, you save $250,000. Can you make up 205 points with $250,000? I bet you can. If he drops to 85 you need to make up 300 points using that money. That’s 15.8 points a week.  At base cost per point 15.8 points of average costs $84,900.  That leaves  $165,100 you can use to put yourself ahead.   

The other practical application is cow selling. If we assume you can make use of the full sale price of a cow, you will hit a point where the extra money they will make in a round is not enough to justify putting off using them right away.  I show that in the Cow Talk cow table-thingies, and I will give examples and explanations next week when I add those. 

In case you want to calculate cases yourself, which I hope you do. 

(Rookie average * round of their score)  +  (Premo average * rounds of their score) = points total from the waiting case. 

Take the points total from the waiting case, and divide it by the number of rounds left. (Which should be the rounds of rookie score plus rounds of premo score added together)  to get the average you need to equal that total score. 

 

With four rounds of data the projections will start next week. I had been thinking about doing them this week, but was travelling for Easter and with the Monday games I ended up without time. Sorry about that. I feel you need more data for projectons to be meaningful, but we have some weird cows this year and so I figure I should go ahead and do them anyways. 

Dodgy Advice:

Much as I preach about not using trades needlessly, sometimes there’s a need for correctional trades after round three.  Corrections before round three are better, no price issues, although maybe bargains showed up from a bad score for a player you like. Maybe you own Hayden Young. Maybe a player looks a lot better or worse after a third round of information. Whatever the reason, it can be ok to make corrections now if you need to. For sure don’t make marginal ones, but we shouldn’t make marginal ones anyway!  

Remember the Cow Talk guarantee: “All predictions wrong or triple your money back!”  (Offer not valid if money is actually involved.)

I am time zonally challenged.  When Cow Talk goes live, I’m probably asleep, so replies from me may take a while.

Thanks for reading!

---

Leave a comment / Scroll to bottom