How Supercoach Pricing Works 2022
Hi Everybody!
Once again it’s time for the annual explanation of pricing and price changing. Because this is nearly the same every year, this post is nearly the same as last year because I am lazy and don’t feel like doing a bunch of extra work here when I could do something more useful. There is a link to the 2020 post with more details at the end for those interested.
Anyways
To get a player’s price, the SC Gods take each player’s average and multiply it by a number, called “The Magic Number,” to get their price. Each year that number changes. This year the magic number is somewheres about $5443.16. After multiplying they round off the results to the nearest $100.
Jackson Macrae: 2,829 points from 22 games = 128.59 * $5443.16 = 699,940.89 which rounds to $699,900. And looking at SC, he is indeed $699,900. I did this for 60 or so players, yay spreadsheets, and that calculator works for all of them that played enough games to avoid a discount. Some players who didn’t play a lot of games will get a discount, which is a great way to find bargains, but also throws off those calculations. So, I stick to players who have played at least nine games. Not because there is a penalty at eight, but because nine happened to be the lowest number played in the top 60ish I looked at.
For changes during the season, you take the player’s current price. Divide it into fourths. Keep three fourths. Throw away the last fourth. Then, take the average of the player’s last three scores and multiply that by the base Magic number we calculated at the season start. (BASE Magic Number, very important to use the base one.) Divide by 4. Add that to the three fourths you saved. Round that to the nearest $100. That’s the player’s new price.
That means that the first round score only counts once towards price changes and the second round score only counts twice.
Another effect of the three round average is that a player who has a really good or bad score will have the maximum change from that score three rounds later. For low scores, that will be a good chance to buy and for a high score a good place to sell. I call it the “Rule of Three”. Helpful when planning purchase and sales.
Quick note, that $5443.16 is the “Base” magic number I mentioned before. It never changes. A lot of people use a current magic number which is the ave/price for each week. Why would it change? Well, that’s from deflation. The SC gods, for some ineffable reason, want the total price of every player in the game, when added up, to be the same each round. That means when there are more price rises than price falls, the total of all players’ prices would go up. So, every round where there are price changes they take the old total and divide that by the new total. Then they multiply the price of every player by that number.
This means that a player who scores exactly what he was priced to average each week would go down in price rather than stay the same, which is what would happen without deflation. It also means the break evens that SC publishes are not 100% accurate, since they do not take deflation into account. I make a shot at it for Cow Talk projections, based on past experience.
Link to that older write up: https://supercoachtalk.com/how-supercoach-pricing-works-2020/
Thanks for reading!
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Thank you FD.
Looking forward to more sage advice and invaluable information, with your irrepressible humour, throughout season 2022.
All the best
Cheers
CT
Thanks very much!
With the great FD back, the season is truly upon us !! May you forgive us for all the SC sins we are about to commit !!
Odds are I will be a leading sinner this season. For sure feeling the forgiveness coming on!
Great to see you, Father, and thanks as always for the explanation (which I will definitely bookmark this time!)
Looking forward to the season proper 🙂
Nice article!
FD – From memory your previous articles have been mostly about getting players who can outperform their starting price. When looking at the midprice analysis article I decided to do some math and came up with the following:
If you get 3 x midpricers that outperform their price by 30 points you would be better off than 1 x premium breaking even and 2 x rookies outperforming their price by 40 points.
Midprice: 3 x $272k (priced at 50 average) that average 80 = 240 points for $816k
Guns & Rookies: 1 x $566k (104 average) and 2 x $125k (priced at 23 average) that average 63 = 230 points for $816k
That is a 10 point advantage to the midprice strategy for same salary output.
The assumption for the +40 rookies is that you are getting the best ones on field out of your selections – you still need enough good rookies to make the Guns and Rookies work.
Do you think there are 3 mid pricers under $300k that can achieve a +30 this year? For the fallen premiums, I see Coniglio and Berry as near certainties to achieve that. Charlie Curnow is line ball (priced at 41 average and has 2 years in the 70s). Breakout candidates would include Jake Bowey, Cam Rayner and Jye Caldwell.
An additional bit of math for 4 players with combined starting average of 200:
Midpricers: 4 x 50 = $1,088k salary, with a +30 average output would be 320 points.
Guns & Rookies: 1 x 120, 1 x 34, 2 x 23 = $1,088 salary, with a +40 average output for rookies and break even for the gun expected output would be 320 points. You also have another captain option.
I think this demonstrates that getting the players outperforming salary expectation is the goal regardless of guns and rookies or midpricer strategy.
Cheap points means more points!
Use of trades complicates this a little, but overall getting players who outperform is important. Which I again plan to write about more after lessons from last season. You are stealing my thunder! 🙂
Great thinking!
I think of players under $300k as Cow-like objects and not midpricers, although that’s just a semantics thing. I feel like there are so many cow-like objects this year that three will make $150k or more. But I do not know which ones!
I’m working on a “Year of the Cow-Like Objects” post which will talk about this in general, as opposed to analyzing players.