An Exercise in Injury Impact

Last week I built two hypothetical fantasy teams. The first team, the ATC Swiss-Army Knives, was comprised of players from each of the first ten rounds (12-team) with the lowest ATC IntraSD measurement. The second team, the ATC Scary Single Blades, was built in the opposite way, taking the player in each round with the highest IntraSD. For kicks, I then built a third team that was a healthy mix of the two. My analysis found that the ATC Scary Single Blades would win in a three-team classic 5×5 roto league if each player exactly met their ATC projections. Let’s take a look at each team:

C: J.T. Realmuto, Adley Rutschman 1B: – 2B: Jose Altuve, Gleyber Torres, Ozzie Albies SS: Fernando Tatis Jr., Dansby Swanson 3B: Gunnar Henderson OF: Seiya Suzuki, Kyle Tucker
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C: Alejandro Kirk 1B: Pete Alonso, Matt Olson 2B: Tommy Edman SS: – 3B: Nolan Arenado OF: Ronald Acuña Jr., Kyle Schwarber, Adolis García, Starling Marte, Jake McCarthy
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C: J.T. Realmuto 1B: Pete Alonso 2B: Jose Altuve, Gleyber Torres SS: Dansby Swanson 3B: Gunnar Henderson OF: Seiya Suzuki, Kyle Tucker, Kyle Schwarber, Adolis García
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It is important to note that while the “Single Blades” are more one-sided on average (IntraSD=1.4) than the “Swiss-Army Knives”, the 1.4 measure isn’t super high. For example, of all players projected by ATC, Adalberto Mondesi has an IntraSD of 2.2, but his ADP (253) is way outside of the top 10 rounds. The “Single Blades” don’t look too bad comparatively at 1.4, but players with high projection totals in any category will naturally throw their IntraSD out of whack. To show this, here is the average IntraSD by round (12-team) when creating rounds using ADP:

Notice that IntraSD is trending down through rounds 1-15, but spikes in round 16. I point this out because IntraSD being high shouldn’t be considered a bad thing, just like a low IntraSD shouldn’t either. Rather than looking at this measure as a way to analyze performance, we should really be using it to assess risk. Let’s remove one player from each team, representing a hypothetical injury, and then we’ll add in a $1 replacement player and recalculate our end-of-season standings.

Let’s imagine that after only 10% of the season has passed, both teams lose their round 8 picks. The Single-Blades will have to replace Starling Marte and the Swiss Army Knives will have to replace Gunnar Henderson. To simulate this, all I’ve done is removed 90% of these players’ projected stat totals from the team and replaced them with 90% of the projected stats from the next available $1 player at their position according to the auction calculator. In this way, the Single-Blades replace Marte with Harrison Bader and the Swiss Army Knives replace Henderson with Justin Turner. Here’s how things pan out:

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While the Single-Blades were lucky enough to find a stolen base replacement on the wire in Harrison Bader, they still drop down into second place. Losing 90% of Starling Marte is more significant than losing 90% of Gunnar Henderson in this simulation and while Justin Turner is also a great replacement-level player for any fantasy team, it shows us that spreading risk and having a diverse team works well if an injury occurs. When you draft Jacob deGrom, Tyler Glasnow, and Carlos Correa, you come out of your draft looking like a beast before the season starts. But when one of those risky players goes down, you’re team is completely changed. Drafting a risk-averse team and using IntraSD to aid in that process, can help you plan for a longer, more reliable retireme-…uh, I mean fantasy season. This draft season, diversify your portfolio and spread the risk using IntraSD.