This is a guide to help you select the right “Valuation” when you use a fantasy football drafting tool.

The terminology of Value-Based Drafting can be difficult to follow. In this short article, I will lay out the key differences between VOLS, VORP, and Man-games options. And I will offer advice about what option you should select.

TL;DR

If you don’t want to bother with different baseline options in the draft tool, I recommend the default “BEER” option. It’s calculated with detailed thought to give a compromise between getting strong starters vs. de-risking your lineup with a strong bench. The other options (VORP and VOLS) have different risk/reward tradeoffs, where VOLS prioritizes starters only and VORP prioritizes a strong bench.

Value Based Drafting (VBD) - In General

Fantasy football drafting terminology has evolved. The acronym “VBD” (value-based drafting) has become a generic term for various approaches to prioritizing players in your draft.

The underlying premise of all approaches is this: The “Value” of drafting a fantasy player, at a certain skill position, should be determined by comparing the player against a “replacement” player, meaning a player that you can reasonably consider as your substitute. This basic idea goes back at least a couple decades: instead of prioritizing the players who are expected to score highest, you instead need to subtract off some “reference” value.

Probably you’ve all been exposed to this concept at your first draft. You might have asked, “why shouldn’t I just always draft a quarterback first, since they usually score the most points?” The answer, as most of you know, is that normally a QB should not be your first draft pick (depending on league settings) because, in any given week, you can probably pick up a backup QB who is likely to score around 15 points or so. So you should be valuing your QB according to “points above the backup”, rather than by points alone.

The following figure shows how a lower-ranked QB can still provide points, and therefore the value of higher-ranked QBs should be taken as relative to this high baseline. [QB data is based on Subvertadown predictive models, averaged over all simulated weeks.]

With this basic idea in mind, the question is which baseline should you use? Luckily for us, over many years, fantasy football nerds (a.k.a. awesome guys) have devised multiple types of baselines.

The following 3 options are the most common baselines that have emerged. Each type of baseline serves a different purpose.

Value Over Last Starter (VOLS)

Let’s start with the easy one: Value over last starter. Your "starters” are the guys who fill your active roster. So “Value over Last Starter” effectively means that you define your value baseline right at the cutoff between active players and your fantasy bench. It could as well be “value over best bench player”.

If you choose to use VOLS, you’re deciding that your bench players are less valuable, because you’re prioritizing starter-tier players.

• In an auction draft, VOLS inflates the recommended prices for top players, while leaving a tiny budget for your bench.

• In a snake draft, VOLS prioritizes earlier picks for positions that are more replaceable.

It’s easy to think that VOLS can help you lead with a killer active roster. However, it comes with a an increased risk of exposure: usually not all of your starters will pan out. You will certainly need a strong substitute at some point during your season. The same is true for your league-mates. If you see them overvaluing players by using VOLS, chances are that they will be at risk of missing a strong back-up at some point.

There are a couple reasons you might consider using VOLS:

• if you have a smaller league and so the waiver wire is large, or

• if your league is not that competitive on waivers, and you consider yourself more active with waivers.

Essentially you’re taking a bet that you’ll have a good chance of picking up strong substitutes when you need them.

Value Over Replacement Player (VORP)

I can’t be the only person who finds this term confusing. I mean, Don’t all these baselines consider “replacements”?

Anyway, “Value Over Replacement Player” has come to mean that you set your baseline equal to the best un-rostered player in the league. In other words: the best replacement on waivers. It would be much clearer if we called it “Value over Waivers”!

In contrast to focusing on starters (as in VOLS), “VORP” is more risk-averse, and it devotes more priority to your bench.

• In an auction draft, VORP reduces the recommended prices for top players, therefore leaving a larger budget for your bench.

• In a snake draft, VORP prioritizes earlier picks for valuable bench back-ups, sometimes before filling your starting roster positions.

There are a few reasons you might consider using VORP:

• if your league is large and leaves a skimpy waiver wire, or

• if your league format is similar to Best Ball, making your bench significantly more valuable, or

• if your league settings have larger active rosters, or

• if your league culture is very competitive for waiver pickups.

Man-Games, which our website refers to as “Best Ever Evaluation of Replacement” (BEER)

Finally, there is the “man-games” approach, which you might consider a happy medium between VOLS and VORP. The idea was originally published in 2012 by Frank Dupont, who was contemplating the supply/demand of fantasy positions in the fantasy football draft. He brought a more detailed consideration to what defines a “Replacement Player”.

The basic idea is to estimate how many players the active rosters will need all season. Obviously, that number has to include more players than just the active starters in week 1, because there will be bye weeks, trades, injuries, and other unforeseen events.

In more detail, the idea is to use historical data to approximate how many games each drafted player is likely to play.

• For example, a typical top QB ends up playing 15 games on average (out of 17).

• And a typical top RB will maybe end up playing 13 games,

• But an RB ranked 40-50 will maybe only play 11 games.

Let’s keep it simple: These types of reductions in games-played mean that some of your league’s “bench” players will become valuable active starters, at some point during the season. And the theory is that we should set our baselines by counting up player availability, until we include enough players to meet the #games demanded for an entire season. This is done for each position.

• This BEER method gives a balanced treatment to prioritizing your roster’s starters and bench players.

• You might prefer VOLS if you think your league’s waivers can be as fruitful for you as your own bench.

• You might prefer VORP if bench players make a bigger difference in your league, as described above.

In short: Don’t get lost in the the acronyms for VBD, VOLS, VORP, and BEER (or VONA and others). You should probably use the BEER valuation in general, unless you find yourself in the situations outlined above.

Good luck with your draft!

/Subvertadown