{"id":11871,"date":"2018-03-25T12:02:47","date_gmt":"2018-03-25T19:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/?p=11871"},"modified":"2018-03-31T19:59:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-01T02:59:00","slug":"moneyball-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/2018\/03\/25\/moneyball-v\/","title":{"rendered":"Moneyball V"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an ongoing effort to drive away readers by <a href=\"\/journal\/tag\/moneyball\/\">combining my love of the worst team in the NFL with my love of math<\/a>, here&#8217;s another post about the upcoming NFL draft.<\/p>\n<p>As I&#8217;ve posted previously, I buy in fully to the idea that most NFL teams are bad at valuing draft picks, and that the Browns have done a great job in recent drafts of taking advantage of that quirk of NFL management (note: they&#8217;ve done a great job <i>acquiring<\/i> picks, and a terrible job of <i>using<\/i> those picks).  For example, while one can argue about whether Deshaun Watson should have been the Browns&#8217; choice last year at #12, it&#8217;s tough to argue against the value they got for that trade, giving up #12 in 2017 for #25 in 2017 and #4 this year.<\/p>\n<p>In my <a href=\"\/journal\/2018\/02\/14\/ten-years-getting-wrong\/\">predictions for 2018<\/a> I suggested that the Browns would take a quarterback #1, and then take advantage of teams willing to overpay to move up by trading away the #4 pick.  The Jets recently traded up to the #3 position, heavily overpaying for that privilege according to the <a href=\"http:\/\/drafttek.com\/NFL-Trade-Value-Chart.asp\">traditional draft value chart<\/a>:<\/p>\n<table class=\"bordered\">\n<tr>\n<th width=\"23%\" style=\"text-align:center\">IND trades<\/th>\n<th width=\"38%\" style=\"text-align:center\">NYJ trades<\/th>\n<th width=\"38%\" style=\"text-align:center\">Result<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">#3 (2200 points)<\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">#6 (1600 points)<br \/>#37 (530 points)<br \/>#49 (410 points)<br \/>2018 2nd round pick (270-580)<\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">2200 points for 2810-3120 points<br \/>(28-42% premium)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>Assuming the Browns would get a similar premium for the #4 pick (worth 1800 points), the following are all trades that I suspect will be viable in this year&#8217;s draft based on the fact that there are four quarterbacks being discussed as top picks, and all of the following teams need QBs; were I the Browns&#8217; GM, I would accept any of these offers without hesitation:<\/p>\n<table class=\"bordered\">\n<tr>\n<th width=\"23%\" style=\"text-align:center\">Trading partner<\/th>\n<th width=\"38%\" style=\"text-align:center\">Picks traded<\/th>\n<th width=\"38%\" style=\"text-align:center\">Result<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">Denver<\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">#5 (1700 points)<br \/>#71 (235 points)<\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">1800 points for 1935 points<br \/>(8% premium)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">Miami<\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">#11 (1250 points)<br \/>#73 (225 points)<br \/>2019 1st round pick (590-3000)<\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">1800 points for 2065-4475 points<br \/>(15-149% premium)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">Buffalo<\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">#12 (1200 points)<br \/>#65 (265 points)<br \/>2019 1st round pick (590-3000)<\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">1800 points for 2055-4465 points<br \/>(14-148% premium)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">Arizona<\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">#15 (1050 points)<br \/>#47 (430 points)<br \/>2019 1st round pick (590-3000)<\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top\">1800 points for 2070-4480 points<br \/>(15-149% premium)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>Obviously making mathematically-smart trades won&#8217;t matter if the Browns don&#8217;t do a better job of actually drafting players that have success in the NFL, and thus the Browns clearly need to improve their talent evaluation.  That said, statistically they&#8217;ve made all the right moves when it comes to maximizing their draft capital, and I hope that they don&#8217;t forgo that success this year when teams offer to trade a king&#8217;s ransom for whoever the fourth-best quarterback ends up being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an ongoing effort to drive away readers by combining my love of the worst team in the NFL with my love of math, here&#8217;s another post about the upcoming NFL draft. As I&#8217;ve posted previously, I buy in fully to the idea that most NFL teams are bad at valuing draft picks, and that &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/2018\/03\/25\/moneyball-v\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Moneyball V&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[49,25],"class_list":["post-11871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-moneyball","tag-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11871"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11916,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11871\/revisions\/11916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}