Using the Dynasty Rankings

An explanation of how best to view and use the ranks

This week I updated the Thinking About Thinking Dynasty Ranks. Since doing that I’ve had a few subscribers ask me a few good questions and I think it’s time I offer a bit of an explainer about how I make the ranks and how the tiers work.

(Here’s the post with the ranks link)

1. The Base Pick Value

If you have access to the sheet, you’ll see that the ranks are organized in tiers. Those tiers are each given a title based on the tier’s “Base Pick Value.”

A “Base Pick” is a term I came up with as a measure of currency. It means a pick in the year following the up-coming season (i.e. a pick you can’t use in your lineup this year) that has an equal chance of being ranked 1-12. Its value is draft class agnostic, rather than tailored to the actual upcoming draft class.

For those reasons, this pick is purely a hypothetical exercise, meant to make player values more universal or easier to understand. No such pick actually exists.

In reality, every pick in your league is to some extent favoured to be early, mid, or late in the draft. And depending on the perception of the draft class, picks will have more or less value.

So when it comes down to weighing up a potential trade for a player, consider the “base pick” value not a representation of an actual pick but as a way to measure up the value of the deal. Are you sitting on a 2025 1st from one of the league’s best teams? Maybe this is worth about 0.75 “Base 1s” to you. The idea is that by converting each pick or player a to a rough approximation of their value in “base picks” that it gives you an idea of equivalent value - or more accurately - of equivalent value *according to me.*

Lastly, when considering what you’d buy or sell these players for, the pick value I’m assigning is neither. It’s what I think is *fair value.*

2. So Would You Do This Trade???

A common question I get from people is taking two players in the ranks, evening their value with some kind of pick, and then asking me if that means I would do the deal. In some ways, this is percisely how I want you to use these ranks and why I designed them this way, but in others it’s lacking some context.

These ranks are based 100% on *my* opinion. Now I assume based on you subscribing to me that you probably agree with my opinion a bit more often than not - though it’s certainly not a pre-requisite. So let’s say for ease of explanation that you value every player identically to how I do, and that your league settings perfectly match those the ranks are designed for.

First of all, if you work up a trade that’s equal according to the base pick values in my ranks, that means I’m saying it’s an *equivalent* or *fair* deal. If it fits your roster construction or team direction, then I’d favour it. If it doesn’t, then I wouldn’t. If there is no strategic reason to do the trade and it’s simply a matter of preference, then I have no opinion on it - you should be trying to either solve problems or win on value when you trade.

Also, my ranks do not take into account the market. I do this intentionally because to me the value add of these ranks is for you to see who I think is over or under-valued. However, trading for someone I feel is under-valued at *my* valuation of them is NOT how these ranks should be used. The idea is that if you agree with me about a player being undervalued, and we’re right, you can buy them at or near their current market cost, and eventually you yield the profit if they perform to the valuation I placed on them. The same goes for players I think are over-valued who are on your roster (or my own roster for that matter).

I’m not one to say you should never make any deal unless you’re winning on market value, but you shouldn’t get in a habit of throwing away buying power just to trade for players guys think are under-valued: if you do you’re defeating the purpose.

For more on trading in dynasty:

3. Are players in the Tiers Equivalent?

To be honest, the actual tiering will always be fairly arbitrary. I do the tiers because i think assigning a pick value to the ranks makes them easier to read, and more actionable. But it’s not as though there is some massive, impenetrable barrier between players on either side of a tier break, or that all players within a tier are the same. There’s a reason I define the tiers with a range at the top of the ranks, and then add a (+/-) further down the ranks. It should be viewed as a sliding scale.

Let’s take for example Amon-Ra St. Brown and Drake London. Both are in the 1.5-2 Base 1s tier, but at opposite ends. Effectively what this means is that I see them as the same tier of asset - young, sub-elite WR, but at a different value within that description. Essentially, St. Brown is more at the 2 1sts side of the spectrum while I’d put London closer to the 1.5 1sts side. Jaylen Waddle - who sits near the top of my 1.25-1.5 Base 1s tier - is someone I’d rank closer to London than I’d rank London to Amon-Ra St. Brown in actuality but you have to draw a cut off somewhere. Where the player is slotted in relation to their tier paints a pretty reasonable picture of how I value them.

So what do I think a St. Brown for London trade should look like?

Well I’d say London + early 2 = St. Brown is roughly equivalent according to my values.

That means I’m saying the London side wins if that add on becomes a late 1, and the St. Brown side wins if the add on becomes a mid-late 2.

However, taking the market into account, I’m a bit behind market on St. Brown while higher on London, so if you’re the team acquiring London in this scenario I would be trying to push beyond what I see as the equivalent value and making sure I get that late 1st or better. Meanwhile, while I’d happily do the London + mid-late 2 for St. Brown deal, your odds of that getting accepted are fairly low, so this isn’t the kind of trade I’d spend a lot of time targetting unless someone comes to you.

I hope that helps clarify some things!