Build a Draft - First Principles

[lemonoppy]

Build-a-Mock 1 - First Principles

When I first learned how to do math, it was very fun, and really until Calculus 2 and Differentials in university, it was always fun. I think one of the most valuable lessons I learned during my studies was realizing over and over that everything I was doing was derived from a few first principles, mostly from geometry and later, linear algebra. In order to know what you are doing, and to prove what you are saying, you need to have an understanding of what the foundations are so you can build and expand into new fields. In the SSL, I have no understanding of any part of the league, so consider this a journal of my SSL learnings, and me trying to derive first principles, and also prove the validity of what I’ve been told or learning during my time in this league.

Drafts are a pipeline for replacing talent that is going to decline at a known rate (or approximated with earnings and unexpected IA not being calculated). Since we have a known rate of regression, known amount of earnings per season, it is simple for us to figure out some important things, which are, how much TPE should we be expecting for our major league players, the rate of replacement for our players, and when we should replace them. Generally speaking, the rate of replacement is static assuming continued earning, but quite importantly, to figure out replacements that need to be figured out ahead of schedule.

In our current setup, we have players starting at 250 TPE  and earning about 205 TPE a season, assuming all tasks and equipment are purchased. There is some variation of earning, of course, as Career Tasks and Training camps dry up after the 9th season, but for quickly apparent reasons, this will not be a significant issue.

This is our standard max earner progression, with the end of season TPE we can expect, after our 8th season, we hit regression, quite gentle at first, and our player will dip below 1000 TPE in Season 14 but will hit above that number during the season, and our 15th season is when the player really starts becoming a liability.

Sorted by Average TPE, we can see that our average Majors player is at 1000 TPE, however, we’re more interested in the replacement level our player will be hitting, aside from the two new teams and A.C. Romana, the number for our lower teams is about 1250 TPE for our player to become the fourth lowest TPE player of the Majors side, which feels like a reasonable mark for our players should be called up into that big, starting XI.

If we put this all together, we can figure out a timeline for replacement drafting, which is what the goal for this first bit is.

Putting this all together, our replacement level for our player is 1268 TPE, which they’ll hit by the end of their 4th season. The player we’re replacing will be hitting below our player’s TPE mark in their 14th season.

We’re considering players in their 14th season to be below replacement level, and in order to replace them in time to keep our team nicely high in TPE, we draft their replacement in that player’s 11th season. Depending on our earning level, this accelerates, but in our next installment of this, we’ll examine some teams to see what they might be wanting to draft.

[McLumberjack]

I see graph, I like.

Simple as

[Lpapi]

Love the article! One note though, players actually start to get hit very hard by regression earlier than you might think. Starting in the 3rd season of regression a players cap for physicals goes down by 1 per season. So by season 12 they are capped at 18 for physicals. For max earning players you will probably want a replacement ready by the end of their 12th season even if they are still like 1300 tpe. A well built(20-20 paccel) 1000 tpe player will be better or equal at most positions.

[rrf_1]

Good way for me to learn about SSL careers! Very nicely done, and fun intro