Geek of the Week: Mike Ribeiro
In my previous Geek of the Week articles I have used the tools at Fantasy Hockey Geek to profile players who are under (or over) valued in various leagues and various formats. Today I want to show how FHG can be used to identify player to target based specifically on your individual team’s needs. With that in mind, let’s look at an example and how Mike Ribeiro fits in.
For this week, I am going to do my analysis based on a real life situation that I encountered in my personal keeper league – the WFHL. It is a 12 team category totals –type H2H league with the following categories (G, A, +/-, PPP, SHP, Hits, SOG, GWG, W, GAA, SV%, SO). We keep 15 players including goalies. Last year, I was first in the regular season but got bounced in the playoffs. I owned Ribeiro last season but I didn’t have room on my roster to keep him going into 2012, so I was planning to drop him to the FA pool and attempt to redraft him.
Let’s take a look at Mike Ribeiro’s value in this league last season:
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Ribeiro’s average draft position (ADP) in Yahoo! pools is 139 so in a league of this format (and most other formats), there is already some value there with Ribeiro. He is a solid contributor to almost all categories, excelling in assists, power play points and hits. His low SOG output is the main reason why he is ranked 105 and not closer to other higher end Cs. If you happen to be in a league that doesn’t count shots, then Ribeiro would be a fantastic find late in a draft.
In a one year league, I would suggest that Ribeiro provides good value as a C that you can get later in the draft in a similar way to Mikko Koivu who I wrote about last week. This week though, I want to give an example of how Ribeiro’s value can be even higher depending on your team’s individual category needs.
Keeper league drafts can be drastically different to single season drafts as there are obviously different considerations (am I rebuilding? What positions am I short on? What categories am I short on?). If you are a shrewd manager then you probably have a good idea of the types of things you need before you even make a single pick. Coming into this year’s draft, my team (The Campkin Cartel) was in decent shape having come off of a fairly strong season. I only planned to keep two centers, so I was light there and I finished last season as a middle of the pack performer in As, PPPs and Hits but in the upper echelon of all other categories. What I wanted to do going into this year’s draft was target a C who can help me in the categories I was low in. In order to do this, I created a mock league in FHG; one that had only the three categories in question (As, PPPs and Hits). Here are the results:
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For these three categories only Ribeiro was the 44th most valuable guy last year and the 15th most valuable center. There were 180 guys kept in the league and Ribeiro was the 44th most valuable in the categories I needed – BINGO! In terms of available centers, he was the number 1 value by a fair margin since 1 through 14 were kept by other managers. After running these numbers, I knew that Ribeiro was somebody I had to target to get on my team.
I want to take a moment to stress one point: setting up a new league with only your target categories is a great way to identify the best players to satisfy your team’s needs, but it can’t be the only thing you look at. I would never advocate taking a player above his overall FHG value just to satisfy a category need. The Ribeiro example works well, because his overall value is higher than where I was able to obtain him AND his needs-specific value was even higher. It is a great idea to target guys who are going to contribute to the categories that you are short on, but don’t do it at the expense of your other categories. This is why Mike Ribeiro was so perfect, his strengths are in all of the categories that I need but he contributes well in the other categories as well.
For the record: after running these numbers earlier this fall I actually made the decision to keep Ribeiro and drop another defenseman who was actually valued higher than Ribeiro last year. I knew that Ribeiro was that important to my team and I also knew that my chances of being able to redraft the defenseman were much higher than my chances of being able to snag Ribeiro. I was ecstatic when I ended up getting the d-man back in the third round.
If Ribeiro can repeat his output of last season, he will be a great contributor to The Campkin Cartel. Guys who contribute in As, PPPs and Hits are not that easy to find - those three particular categories are a rare combination. There were only two centers last year with at least 45As, 15PPPs and 100Hits – Ribeiro and Getzlaf. In many ways actually, Ribeiro is a poor-man’s Getzlaf.
What I also like about Ribeiro going into this year is that I think the move to Washington will be good for him. I see him spending at least some time on a line with Ovechkin and I also see Washington’s offensive numbers kicking back up a bit. I think that Ribeiro also has a decent chance of getting some time on the top power play unit. Even if he spends the majority of his time as a second line center, there is enough talent in Washington for Riberio to shine and at the very least he will see some improved +/- numbers. I also love the fact that he is in a contract year - as Dobber points out in the guide, Ribeiro has a history of performing well in contract years. To me it all adds up as a great value addition, who meets my team’s specific needs and I think there is some solid upside there too!
To find players who can meet the specific needs of your team, sign up for Fantasy Hockey Geek today and run some mock leagues. It’s a great way to identify the perfect draft/trade targets!