Data analysis: Pain and gain points, Round 5

Round four is complete and it’s about time we start regretting the early season trades we have made.

It’s too late to fight yesterday’s battle and fix your starting team, we need to focus on building value and targeting underpriced players.

The top 1,000 teams are yet to pull too far away from the pack, with still only about 200 points separating position 1,000 and 10,000 (9,290 vs 9,083).

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This means you are only one good round away from dramatically improving your ranking.

I will again look at pain points and gain points as it frames ranking movements quite nicely. It will be based on the average price paid for a player (e.g. to account for the poor souls that paid $518k for Patrick Cripps last round) so will be slightly approximate now that we have price movements and trades.

I have also brought in the top 5,000 ranked ownership percentages to add context to the top of the rankings. Check out the round one article for a more detailed explainer on the methodology here.

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The gainers:

• The popular picks continued to deliver in round four with Brodie (135 points), Heeney (131), Hewett (120) and Neale (128) scoring well over their equivalent price. Heeney is the least represented in the top 5,000 with 57% ownership and could be the player that splits those at the top.
• Gawn (160) repaid those who held him through a few lean weeks and especially those who managed to captain him. However, he has still underperformed on season to date total score and will need a few more big weeks to balance the ledger.
• Berry and Chapman were popular trade outs after round two, with hindsight beginning to show that this might have been a poor decision. It seems we overreact to a small sample and can’t wait to hit that trade button (I look forward to making the same mistake again next year …).
• Jackson (126) and Gresham (106) had big scores on the weekend and have been net positive year to date. However, they are both underrepresented in the top 5000 compared to overall. Have the top coaches got it wrong on these two?

Full Name	Price rd5	Owned rd4	Owned Top 5000 %	Score Rd 4	Pain Gain R4	Net P/G
Will Brodie	$355,000	43%	85%	135	6,441,494	15,597,152
George Hewett	$489,900	57%	96%	120	4,256,323	13,259,793
Isaac Heeney	$528,300	41%	57%	131	3,099,150	7,348,277
Lachie Neale	$632,800	64%	99%	128	2,906,556	15,479,684
Max Gawn	$617,500	40%	41%	160	2,504,195	-3,105,872
Jarrod Witts	$450,000	17%	36%	154	2,289,732	4,254,598
Jack Macrae	$675,600	48%	82%	158	2,270,232	798,304
Stephen Coniglio	$388,900	78%	100%	64	1,939,383	24,137,577
Luke Jackson	$463,500	20%	10%	126	1,751,179	2,982,879
James Sicily	$474,700	34%	52%	113	1,655,875	4,122,020
Jack Crisp	$551,300	34%	54%	132	1,488,457	-1,048,044
Jade Gresham	$364,000	16%	10%	106	1,339,075	3,739,422
Jarrod Berry	$333,900	16%	25%	96	1,200,927	3,905,455
Jye Caldwell	$346,100	15%	19%	87	946,849	3,758,456
Heath Chapman	$350,000	7%	10%	118	771,354	1,839,149

The painful:

• Patrick Cripps (38 points) did the most damage this week but this was shared across a majority of coaches, so it shouldn’t have hurt you too much overall – unless you had him as captain. Whether you trade or hold is the number one decision this week.
• What do we do with Butters (57 points)? He stands to plummet in value after a promising start to the year. Consensus would say to hold (especially with Ollie Wines out) but a trade out could be a nice point of difference to the top 5000 if he continues to underperform.

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• Steele and Whitfield have been net negatives on the year but have been better in recent weeks. Trading them out in round two has probably not gone to plan and is more evidence that these early season trades are usually mistakes.
• The remainder of the players on this list – Oliver (68), Petracca (85), Miller (105), Lloyd (76) and Ridley (74) – showed again that it is not so easy to pick a premium. However, it is nice timing for non-owners as they should bottom out in price in the next few weeks just when we want to upgrade.

Full Name	Price rd5	Owned rd4	Owned Top 5000 %	Score Rd 4	Pain Gain R4	Net P/G
Patrick Cripps	$525,000	61%	85%	38	-4,555,757	6,194,651
Clayton Oliver	$639,000	31%	29%	68	-2,773,282	-2,393,956
Zak Butters	$454,100	50%	83%	57	-1,975,590	2,759,170
Christian Petracca	$596,600	20%	12%	85	-838,708	187,192
Touk Miller	$627,300	26%	40%	105	-804,072	-1,704,866
Jordan Ridley	$515,200	19%	19%	74	-774,360	-1,261,906
Jake Lloyd	$558,600	13%	3%	76	-665,890	-864,302
Jack Steele	$636,600	26%	24%	125	-44,489	-3,281,644
Lachie Whitfield	$466,600	29%	34%	92	-17,651	-3,332,937