2015 AFL Trade Period

And we’re back.

After another long and tumultuous season, ending in another now-inevitable Hawthorn premiership victory, the AFL Trade Period is with us again. Over the next few weeks HPN will be breaking down potential and actual trades as they happen, and also will glance our eyes over the forthcoming draft period.

To evaluate each trade, we will be using the HPN draft chart (as unveiled last year), and the HPN Player Value formula.

afltradechart

Changes from last year

Over the last 6 months, we’ve made a couple of refurbishments to our Player Value formula to better account for remaining career resources, as discussed in this post. Last year we applied a linear discount to player value, with each year of a player’s career deemed to have the same worth to clubs. That was a data problem, which we’ve resolved by mapping each player age cohort against actual outputs in that age group. For example, a player into his first season has 95% of his career resources remaining, as the first year of a player’s career isn’t expected to contribute much, nor use up much of his potential.

By the time a player hits age 26, the expectation is that they have about half of their total career value remaining. As per our formula last year, the expected retirement age of a player who is being traded is 31 years old, unless he is an “elite” player (All Australian selection, or twice being selected in the 40 man AA squad, or finishing in the top 5 of the Rising Star).

Why the top 5 of the Rising Star?

Placing in the top 5 of the Rising Star is a relatively good indicator of future career success. It roughly places a player in the top 4-7% of all incoming players (depending on the number of players in the draft pool). By contrast, making the All Australian team puts a player in the top 3% of all players in the league, and the AA squad in the top 6%. As a result, we are comfortable adding the elite loading to young players who have demonstrated that they can cut it at AFL level.

Watch this space in the coming hours, days and weeks.

HPN.

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