With a new price-change system in place for MLS Fantasy Soccer this year, there have been a lot of questions about how it works. So this week, I’m going to delve deeper into how the results of the last three weeks of play have affected player values.
First off, let’s take a look at how the prices have affected the different positions:
| Total price change per position | |
| Position | $ Change |
| Goalkeeper | 0.2 |
| Defender | -1.7 |
| Midfielder | 1.7 |
| Forward | 0.7 |
| Total | 0.9 |
As you can see, defenders have taken the most damage, and that’s mostly because of red cards. Eight out of the nine red cards issued so far in the first three weeks have been to defenders, which accounts for $1.6 of automatic price drop, not including any additional decreases because of the low scores that resulted.
Midfielders' prices have trended upward so far this season. Their scores have been generally lackluster, so the low-scoring rounds have not hurt players’ prices, while the few hot players, such as Clint Dempsey, Fabian Castillo and Jose Villarreal, have seen significant price increases.
The overall value for the entire MLS Fantasy population is only $0.9 higher than the start of the season. All in all, there hasn't been a ton of movement yet.
Breaking it down by team, however, you can see 11 of the biggest movers, both in terms of performers and duds. Keep this in mind going forward – if you’re worried about your fantasy budget becoming too penniless, you may try and catch one of the hot teams while they’re still on the rise:
| Total price change per team | |
| Team | $ Change |
| FC Dallas | 1.3 |
| Seattle Sounders | 0.6 |
| Vancouver Whitecaps | 0.6 |
| Columbus Crew SC | 0.5 |
| New York Red Bulls | 0.5 |
| Real Salt Lake | 0.5 |
| Orlando City SC | -0.4 |
| Toronto FC | -0.6 |
| Philadelphia Union | -0.9 |
| New England Revolution | -1.0 |
| Chicago Fire | -1.3 |
I’ve also taken a cross-section of some of the best- and worst-performing players in 2015 to see what kind of effect each round has on their price. As I mentioned before, the biggest chunk of losers have been due to red cards (denoted by ^ on the score), and in a couple of cases, the player getting the red also played at least 45 minutes, which resulted in a couple of -$0.4 losses in one round!
| Price changes by round for individual players | |||||||||
| Player | Team | Pts | R1 Cost | R1 Pts | R2 Cost | R2 Pts | R3 Cost | R3 Pts | R4 Cost |
| Clint Dempsey | SEA | 26 | 11.0 | 18 | 11.2 | 8 | 11.3 | 0 | 11.3 |
| Chris Seitz | DAL | 24 | 5.0 | 7 | 5.0 | 9 | 5.1 | 8 | 5.1 |
| Zach Loyd | DAL | 22 | 7.5 | 9 | 7.6 | 4 | 7.6 | 9 | 7.7 |
| Blas Perez | DAL | 22 | 9.0 | 8 | 9.1 | 12 | 9.3 | 2 | 9.3 |
| Jose Villarreal | LA | 22 | 6.0 | 8 | 6.1 | 7 | 6.2 | 7 | 6.3 |
| Fabian Castillo | DAL | 21 | 9.5 | 3 | 9.5 | 10 | 9.7 | 8 | 9.8 |
| Ike Opara | SKC | 21 | 7.0 | 10 | 7.1 | 2 | 7.1 | 9 | 7.2 |
| Octavio Rivero | VAN | 21 | 8.5 | 7 | 8.6 | 8 | 8.6 | 6 | 8.7 |
| Aurelien Collin | ORL | 3 | 8.5 | 0^ | 8.1 | 0 | 8.1 | 3 | 8.1 |
| Matt Polster | CHI | 1 | 5.0 | 0 | 5.0 | 1 | 4.9 | 0 | 4.7 |
| Jose Goncalves | NE | 1 | 9.0 | 2 | 8.9 | -1 | 8.5 | 0 | 8.5 |
| C.J. Sapong | PHI | 1 | 7.0 | 1 | 6.9 | 0 | 6.9 | 0 | 6.9 |
| Victor Bernardez | SJ | 1 | 7.5 | 3 | 7.5 | -2^ | 7.1 | 0 | 7.1 |
| Jordan Harvey | VAN | 1 | 7.5 | 1 | 7.4 | 0 | 7.4 | 0 | 7.4 |
| Fabinho | PHI | 0 | 6.5 | 0 | 6.5 | 0 | 6.5 | 0 | 6.3 |
| Zach Pfeffer | PHI | 0 | 5.5 | 1 | 5.5 | 1 | 5.5 | -2^ | 5.3 |
<45 min played, ^Given red card
Will this change the way you go about transferring players this week? Let me know in the comments, and good luck in making some fantasy bucks!
