Well please guess how much Castagna gets each year, in your opinion. I’d certainly be interested in what figure it is. I certainly don’t know.
I’d like to know what Aarts earns as well ( I can only surmise it would be fairly cheapish contract). Add them together to upgrade, what have we lost?
I wouldn’t be against going into a season with a spare list spot or 2. Evaluate a need if we have injuries using the PSSD or MYD
Average wage is approx $390k per year.
When did I say a small forward needs to kick 44-60 goals per year?
I stated I preferred “a player who kicks 2-3 goals when the opportunity presented itself” a player who has the basic skills of a professional footballer.
Its not a matter of downgrading one area for another. That’s List Management 101. If you have a plethora of small forwards (Stengel, Castagna, Butler, Higgins at a pinch Stack, Baker, etc) you sometimes have to make the call to let someone go to bolster where you have a deficiency. Or sometimes the players themselves will look for more opportunities
Its balancing the list. You don’t carry 8 hbfers when you desperately need mids. Or 6 specialist wingmen when you need a key forward.
Or 5 ruckmen etc.
Rather than accepting the limitations of equalisation measures, the way I read your argument is that you've resorted to "well, let's just package up our worst players and pool the resources together for 1 good player so we can afford an upgrade"
Am I misreading the argument?
And even if I entertained that approach as a genuine approach, we could just apply that same argument to any other player - say a star midfielder - instead of wasting such a strategy on upgrading a small forward. That would then put us back to my original argument:
In a zero sum game, you need to consciously choose which areas you invest in the least. Most people find ways to avoid doing that, but philosophically that's the wrong because you'd be setting yourself up to run out of resources before you intend to... without writing several paragraphs to better explain exactly what I mean, I think the concept is objectively true, I'm just not sure how to describe it.
Regarding your next point, I don't need to know exactly how much our cheapest players are getting to know that they're in the category of low priority investment.
Are you disputing the idea that George absorbs a smaller portion of the equalisation pie than most of our players? I think that's a reasonable assumption to make.
A player who kicks 2-3 goals a game = a player who kicks 44-66 goals per season. That's what it is.
Hence, my interpretation is that you're saying let's package up George and Aarts, and pool that money to get 1 player who can kick 44-66 goals per season.
My argument is the club is very smart with our conscious allocation of limited resources, and that it's human nature to do the opposite and chase 'better talent' without really acknowledging the consequences that pursuit has on limited resources. It's all in context of value for the price. Value can be exploited if you know things that your competition doesn't know or doesn't have the discipline to act upon.
So, do you accept the reality that upgrading a forward pocket means decreasing an investment elsewhere by an equal amount, and if not, why? If so, which area do you consciously disadvantage so we can upgrade our small forward stocks?
You've raised the idea to offset the cost by using the PSD and MSD. However, we already utilise the PSD and MSD. Therefore, any stance to upgrade our forward pocket without consciously choosing where to decrease investment is a short-sighted argument to pull additional resources out of nowhere to get better talent, and deal with the guaranteed repercussions later. Is that your suggest approach?
Another alternative would be to replace what we have with similarly-priced alternatives from the rookie draft.
When we know our current cheap option is good enough to contribute to multiple premierships, then I just don't see a large incentive to churn through lottery tickets hoping to find a better one quickly.
Dig deeper into the best and worst kicks for goal at each AFL club. Investigate every goal kicked since the start of the 2018 season.
www.statsinsider.com.au
Castagna not impressive. Would like to see 2022 data.
View attachment 16016
Thanks for finding these data.
I'm not sure how to accurately apply that -12% figure to the stats I'm currently aware of, but I think we can still think about the general concept.
Being intentionally vague about the specific numbers, let's now say George is about -12% for expected shot difficulty and -6% for overall goal kicking accuracy compared to the competition average, and overall, he costs us 1 goal for every 10 shots compared to average.
So, we could be getting 1 extra goal in every 10th shot he takes i we invest more into talent in this position on the ground.
Does that sound fair?
I would then say the most important context here is for whatever numbers these are to make sense
after we adjust for where his output lies on a distribution that takes into account salary and upfront pick cost of every player in the competition.
That value rating is what it's all about. Everything else is relative to that number on a distribution adjusted for equalisation measures.
We can't analyse the actual numbers in here unfortunately, but let's say George comes at around half the investment cost overall compared to average, then it'd be a win if the things he does are more valuable and harder to observe than the "-10%" weakness that everyone can clearly notice, including any 5yo kid.
The good is obscure
The bad is obvious
...and I'd argue that's a good thing after value for money enters the equation.
I believe list management success largely hinges upon us trying to avoid the many, many biases that we all have when faced with difficult decisions surrounding limited resources.
Most suggestions for improving upon players like George ultimately fall into the category of spending more money for more talent, which isn't a good approach.
Assuming he's still a relatively cheap option, it's hard to replace him even if someone slightly better becomes available.
I think our top priority is to find Cotchin and Edwards replacements in the draft, and to keep Bolton, Baker, Short, Balta, etc.
Small forward is a good transitory position for future midfielders IMO.
Maurice Rioli is the perfect type for this position, as he offers potentially a handful of competent years as a small forward before going on to fulfil a role in the middle.
Daniel Rioli wasn't a career small forward
George is one of the few career small forwards in this regard, but I wouldn't replace him with a better version of is type... I'd keep him while churning through Cotchin and Edwards replacements (top priority) and then play those replacements as a small forward if the opportunity arises. I don't think it matters if we gain marginal upgrades on fringe role players.
