Jules last year across the season he had 56, 53, 37 and a 60. All in all 9 scores under 90 for the season (compensated by 5 times over 100).
He usually gets cheaper as do most defenders but when you add in now an interrupted pre-season he's even more likely to miss games and/or put in those low scores.
My point was that generally his standard deviation is low for a defender. Half of his games (inc. finals) he went between 80-100. I'll do a quick compare with some of the other defenders available this year.
Malceski - Standard deviation of 19.4. No surprise that here because he was the best defender in 2014. I don't expect him to back up those numbers this year, but will be pleasantly surprised if he does.
Simpson - Standard deviation of 32. A scatter gun of very high and pretty average scores. 3 scores of 60 or lower.
Burgoyne - Standard deviation of 15. Old reliable head. Didn't go low or high too often, just delivered. None below 70.
Smith - Standard deviation of 29.3. A breakout year, good against the weak, worse against the poor. 8 below 80.
Hibberd - Standard deviation of 17.7. We know this bloke is consistent. A few injury effected scores, the a lot between 90-100.
Hodge - Standard deviation of 22.6. Captain courageous combined crap with brilliant. Prone to a red vest head injury. 4 below 70.
Shaw - Standard deviation of 29.6. Some big scores, combined with 2 scores below 35.
Gibson - Standard deviation of 26.5. Spike year.
Jaensch - Standard deviation of 25.1. Breakout with some injuries.
Hurn - Standard deviation of 29.8. Injury games through him around.
Duffield - Standard deviation of 25.2. Dockers defenders are all over the place.
Enright - Standard deviation of 18.2. Has been a rock for many years.
Birchall - Standard deviation of 20.5.
In order that gives us:
1. Burgoyne
Hibberd
Enright
Malceski
5. Birchall
Hodge
Jaensch
Duffield
Gibson
Smith
Shaw
Hurn
13. Simpson
Almost every good defender has some low scores when they are tagged out of the game from the back pocket, when they are forced to defend, or when they get injured or suspended. I find it easy to fixate on certain areas of a players stats to justify selection, but at the end of the day, if you are selecting the player for round 1 and aiming for the highest overall score, standard deviation does not matter. You are buying all of there good scores, all of there bad, and everything in between. Simpson is the perfect example of why not picking a high standard deviation player from the start can be a double edged sword. The
wait for his bad games and buy him cheap approach would have seen us not get his 110 average leading into the byes, and then waiting for his bad games, you could have bought him and netted an 80 average for the rest of the year. Buddy showed why it can be good, dropping as low as 390k in the first half of the year, and going on to average 120 for the rest of the year.
I agree that waiting is the right option if he doesn't get any NAB cup games or practice games, but ruling out a starter based on standard deviation is not always a good call. For starters, it is always better to estimate how many games they will play and what the average will be for that player come years end. Waiting for those injury/dirt games can mean a lot of lost points.
