Opinion Todd Goldstein $695,100 - Trust Or Trap?

Philzsay

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#61
Did last years winner have set and forget rucks? What did he have?
Set and forget (for a while!).

He had Goldy, NicNat and Read. In R19 he traded NicNat to Martin and in R23 he traded Goldy to Jacobs.
 
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#62
@ Jurn Stern - mate you always make valid points! plucking two out of goldy/Jacobs/martin is a lot of cash no doubt about it. You make a very good point, it could ruin your season chasing last years points and top rucks falter for whatever reason.

It is difficult in this game to fully avoid carnage. I have had weak rucks every year for probably the last 4 seasons! whilst trying to upgrade to the top ruck early in say rounds 5-9, there is always other areas that seem more important at the time- culling, grabbing a bubble boy, rocky drops 200k, ect.
I remember in 2014 I went through about 6 rucks options as I simply couldn't afford to bring in the top scoring ruck options at the time.

My choice in 2016 is to over pay for the rucks, end of the day I'm more than happy to side swap a ruck if needed - I've blown so many trades over the last few seasons within the ruck line, my squad doesn't improve and I watch the top rucks create at least a 500+ point advantage from my picks. I'd rather at least have the collateral (hopefully) of a goldy/martin so if they do falter through injury or seriously poor form I can only use one trade as these guys should hold some value. So i'm content already that if a sideways or corrective trade needs to be done early i'm willing to pull the trigger early in 2016 on he ruck. If you do not have two out of the top3 rucks it is very difficult to remain in contention.

After years of trying to pick the good ruck option, ive yielded, will be picking 2 out of the top 3 to start with and looking for value in every other line.
im with you torres..last year i went with mcevoy and another mid pricer. mcevoy got injured and then i traded him to mumford. mummy lasted one round and then i did another trade perhaps goldie (sorry cant recall) but i made three trades for one ruckman. this year i went with goldie and nicnat. i was anticipating i would need to upgrade nicnat but he ended up being a keeper. the point of the story is have 2 solid rucks. im not for or against goldie. if i can fit him in then great, but if i dont then i would want 2 solid rucks unless you have the dpp link.
 

KLo30

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#63
This is worthwhile in this thread, so copying across.

Here's some figures to contemplate in regards to Goldy.

Goldstein scoring at career average against opponents
If you didn’t start with Goldy and were planning of getting him in before the bye, this is the dream scenario for you.



Goldstein scoring at last game level against opponents
If you started with Goldy this is a double win scenario. Not only do those who start without him miss out on valuable points but his price hardly drops making him almost unattainable.



Goldstein scoring at an 115pt average
Those with Goldy get handy points on the board, whilst those without can pick him up for a $100K discount. Probably a win for those starting with Goldy.

First, the easy part, how does Goldy's Price change, depending on what he averages? I hate tables like this, that use the average score, week in, week out, to generate prices. So what I've done is assumed Goldy will score 15% higher in games in Victoria, than he does in games outside of Victoria, which is about what he did last season. ie in the first column where he averages 130, I have him scoring 139 in Victoria, and 118 interstate.



There are two hard parts to doing analysis like Blicavs. Firstly getting past your own preconceived ideas, and secondly knowing where to draw the line. Let's soldier on regardless.

First, let's try and tackle this from a Club point of view. Imagine you are part of the Geelong match committee, and you sat down to discuss things at the end of a largely disappointing 2015. Rucking and Stoppages would have been a large part of that conversation. Let's look at the main numbers:

Hitouts: Geelong 725, Opposition 1,008 - Geelong won only 41.8% of Hitouts.
There were only 2 games for the season where Geelong won the Hitouts.
Rnd 5 v Rich - Simpson 21, Blicavs 15, Walker 1, (total 37) beat Maric 25, Vickery 5 (total 30)
Rnd 11 v Port - Stanley 24, Blicavs 20, Walker 16, Others 3 (total 63) beat Lobbe 52, Others 7 (total 59)
There were 14 games where Geelong won less than 45% of the Hitouts, 6 games where they won between 45% and 55%, and 1 game where they won more than 55%, and that was only 55.2%!
They obviously need to do something, as it's not working right now. The recruiting of Z Smith was possibly the best they could get, given they were trying to get Dangerfield (to be covered in the next section of this analysis) as well.
This is about Blicavs, so let's isolate his Rucking performance. There were 8 games where you could say he was Rucking solo, or 1st Ruck. In Rounds 1 and 2 he seemed only to be Rucking "incidently", and all other games he either shared the duties, or was playing 2nd Ruck. To focus on his performance as a Ruck, let's look at how he went in those 8 games as a solo or 1st Ruck:
Blicavs 189 H/outs at 23.6/game, other Geelong H/outs 87 H/outs at 10.9/game - total 276 at 34.5/game
In those 8 games the opposition team won 407 H/outs at 50.9/game.
With Blicavs playing 1st Ruck or solo Ruck, Geelong won 40.4% of Hitouts, just below their seasons poor average.
Obviously, Blicavs isn't a credible option at 1st Ruck, if you are trying to improve your Rucking woes.

Stoppages. Selwood came 9th in average Clearances/game with 6.95. (Dangerfield came 7th with 7.17). No other Geelong players were in the top 20, with Caddy next best at 5.1/game and Guthrie/Blicavs tied next at 3.6/game.
Geelong lost the Clearances to the opposition in 2015 727 to 838 (34.6 to 39.9 per game).
They had 7 games where they won the Clearances and 14 games where they lost the Clearances.
There were 11 games where they got less than 45% of the Clearances, 8 games where they got between 45% and 55%, and 2 games where they got more than 55%.
It's pretty hard to lose first use of the ball in games consistently, and win more games than you lose. They needed to address that, and the recruiting of Dangerfield goes a long way to fixing that problem. Not that they specifically wanted him for this problem, just happy coincidence.

Where does Blicavs fit into this analysis of Clearances? You might think that 3.6 is pretty good for someone attending most Stoppages as a Ruck, rather than a Mid, but it's not that great. Looking at the top 8 Rucks, as far as Hitouts/game, and how many Clearances they averaged/game you get: Goldy 3.5, Sandi 2.5, Mummy 3.2, Jacobs 2.6, Gawn 2.8, NicNat 4.0, Martin S 4.8, Lobbe 1.8. So Blicavs Clearance numbers look fairly typical for an athletic Ruck, and there is nothing in them to suggest that he will be a fix to the Clearance problem.

So to summarize the "Club Point of View". Blicavs is servicable, good as an "incidental" weapon, but isn't the fix to either the Hitout or Clearance dilemma. He will attend his share of Stoppages in 2016, but if Geelong are to address these two problems, it would appear he will be at less stoppages in 2016. They've added Z Smith, and Dangerfield to the mix, so who is it you think Blicavs will replace at Stoppages to keep his Stoppage numbers high? Caddy? Guthrie? It seems very unlikely!

So let's look at this from a SC point of view.
Blicavs 8 games as solo or 1st Ruck saw him average 106.0 in SC, 16.8 Disp, 9.0 CP's, 23.6 H/outs, 3.8 Clearances.
Blicavs 13 games as 2nd Ruck, Shared Ruck or Incidental Ruck saw him average 103.2 SC, 19.1 Disp, 10.0 CP's, 11.1 H/outs, 3.5 Clearances.

There's a fair chunk of his score, in each of those sections, that comes from the points he got attending Stoppages. He averaged slightly less in the games where he attended less Stoppages. The question becomes, where do you see him making progress? It would seem certain, if Smith, Vardy and Stanley can hold fitness, that Blicavs will be attending less Stoppages, and the Stoppages he does attend as a Mid, he would seem even less likely to get the ball, with the introduction of Dangerfield. It seems a lot of his game will go back to being "Mr Stop Gap", and filling holes where needed. History says that is not a very SC friendly role. There seems to be have been some talk of him possibly playing more Mid this season. With the introduction of Dangerfield, we will see Selwood, Duncan, Caddy, Guthrie and Company getting a little less Mid time. Who is it that will give up even more of their Mid time to Blicavs? It's very hard to see how it will work! 110 averages in SC usually come to the top 12-15 Mids, a couple of Rucks and Forwards, and maybe one Def. The numbers above show that Blicavs fails to fall into anyone of those catagories.
He could well prove to be useful pick of sorts in SC, but it is hard to see him being anymore than a slightly underperforming R2/M8, but his DPP flexibility might save you some points along the way. To me, it really looks like a more realistic expectation of his 2016 season is something like 95 to 104.
Mods you may want to tidy up ??? and have Rowsus' completed analysis post hear as well. [Added]
 
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#64
I can't see how he can be worth picking. No ruckmen ever backs up their peak season, and Goldy has never previously averaged more than 113.

Instead, I'm going for Jacobs and Martin, who should both average around 110 (compared to a likely 120 for Goldy).

As an example, I can use the money from Goldy -> Jacobs to upgrade elsewhere for the value of around 20 PPG for an overall gain of 10 PPG.
 
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#65
I'll be aiming to bring him in as my first upgrade hopefully he drops under 600k around rd 6
 

KLo30

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#66
I'll be aiming to bring him in as my first upgrade hopefully he drops under 600k around rd 6
As part of the analysis of this thread can you give us the who, what, when, where, how and why you will do this?

Are you keeping money aside? Starting with Lobbe who has an easy draw and will increase in value by $X? Etc

Always interested in the strategy of fellow SCSers.
 
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#67
Yeah i'll be staring with lobbe so plan is to turn him into goldy when 1 of my rookies is ready to go i always trade hard . Alternatively i could move blicavs to midfield if someone goes down with an injury.
 
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#68
If lobbe fires imay keep him and move blicavs to mid to open up a spot for goldy is what i mean
 

Bomber18

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#69
Fantastic tables Klo! Great resources.

I can see why people might bank on a down game against Freo bringing down his price for a round 7 trade in but keep in mind how he also verses teams like BRI, MEL, GC around that game. These are teams that give up the most SC points to their opponents. If he goes 150+ in a few of those games, his price won't go down that much.

I can see Klo's middle table of Goldy's last scores against his opponents being a more accurate representation of how his price might fluctuate (Although I think he'll score lower against Freo). Even if he scores 90-100 against Freo, his higher scores around it will keep his price around 640k. Rookies won't have matured enough for a trade in at Round 6 IMO. He had 150+ scores early last season as well. Teams that miss out on him in Round 7, 8 and 9 would really struggle to catch up. Assuming Goldy averages 115-120, his higher scores would come against BRI, MEL, GCS, STK, ESS and CAR as those are all teams that give up heaps of points to opposition and he plays them all in the first 9 rounds!

My prediction of his first 8 would be something like: 105, 130, 150, 95, 150, 115, 140+, 140+ (200?), 140+
 

Bomber18

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#70
Fantastic tables Klo! Great resources.

I can see why people might bank on a down game against Freo bringing down his price for a round 7 trade in but keep in mind how he also verses teams like BRI, MEL, GC around that game. These are teams that give up the most SC points to their opponents. If he goes 150+ in a few of those games, his price won't go down that much.

I can see Klo's middle table of Goldy's last scores against his opponents being a more accurate representation of how his price might fluctuate (Although I think he'll score lower against Freo). Even if he scores 90-100 against Freo, his higher scores around it will keep his price around 640k. Rookies won't have matured enough for a trade in at Round 6 IMO. He had 150+ scores early last season as well. Teams that miss out on him in Round 7, 8 and 9 would really struggle to catch up. Assuming Goldy averages 115-120, his higher scores would come against BRI, MEL, GCS, STK, ESS and CAR as those are all teams that give up heaps of points to opposition and he plays them all in the first 9 rounds!

My prediction of his first 8 would be something like: 105, 130, 150, 95, 150, 115, 140+, 140+ (200?), 140+
 

KLo30

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#71
Fantastic tables Klo! Great resources.

I can see why people might bank on a down game against Freo bringing down his price for a round 7 trade in but keep in mind how he also verses teams like BRI, MEL, GC around that game. These are teams that give up the most SC points to their opponents. If he goes 150+ in a few of those games, his price won't go down that much.

I can see Klo's middle table of Goldy's last scores against his opponents being a more accurate representation of how his price might fluctuate (Although I think he'll score lower against Freo). Even if he scores 90-100 against Freo, his higher scores around it will keep his price around 640k. Rookies won't have matured enough for a trade in at Round 6 IMO. He had 150+ scores early last season as well. Teams that miss out on him in Round 7, 8 and 9 would really struggle to catch up. Assuming Goldy averages 115-120, his higher scores would come against BRI, MEL, GCS, STK, ESS and CAR as those are all teams that give up heaps of points to opposition and he plays them all in the first 9 rounds!

My prediction of his first 8 would be something like: 105, 130, 150, 95, 150, 115, 140+, 140+ (200?), 140+
Therefore, after 9 rounds Goldy would be priced at a minimum of $665K (entering 140+ as 140). A nightmare scenario for those who don't start Goldy.
 

Bomber18

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#72
Therefore, after 9 rounds Goldy would be priced at a minimum of $665K (entering 140+ as 140). A nightmare scenario for those who don't start Goldy.
Thanks for those stats Klo! How about after Round 6 with those predictions?
 

Sloth

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#73
think its easier to go with set n forget rucks. if we get anywhere near the amount of injuries at the start of the season like last year I don't see how u can do an upgrade by round 6.
 
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#75
Thanks everyone for the great analysis here.

I'm leaving him out at this stage, and going with Jacobs & Blicavs.

My plan is to bring him in 6-9 rounds in, move Blicavs to the mids and trade out a fattened cash cow.

That's the theory at least!!
 
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#76
Thanks everyone for the great analysis here.

I'm leaving him out at this stage, and going with Jacobs & Blicavs.

My plan is to bring him in 6-9 rounds in, move Blicavs to the mids and trade out a fattened cash cow.

That's the theory at least!!
By moving Blics to the mids does this mean you see him as a top 10-12 scoring midfielder for the year?
 

Jandrews

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#77
By moving Blics to the mids does this mean you see him as a top 10-12 scoring midfielder for the year?
More likely to be an M7 or M8. If you have your 8 mids in the top 12 by the end you would be a very happy camper. Id be more than happy with my m8 being in the top 20-25.

Believe starting Blitz in the Ruck is a great option, super versatile pick!
 
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#78
More likely to be an M7 or M8. If you have your 8 mids in the top 12 by the end you would be a very happy camper. Id be more than happy with my m8 being in the top 20-25.

Believe starting Blitz in the Ruck is a great option, super versatile pick!
For Crouch/Libba/O'meara maybe but you'd want better from 560k
 
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#79
More likely to be an M7 or M8. If you have your 8 mids in the top 12 by the end you would be a very happy camper. Id be more than happy with my m8 being in the top 20-25.

Believe starting Blitz in the Ruck is a great option, super versatile pick!
SC Gold is starting to agree - Blicavs 4th most popular ruck at 13% ownership :)
 

Jandrews

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#80
For Crouch/Libba/O'meara maybe but you'd want better from 560k
If he can hold his own before you make the play for a discounted Goldy, the discount could be very handy in the kitty.
 
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