Hi Rowsus,
I considered starting a thread for this question (apologies to all if there has been one!), but I particularly wanted your analysis of these figures. Given the amount of discussion about bye structure, in essence, my question is, "What exactly is an even bye structure, and how important is it"? I'm only interested in overall, not league games. Here is some relevant information from my team last year.
[table="width: 500, class: grid, align: center"]
[tr]
[td]Round[/td]
[td]Points[/td]
[td]Weekly Position[/td]
[td]Overall Position[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]After Rd 10[/td]
[td][/td]
[td][/td]
[td]
21516
[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]11[/td]
[td]
2166
[/td]
[td]
324
[/td]
[td]
9426
[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]12[/td]
[td]
1859
[/td]
[td]
114748
[/td]
[td]
13687
[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]13[/td]
[td]
1636
[/td]
[td]
51190
[/td]
[td]
13212
[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]end of season, rd 23[/td]
[td][/td]
[td][/td]
[td]
1250
[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
Given the scores for each bye round, and the weekly position, I think it is fair to say that I did not have an even bye structure! However, during the byes, I climbed over 8000 places in the overall, so I'm happy with the result. I did use 3 trades each week, but they were team improvement trades, not just to get a team on the park. The fact that my team continued to improve until the end of the year shows me that I didn't damage my team through the byes.
I've heard others say that an even bye structure is less important than just getting the right players, because if you have a down week because a number of players are out, you will have a corresponding good week when all those players are in. I contend that these figures support that theory.
The only real problem I can see with bye structure is if I have one week where I have too many players available in one position, e.g. 7 forwards available, because one of them cannot be counted. In this case, I potentially wouldn't be compensating fully for the down week where most of those players are not playing. This is the opposite of most of our analysis, where we worry that we have too many players out in one week.
I've had Murphy in my team all pre-season, instead of Beams, because I'm worried about having too many out in Rd 8. If those 2 players average the same, that is a good decision. If Beams averages 30 more than Murphy, it would be a bad decision. If Beams averages 5 more than Murphy, would it be a good decision because I have better bye structure, or would it be a bad decision because I cost myself 5 points per week?
Apologies for the length of the question
, but I have seen other web-sites advocating an even bye structure as well, and I'm struggling to quantify the benefits.