The simple answer is yes. If you feel these are the two most reliable high scorers, then you pay premium on their price, and eat the value loss. Getting your Captain picks right is just that important! To say you don't want to pay the top dollar, means you are willing to compromise, on what is the first, and most important picks you make in your team.
I'll do a little exercise to demonstrate this point. I'll do it for 2019 and 2020.
Taking the 5 players with highest averages from the previous season, make the 10 possible combinations of two players.
We'll start with a budget of $1,500,000 and subtract the two players prices from that starting amount.
ie 2018 highest 2 averages were, and their 2019 opening prices $1,500,000 - Grundy $708,200 - Gawn $692,100 = $99,700.
So we have 10 "teams" of 2 players. We'll look at the first 8 Rounds of each season, and for each Round, the first player in the team to play that Round will be the VC, with the ability to take their score as C, if desired. We'll use 4 scoring levels as a trigger to take that VC score: 115, 120, 125, 130 and look at the result for all 10 teams, using those 4 trigger points. If the two players play against each other, the most expensive players is Captain. If a player misses a game, he will be replaced by the 6th highest averaging player from the previous season. To even out the the lower priced teams potential to score, we'll divide the remaining cash (ie. with Grundy/Gawn in 2019 the $99,700 shown above), by the MN for Rnd 1 of that season, and come up with the number of additional points each team will receive, based on how expensive their teams were. So the Grundy/Gawn combination in the 2019 table received an additional 18.4 points/Round, and the Neale/Fyfe comination (the 4th and 5th biggest averages from 2018) receive an additional 35.2 points/Round.
I hope that makes sense, sometimes I'm not good at explaining things.
So we have ten 2 players teams, and 4 VC trigger scores, that gives us 40 different results for each season.
The color blocking in the table is just to more easily show when combinations tied.
View attachment 26089
So we can see that the highest priced player (Grundy), and the 5th highest priced player (Cripps) when looped at 115, 120 & 125 points, totalled 3,306.7 points, compared to the worst combination of the 2nd highest (Gawn) and 4th highest player (Dangerfield) totalling 2,743.8 points. That's 509.6 points less, over a period of 8 Rounds. That's pretty enormous, when we are only considering the 5 highest priced players, and using only 2 of them!
The last 4 numbers in the table are what each loop trigger score totalled, across the 10 teams. Interestingly, the old traditional trigger score of 120 was the best performer, while the 130 trigger faired worst.
2020 gives us a similar result. The totals are a lot higher, given the higher scores recorded in 2020, and the difference between the top and the bottom combination is also larger.
View attachment 26090
Not unexpectedly, the Gawn/Neale combination was the top scorer, and scored the same, no matter which loop trigger score you used. This is due to them both posting so many 130+ scores. The Macrae/Fyfe combination, using the 125 & 130 trigger point fared worst, a whopping 735.3 behind Gawn/Neale!
The trigger points of 120, 125 & 130 were all very similar, once again, due to the number of really high scores recorded, while the 115 trigger point lagged behind, as you once again, might expect in a high scoring year.
The 2 tables demonstrate how crucial it is to get your starting Captain picks right. I really think the potential dollars lost mean next to nothing, if you are giving up 500 or 600 points across the first 8 Rounds.
It comes back to my old team selection process.
Start with your 2 or 3 Captain picks, and don't look at the price, as you just need to get it right!
As I said during the post, sometimes I'm not good at explaining things. If there is anything in here that doesn't make sense to anyone, please just ask, and I'll attempt to clarify it for you.
