I like your thought process here but I think your logic might be a bit flawed, and please do correct me if im wrong here, but youre assuming that the rookie selected in place of Rocky in this example is going going to have good return on investment in comparison to the mid priced player. Whereas in actuality most teams will share the core of 14-16 rookies, in effect those picking a rookie over a mid pricer are picking the 15/16th best rookie which most years tends to be a flop.
In comparison to the Brayshaw/Steele types i think you also need to factor in how much more difficult it is to make the 95 to 110 jump than it is to make the 75 to 90 jump. Im not sure which side comes out in front if they both hold value, a higher priced player holding their price is returning more points, but they've also had more money invested in them, that sort of math is way over my head.
I do whole heartedly agree that if your selecting Rocky with the mindset that hes only going to hold value, you should be looking elsewhere. Of course its a much more complex situation as most people will use the money saved over a "true" premium in different ways, but the idea that non selectors are getting a decently performing rookie over the mid priced selectors is almost always untrue in my experience.
Yeah I also weighed that up when thinking about it, it seems to be swings and round abouts. Because if Rocky holds value and you have a 16th Rookie who is only making you a bit of cash it then comes down to where that other 280k was invested.
Whether it was used as an advantage to push say a Smith to Lloyd and the result between those two or say a rookie to Milera and he kills it.
It’s obviously a lot to do with chance but I was more trying to shed light on the personal opinion that even if premiums fell in price, having Rockliff sitting there just retaining his price doesn’t feel like a win to me due to every other team having the opportunity to pick up that same fallen mid as well. In comparison to Rockliff holding steady, other teams may have had other guys across the different lines generate cash for them to help compensate the non-Rockliff choice.
The counter point to that is where I see people coming from though, even if I’ve generated more cash and have a stronger line somewhere else it probably is a lot easier for them to get that fallen premium mid than me because I’d have to trade out a mid pricer on another line to upgrade a rookie to that fallen premo. Or, I’d have to sacrifice a rising player I probably selected as a premium anyway (and is performing of similar standard to the fallen premium) or maybe a mid pricer like Smith who has risen in price.
In that situation if a mid price in another area has risen a bit and Rockliff has stagnated you could always downgrade them and upgrade any of your mid rookies to that fallen premium but it’s obviously more of a sacrifice and cash than a Rockliff upgrade to them but does feel like a win compared to the Rockliff situation.