Dream Team 101: Breakevens

The term ‘breakeven’ refers to what score a player must score in their next game to avoid a price change. For example, Michael Barlow is smashing it. While already going up $147,400, he is still set to rise in value due to his smashing average of 98.8 points per game. His breakeven is -6. For him to go down in value from his current price tag of $253,200, he would need to give away more than two free kicks. Not going to happen.

On the flipside, Ryan Hargrave is a bloke who averaged 93 points last year and was therefore priced at that average. He has stunk it up so far this year, already dropping $101,300 for his current average of 48. Hargrave’s breakeven is a massive 154 – so he is set to slide next time he plays.

The best place to get this info is from the FFGenie – which is a product of a very good friend of DT TALK, grimlock. Click here to access the website for this awesome resource.

So how does this effect my team?

The breakevens help with your trading. In a perfect world, you want to sell your cash cows (ie. money makers:  rookies or mid priced players) at their peak. Offloading Josh Hunt this week could be a good call. He is averaging 58.4 and his breakeven is 66. He can get it, but it seems to basically be his limit. He has made $58K and could be one of those guys who you can cash in for a rookie – such as Ashton Hams or Phil Davis – or give you a leg up to a premium. Most rookies haven’t peaked yet. You can see this with breakevens of some of my favourites: Jack Trengove (15), Dustin Martin (30), Scott Gumbleton (2)… and James Podsiadly (-63) who has a lot of growth left in him as he has only had one price movement.

The other end of this is trying to find a falling or fallen premium. An example, and one that I will be all over this week, is Alan Didak. He has dropped $62,700 and has a breakeven of 92. That is what we call a cash fowl (rather than a cash cow). His breakeven is achievable and we can assume that his price has ‘bottomed out’. So jumping on him this week is a winner.

For those of you thinking that Dane Swan is a bargain at the moment at $471,800 would be right – considering he has $51,700 from the start of the year. But don’t be too quick to jump on him just yet. His breakeven 147 – which is probably out of Swannie’s reach at the moment. So he is likely to drop again – I would hold off at the moment. Could you find someone like Lenny Hayes $416,800 (over $60K down on original price) instead? And look at Swan in a couple of weeks?

I hope this is some food for thought for some of you Dream Team coaches that aren’t too sure how this works. I could spend hours and hours talking about the relevant breakevens for this week, but part of the fun of DT is finding your own little gems through your own research. The FFGenie is by far the best tool for AFL Dream Team (and other fantasy footy games).

Click here for the FFGenie and all of the details on how to use it!