Moneyballin’ – Round 2

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North Melbourne vs St Kilda

BEST PICK: Blake Acres ($6,900 MID)

Acres had a strong JLT showing with 28 touches and 98 MB points, and took that straight into the season proper with 30 disposals against the Lions, an equal career-high. Acres gives the Saints something they don’t have, a smooth user on the outside that can complement the grunt of Steven, Armitage, Steele and Ross. The role is definitely there for the WA product, and he’s heavily underpriced based on his current price.

BEST STAT: Luke Davies-Uniacke ($3,500 MID)

We expect rookies maybe won’t find heaps of the footy straight away, but LDU’s “bonus” stat numbers are really concerning from his three games so far. 0.3 marks and 1.7 tackles is nowhere near enough to pad out his 12 disposals and I suspect that Davies-Uniacke will be a slow burner in fantasyland.

BEST VALUE: Shane Savage ($6,800 DEF)

Savage was straight back into that “loose” role for Saints that we all wanted to see after a strong JLT showing where he was St Kilda’s most potent scorer. Sure enough, of all players to have over 20 touches in Round 1, Savage had the lowest Contested Possession ratio with 12.5% (3 contested, 21 uncontested). We usually talk about CP’s being the mark of a player’s talent, but a low CP% usually shows that teams love getting the pill into a particular player’s mits. Averaging 92 from his past 12 games, Savage is certainly that guy for the Saints.

BEST RETHINK: Jack Steven ($8,800 MID)

We have a Ben Jacobs tag incoming, and history says you can’t even have a lick at Steven here, despite the tasty price. The last 3 times Steven was been tagged last year, he finished with totals of just 65, 63 and 90 MB. Some of those were from part-timers too – Jacobs is a specialist, and in good form too having tagged Lyons last week and holding him to just 42 over the first 3 quarters.

Carlton vs Gold Coast

BEST PICK: David Swallow ($7,700 MID)

Swallow’s been sneakily getting the job done for Gold Coast despite their issues, and probably isn’t getting the respect he deserves (or the price-tag) after ticking along at 96.3 MB over his past 10 games stretching into last season. Honestly, he just fits the 2018 narrative of yet another young gun who’s benefiting from his first full pre-season in a while, starting the year with averages of 28.5 touches and 107.5 MB. Both those games were in VERY wet conditions for Gold Coast, so just imagine what he can do in a dry-weather game in Round 2?

BEST STAT: Kade Simpson ($9,300 DEF)

78% of possessions won in the defensive half – this is exactly the kind of role we wanted for Simpson when Docherty went down. The veteran was everywhere last week with 35 touches, and now leads the competition for metres gained in Round 1 with 903. The next best was 735. Carlton will do everything they can to set up his lethal left boot for success, so feel free to take out shares in him on pretty much any DFS offering going forward.

BEST VALUE: Nick Holman ($3,500 MID)

The former Blue is now the sole league-leader in tackles with 14 hugs in monsoonal conditions in Round 1. This is definitely his niche for Gold Coast, averaging an equal-5th best 6.5 tackles over the JLT before translating that over into the big time. He won’t be this cheap for long.

Collingwood vs GWS

BEST PICK: Rory Lobb ($5,900 FWD)

The forward-cum-ruckman came in underdone against Bulldogs, but showed enough with 41 hitouts to show he’s the sole ruckman at GWS (Patton was his back-up with just 2 hitouts) and that he’s he worthy of being on the DFS radar. He’s now played 3 AFL games as the #1 ruckman, averaging 37 hitouts and 82.3 MB which shows his potential playing up the ground. The big question is whether he can translate his obvious athleticism into a big fantasy score against an actual ruckman in Grundy compared to the makeshift Bulldogs.

BEST STAT: Lachie Whitfield ($8,900 MID)

Our mate Fantasy Freako says that Whitfield spent 77% of his time in defence, which is a big tick from our pre-season scouting in terms of role. That means that in 3 games as a defender he’s produced 101, 121 and 114 – clearly, it suits him. For reference, Lachie averaged a solid 95 MB as a wingman last year.

BEST VALUE: Tim Taranto ($5,900 MID)

The former high draft pick impressed with 112 in Round 1 to put his name in front of DFS coaches this week. Yes, it was in a thrashing and 7 Giants hit triple-digits in total, but more importantly, Taranto just looked like a really good footballer. He aced the “eye test” and has me optimistic he can pump out these sorts of scores regularly. Last week’s 32 touches smashed his previous career-high of 21 disposals and I’m pretty confident he produced something in that range again this week against the high-volume Pies.

BEST RETHINK: Brodie Grundy ($9,600 RU)

No Mason Cox due to suspension, which means my early-season kibosh on Grundy will be put on hold for a week. As we’ve covered in excruciating detail in this article before, Grundy was a whopping 27 points better off last year when Cox was out of the side. Now he comes up against Lobb, who’s played just 3 games of ruck in his life – he’ll be huge!

Brisbane vs Melbourne

BEST PICK: Christian Petracca ($6,600 MID)

All initial stats point to the promised “midfield time” being real. He won a career-high 7 clearances, collected his second-most disposals in a game with 24, but the thing I’m most sold on is his significant TOG jump last week. It’s been well-known that the only thing that’s kept Petracca out of the midfield to date is his endurance, and he put those concerns to bed with 88% time-on-ground, smashing his career-average of 80%. He’ll go missing in patches, but Petracca is in for a big year overall – make sure you’re riding him before his price skyrockets in future weeks.

BEST STAT: Dayne Beams ($8,100 MID)

4 of his 5 scores of 140+ last year came at the Gabba. Beamer (and the Lions in general, actually) love playing at home – since he became a Lion, Beams has averaged 7.5 more points at the Gabba (110.6 AF) than when he plays “away”. $8.1k is way too cheap for someone with his lofty ceiling.

BEST VALUE: Nick Robertson ($6,500 DEF)

The angry nut played as a midfielder (sent to shadow Jack Steven) last week and ended up being one of their best with 27 touches, 4 marks, 6 tackles and a team-high 11 contested possessions. A play like this screams knee-jerk reaction, point-chasing silliness… But with Mitch Robinson suspended this week, his similarly-named teammate is definitely getting that MID time again in Round 2, surely?

Fremantle vs Essendon

BEST PICK: Dyson Heppell ($8,500 MID)

The Dockers conceded the most fantasy points of any team last year, and were back to their old tricks again in Round 1, conceding the 2nd-highest of the round with 1833 to Port. Targeting Bombers is the obvious play here, and why wouldn’t you ride the hot hand from Heppell? The Essendon skipper ranks #1 in the league for marks, working extremely hard to rack up 13 against Crows.

BEST STAT: Zach Merrett ($10,700 MID)

Assuming he plays of course – and he’s been named – Merrett might be a sneaky contrarian pick this week. Many will be gun-shy after concerns with concussion has tainted his 2018 season so far, and fair enough. But if he can get through a full game unscathed… the numbers are overwhelming. Zach top-scored for the Bombers in BOTH games against Freo last year with 124 and 144.

BEST VALUE: Matt Taberner ($5,300 FWD)

Famous for his frequent alligator-snap attempts to mark, are we going to have to start taking Taberner seriously as a DFS option now?

JLT1: 3 goals, 7 marks, 89 AF.
JLT2: 2 goals, 12 marks, 128 AF.
Rd 1: 1 goal, 9 marks, 90 AF.

Usually I’d steer away from targeting forwards against the Bombers, but Tabs actually had a good time against them last season, averaging 3 goals and 86 AF from two games. He’s cheap enough to take a stab in GPP’s, for sure.

BEST RETHINK: Connor Blakely ($9,100 MID)

I know it’s early days, but it doesn’t look like Freo have that “role” this year. No Docker defender had over 7 marks against Port, which was a big part of why Blakely (and Luke Ryan, when Blakely was out) dominated as a defender to end 2017:

Rd 16: 32 touches, 12 marks, 135 AF.
Rd 17: 33 touches, 11 marks, 149 AF.
Rd 18: 29 touches, 10 marks, 114 AF.

As you can see, Blakely’s 17 touches and 4 marks against Port doesn’t even tickle those numbers, and it’s not like Ryan or Wilson had any success instead. Freo defenders are off the table under further notice.

Western Bulldogs vs West Coast

BEST PICK: Andrew Gaff ($9,600 MID)

West Coast’s personal little seagull LOVES playing the Bulldogs, scoring 146 and 130 against them last year. While I advised staying away from Gaff last week with the scrappy Sydney match-up (he finished with 96 from 24 touches), the Bulldogs’ slingshot playstyle is perfect for the running machine.

BEST STAT: Nic Naitanui ($7,200 RU)

Of the Top 100 scorers in Round 1, Naitanui’s PPM was the second-best, behind Jack Steven and marginally ahead of Tom Mitchell in third. That’s some serious company and puts his 93 AF in 54% TOG into perspective. However… this low TOG will continue for at least the next month. Is Naitanui simply too risky to pick if he’s only going to play half a game, even if it is against the Bulldogs’ spud ruck trio? Unfortunately, I think so. If you play a bad game with 55% game time, it’s going to look horrible on paper.

BEST RETHINK: Jackson Trengove ($6,100 FWD)

Recruited from port, Trengove scored 71 and 100 over the JLT (at a breezy 0.97 PPM) which was really promising… but then Bulldogs decided to roll with a Trengove/Roughead/English tag-team and it completely murdered his scoring. He ended up with 31 AF from 4 touches and 14 hitouts, suffering when left anchored in the attacking arc for long stretches at a time.

Tim English ($3,900 RU) is the ruckman to target for Bulldogs, given he has same upside as Trengove but for a much lesser price. Last week’s 78 from 6 marks and 12 hitouts against the Giants was very impressive and coach Luke Beveridge earmarked him for a bigger role moving forward. We’ll see this week whether it was a fluke.

Sydney vs Port Adelaide

BEST PICK: Justin Westhoff ($8,200 MID)

With Ryder out, it looks like we’ll be treated to a Westhoff/Dixon/Howard tag-team in the ruck. After 132 last week (25 disposals, 9 marks and 9 tackles), is that a good thing or a bad thing for Westhoff’s scoring potential? A quick looks over his career suggests he’s 10 points better when he wins at least 5 hitouts than when he doesn’t… Which isn’t actually saying much when you take the value of the hitouts themselves into account. I’m valuing him as normal here, and Westhoff has been electric to star the 2018 season.

BEST STAT: Jake Lloyd ($8,600 DEF)

Of all players to have over 20 touches in Round 1, Lloyd had the 2nd-lowest Contested Possession ratio with 17.2% (5 contested, 24 uncontested). As we talked about with the guy who one-upped him (Savage) above, this is an excellent sign for Lloyd believers. The Swans love it in his hands and, as a side-note, he finally looks to be free of the McVeigh effect with the veteran doing various amounts of sweet FA down back against the Eagles.

BEST VALUE: Riley Bonner ($5,400 DEF)

Speaking of players whose teams like to feed, Bonner is only starting out in his career but Port have already made it clear that he’s their distributor with Pittard out (hamstring) for the next month. He gathered a career-high 31 touches last week, but it’s now up to us to decide whether we should expect this moving forward. Bonner obviously won’t play the Dockers every week (easiest team to score against last year), but he has averaged a healthy 72 from his three games last year. At this price, and given how friendly his fantasy game is, Bonner should definitely be in your player pool this weekend.

BEST RETHINK: Tom Rockliff ($9,700 MID)

The fact that Rockliff was clearly playing a ton of time up forward and only won 4 possessions in the front half (according to AFL Heat Maps) is extremely concerning. Yes, his last 4 scores against Sydney (141, 128, 132 and 167) are pure fire; and yes, his tackles numbers in those games (11, 10, 11 and 11) are moistening. But this is Portliff, and we’re not certain yet that he’s still a Pig in the teal.

Geelong vs Hawthorn

BEST PICK: James Sicily ($6,400 DEF)

In the knowledge that Hawks were struggling with personnel down back, we saw exactly the kind of role we wanted to see from Sicily. He was floating around back there with a license to fly, registering 11 intercepts against the Pies (ranked 5th in the league) in a slippery affair. I actually think the drizzle might have capped him at 7 marks in Round 1, so watch out for the dry games where he gets 10 or more with ease.

BEST STAT: Gary Ablett ($10,900 MID)

These numbers are the stuff of legend. Gary Ablett has posted 14 tons in a row versus the Hawks. In his last 9 against them, he averages an insane 145, including a lowest score of 129 in that time. There is simply no bigger bunny side for any player in the history of the game. Ablett looked cherry ripe last week with 39 touches in his first game back for Cats, and proved that they weren’t joking when they claimed he was 100% a midfielder in the hoops. Get on.

BEST VALUE: Tim Kelly ($3,500 MID)

27 touches on debut. Won a team-high 13 contested possessions. Played 91% TOG. Named on a wing. Basement price. This guy’s the biggest lock you’ll find in Moneyball, because he looked like a star in the making in his first run. You’re basically picking an 8-man line-up on Monday because any team without Kelly ain’t winning.

BEST RETHINK: Mark Blicavs ($7,800 MID)

Steeplechaser, ruckman, wingman, tagger and now a backman (especially with Harry Taylor going down), the road has been an interesting one for Blicavs. While his story makes for a good fluff piece, don’t pick him in any kind of fantasy any time soon. The Blitz managed just 38 AF last week as he was asked to play as a full-time defender, and it won’t improve until he’s back on a wing.

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