What Redraft Value Means (And Why It Is Not Your Dynasty Number)
methodology · redraft · rosters
Open a dynasty league and the roster numbers are familiar. You have seen enough of them to know roughly what a 6,000 player is and what a 2,000 player is, even if you could not say what the units are.
Open a redraft league and that intuition is worthless, because the number is a completely different thing. This post is what it is.
The Short Version
A redraft player value is projected points above replacement. It answers one question: how many fantasy points is this player forecast to score this season beyond what you could have gotten for free off the waiver wire at his position?
A team total is just the sum of that for the players on the roster. Nothing else is in the number.
Why Points Above Replacement, Not Points
Raw projected points look like the obvious choice and they are a trap. In a one-quarterback league the QB1 and the QB12 both start every week, so the forty points between them is nearly all of it, while the forty points between the QB12 and the QB18 sitting on waivers is worth nothing to you. Raw points cannot tell those two gaps apart. Every quarterback looks enormous next to every running back, and your roster ranking becomes a list of who rosters the most quarterbacks.
Replacement level fixes that. For each position we find the last player who clears league-wide starter demand, and everything is measured against him. He is the guy you could add today for nothing, so beating him is the only part of a player's production you actually own.
This is also why the same player is worth wildly different amounts in different leagues. An elite quarterback in a one-quarterback league is competing against a deep pool of startable quarterbacks, so his edge over replacement is modest. Move him to superflex, where every team wants two, and replacement level collapses and his value jumps. One player, one projection, two very different numbers, and both are right.
Your League Sets the Baseline, Not Ours
Three things about your specific league feed the calculation, which is why you should not expect the same player to carry the same number in two of your leagues:
- Your scoring settings. Season projections are converted with your league's own scoring, so a tight-end premium or a six-point passing touchdown changes the inputs before anything else happens.
- Your starting lineup. Replacement level is set from your roster slots. Every FLEX spot is split across running backs, receivers and tight ends; a rec-flex is split across receivers and tight ends; a superflex is counted as a second quarterback. More starting spots at a position means a deeper baseline and smaller values there.
- Your league size. Starter demand is multiplied by the number of teams. Replacement level in a 14-team league sits several players lower than in a 10-team league, so everybody's value goes up.
A player projected below replacement is shown as zero rather than a negative number. He is not a liability, he is simply not an asset: you can replace him this afternoon at no cost.
The Two Numbers On A Roster Row Are Different Units
This is the part that trips people up, so it is worth being blunt about.
On the Rosters tab, a redraft team's big headline number is projected total points for the season, carrying a small "pts" label. That is the whole team's forecast output, replacement level not subtracted, which is the right thing to headline because it is what actually shows up on your scoreboard.
The Starters, Bench and Picks line underneath is a different unit: those are sums of points above replacement. That is why the starters figure looks so much smaller than the headline, and why it should. A bench full of waiver-level bodies genuinely contributes near zero above replacement even though those players will score plenty of raw points.
Both numbers are labeled in the app now. If you only remember one thing: the big number is output, the breakdown is edge.
It Is Not Comparable To A Dynasty Value
Say this out loud once and it stops being confusing. A dynasty value is a price. It is a market's read on what a player is worth to trade, blending several years of expected production, age, contract situation and hype. A redraft value is a quantity of points over one season. They share no units, no scale, and no time horizon.
So a 402 in a redraft league is not "worse than" a 6,000 in your dynasty league, in the same way that a temperature is not worse than a distance. Comparing them across your leagues, or reading a redraft roster as though the dynasty scale applied, will lead you somewhere wrong every time. We keep the two labeled distinctly for exactly this reason.
Survivor Leagues Get A Different Number Again
If your league chops the lowest scorer each week, the goal is not maximum output, it is never finishing last. So those leagues are valued on a floor: projected season points discounted for week to week volatility. A steady fourteen-point receiver beats a boom-or-bust sixteen-point receiver, which is the opposite of what a points-maximizing lens would tell you. Same idea as above, different question.
Known Limits
Stated plainly, because you should know where the edges are:
- It is a projection, not a result. Everything upstream of the math is a preseason forecast, and forecasts are wrong in ways that no amount of clean arithmetic fixes. Treat the number as a starting point for a decision, not the decision.
- It is season-long. It says nothing about a bye week, a matchup, or who to start on Sunday. Those live on the in-season surfaces.
- Replacement level moves. As projections update through the season, the baseline moves with them, so a player's value can change without his own projection changing.
- Roster rank is not the value total. Teams are ranked on projected points and projected win percentage together, not on the sum of the breakdown, so the best roster is not always the one with the largest number.
Where To See It
Open a redraft league and go to the Rosters tab. The unit is stated above the rankings, every total carries it, and hovering any figure in the Starters and Bench line spells it out in full.