Injury Adjusted Points per Game

Which of these WRs would you rather have:

              Player A – 14.5 PPG, 14 Games Played (203 Points Scored)

              Player B – 12.5 PPG, 17 Games Played (212.5 Points Scored)

Photo "Chris Godwin (2021)" by All-Pro Reels, licensed under CC by SA-4.0/Wikmedia Commons

              What about these ones:

              Player C – 17 PPG, 6 Games Played (102 Points Scored)

              Player D – 13.5 PPG, 17 Games Played (229.5 Points Scored)

              You may have found yourself choosing Player A and Player D. In one instance, you favor the player with the higher PPG, but in the other, the player with more total points scored. If follows then, that neither points per game or total points scored can always be used to measure a player’s performance.

              Enter a new metric – Injury Adjusted Points per Game. The logic is as follows: For every game a player misses, credit them with the points that a replacement level player at their position would have scored. After all, this is likely roughly the number of points you expect to get from whoever you replace them with in your lineup.

              Take the examples above again. Replacement level WRs score about 9.5 PPG.

              Player A’s Injury Adjusted PPG can be calculated as:

14.5*14 + 9.5*3 (The 3 games that player missed) = 231.5

Player B = 12.5 * 17 = 212.5

Player C = 17*6 + 9.5 *11 = 206.5

Player D = 13.5*17 = 229.5

              By adding the appropriate value back for the games missed, we can create one metric that tells a more complete story than traditional statistics do.

One shortcoming is that players who average less than a replacement level player actually get a boost for a missed game. The best way to address this is to credit a player the lesser of the replacement points or their average points in games played that season.

              This is not a perfect metric, there are instances where players are so dominant in the few games they play that they single handily win you games, or so boom/bust that they lost you weeks along the way. To capture this, a WAR metric would be most effective. Matt DiSorbo wrote a great article on how you would do that here.

Although it is less effective, adding back replacement points for missed games is a quick and easy way to quantify the amount a player helped your fantasy team.