Price Check: How Much Should You Spend on Saquon Barkley in Salary Cap Drafts?

Saquon Barkley has become one of the most polarizing early-round picks in 2022 fantasy drafts. Some drafters are ecstatic about grabbing a player with overall RB1 upside at a late second-round price, while others are swearing him off after injuries and the Giants’ offensive ineptitude has led to two consecutive disappointing seasons for the man who was once one of the most electrifying players in the league.

Other Salary Cap Articles: Studs and Scrubs | Striking at Value in Salary Cap Drafts | How to Approach 2022 Salary Cap Drafts (Tips & Tricks) | Salary Cap Nomination Strategy

At the time of this writing, Barkley’s ADP is RB10 and 18 overall. However, these expectations can be thrown out the window in salary cap leagues. I’ve written previously about the Rule of One and why you may see managers in your drafts emptying their wallets for a player like Barkley, primarily because many will see him as the last running back available who has a real shot at finishing as the overall RB1. Even if half of your league completely swears Barkley off, the other half can easily drive a chaotic bidding war.

So what’s a reasonable price for Saquon Barkley if you’re targeting him? With our projections and estimates of his range of outcomes, we can come to a price target that will help you make a competitive bid while giving you a baseline of when to walk away if the price gets too high.

All numbers in this article are for a basic 10-team, half-PPR league that starts two running backs and wide receivers and one of all other positions including Flex. This should provide a baseline price target for you to adjust based on your league settings and your league’s drafters.

Finding a Range of Outcomes

To set a price target for a player, the first step is to identify their realistic range of outcomes: what is their absolute best-case scenario, what is their worst case, and what lies in between? With Barkley, his range of outcomes is completely across the board; we’ve seen him finish as the overall RB1, and we’ve also seen him play one unimpressive game before leaving the next week with a season-ending injury. Frankly, both are possibilities in 2022.

While considering the range of outcomes, we also have to assign realistic probabilities that each one is to occur. While somebody may try to convince you Barkley is obviously going to return to stardom this year, his ADP would be higher if we felt that was a guarantee. So let’s break down a simple range of outcomes for Barkley’s 2022 season and assign basic probabilities to each one:

We all know about Barkley’s upside, and as the RB10 in ADP it’s reasonable to say he has a 10% chance of finishing as the top overall running back. I also gave him a 20% chance of finishing somewhere else in the top five, giving him 30% odds of returning to form with an elite season. Barkley can reach this point if his health brings a return to his explosiveness, he plays a full season of games, and the changes brought to the Giants' offense over the offseason prove fruitful.

But maybe he misses a few games to injury, or his prior injuries have slowed him a bit, or the offense doesn’t make huge steps forward. I’ve given him 55% odds of meeting expectations in 2022, landing between RB6 and RB15. He’d still absolutely be a valuable fantasy asset that can help bring a team to playoffs.

Finally, we get into the disappointing cases. Maybe he misses significant time, maybe the Giants continue as one of the league’s worst offenses, or maybe lingering injuries weren’t really to blame for his poor performances in the previous seasons. I’ve given a 10% chance of Barkley landing between RB16 and RB24, and a 5% chance of him finishing worse than that, which would almost certainly have to be caused by serious injury.

Setting a Price Target

Once we’ve established a range of outcomes and probability, we need to assign a value to each outcome. How much is Barkley worth if he finishes as the overall RB1? What about top five? This can be a daunting task, but we have the tools to work through it.

The most common way to assign auction values to a player is through a value-based drafting (VBD) model, which you can read more about here. This approach will define a player’s value based on how many points they score or are projected to score, over a common baseline at their position. The best player available on waivers, known as the replacement player, is the most popular baseline, but I also like to incorporate the last starter at each position as well. This gives a boost to players who not only outperform the depth of their position but also give you a weekly edge over whoever your opponent holds in their lineups.

Through a VBD approach, we can estimate that the overall RB1 this year will be worth $95. If our season projections were 100% right, that would be Jonathan Taylor’s value in 2022. The average value of the other top-five running backs is $71, and so forth in the table below. Once we assign a value to each outcome, we multiply the probability by the value to get the adjusted value for that outcome. The sum of all adjusted values is our price target.

And just like that, we arrive at a price target of $51. If you are targeting Barkley in your drafts, this is what I would budget in order to be able to draft him. Further, I’d walk away pretty quickly if the price went above this.

And you don’t need a complicated VBD approach to do this yourself for any player! So long as you have some trusted source of pre-draft auction values and an understanding of your league’s behavior, you can perform this exact same exercise to help you set a price target for any player you’re targeting

Setting Expectations

As I look at the same VBD model I used to arrive at the $51 price target, I see that Saquon’s projected value for 2022 is $44. In fact, Joe Mixon, the RB6 overall in rankings, is projected to be worth $51. Why would we set such a high price target for Barkley in this case? There are a lot of reasons behind this:

Projections are best guesses at the most likely outcome: They often fail to accurately capture players with a wide range of outcomes, like Barkley. Barkley’s price target is higher than his projection because we’re more heavily pricing in the chance of him having an elite season.

This is a pro-Barkley case: You probably aren’t targeting Barkley if you don’t believe in his upside, and our range of outcomes gave him twice the odds of having an elite season as a disappointing one. A more balanced approach would give him a price target of $46, much closer to his projection, and a downside approach comes to a target of $41, but at that point, you probably have no shot at drafting him. This also gives you a firm walk-away point. If Barkley’s favorable case results in a price target of $51, you know that you should be comfortable letting him go if his price escalates beyond that.

Top picks get drafted at a premium in salary cap leagues: This is why you need to build a reasonably favorable case around a player that you’re excited about like we just did for Barkley. Elite players will almost always be drafted for more than their suggested value. Since roster sizes and starting lineups have a fixed maximum, one player providing $60 of value is worth more than two players providing $30, so that $60 player will see their draft price increase accordingly. Many players happily pay this premium on draft night, hoping that waivers and late-round breakouts can fill in weaker starting spots as the season goes on.

Conservative budgeting: If you budget $51 for Barkley and draft him for $48, you suddenly have $3 extra that you can reallocate to other positions in the draft. However, if you only budget $44 and need to go up to $48 to land him, you now have to take $4 away from your draft plan, and you may not like how that makes your roster look.

The Rule of One: I've written a full article outlining this behavior, but you probably aren’t the only player in your draft excited about paying an RB10 price for a potential overall RB1. This can easily result in a bidding war that drives up Barkley’s draft price, and you need to be prepared for that.

Conclusion

With his wide range of outcomes and complicated history, Saquon Barkley is a fascinating case study to set a price target for in the upcoming draft. If you’re excited about Barkley this season and are saving a spot on your rosters for him, I recommend budgeting $51, and adjusting for your league settings. But more importantly, I hope this gave you an understanding of the process and nuances of setting price targets for a player. You can replicate this exercise with Christian McCaffrey, Derrick Henry, Cooper Kupp, or any other fantasy asset, and it’s a valuable way to make you think about all the possible outcomes for a player’s season.