FanPost

Can You Understand She-Bear? FSA DS Pricing Another Perspective!

In Usual Cryptic Off-Season fashion Ursula showed up in one of my threads and made a dread pronouncement. "Riders shall be priced as in the year 2010" or some such nonsense. What does it mean this "priced like 2010"? 2010 was the dawn of the modern era of rider pricing. If we look at VDS/FSA DS in parallel to cycling history, we will see three distinct periods.

The Pre-War era/2007 and earlier

In this time participants had spread sheets which contained rider pricing. 2007 was the first year a Google spreadsheet was used to track and display info. The ominously named VDSentry email address was used to send teams in to Chris who compiled them into a master sheet. Competitions were held for spring classics and each GT. I am unsure exactly when the Season long comp started.

The War years/ 2008-2009

The site gains popularity and we begin to head toward the Modern structure. 2009 is the last year for GT only comps. Team budgets go from 100 in 2008 to 150 in 2009. The restricted rider is introduced in 2009 with only 2 riders over 20 points allowed. The rider list contains mostly notable riders, new inclusions are 1 point. This means that any rider Chris missed in assigning points was a 1 point steal. Hand calculation of prices meant that the fewer categories the better, hence the even point structure from 2-20.

The Modern Era/ 2010-present

Super Ted in all his Superness creates the podiumcafevds.com website. A database which includes all riders, prices, and the ability to sandbox your team construction right up until the deadline. We now have restricted and double restricted riders. Budgets are fixed at 150 points, races are categorised right down to Cat 6. In 2011 the race schedule is expanded to include a broader selection of races and make the VDS ranking a more accurate predictor of cycling awesomeness. 2012 sees all Protour/WorldTour races bumped up to at least level 3/4.

With Calendar expansion and Race bumping we have seen a general inflation in team production each year. The addition of many new competitors has made the top spots much more tough, and also contributed to the increase in production. Another aspect that has been slowly changing has been rider pricing.

In 2009 there were 11 riders who were restricted and of which you could have 2. In 2010 we had 22 restricted riders, of which 10 were double restricted. 2011 saw a drop to 15 restricted riders of whom 8 were double restricted. 2012 had 15 again but only 5 double restricted. This in my opinion has had a major influence on team points production. More restrictive pricing at the top end drive point production down more that any other factor will drive them up.

A little bit of charting awesome. Projected Efficiency is last years points divided by this years price. Actual Efficiency is this years points divided by this years price. Efficiency outperform is Actual Minus Projected. Lower numbers point to more conservative pricing.

Year

Projected Efficiency

Actual Efficiency

Efficiency Outperform

2010

13.47

39.73

26.27

2011

18.77

40.11

21.33

2012

24.61

40.45

15.84

2010 (scoring riders only)

37.94

77.78

80.69

2011 (scoring riders only)

42.37

78.58

82.03

2011 (scoring riders only)

57.16

84.21

85.74

All Restricted Riders

68.81

61.86

-6.86

All Constrained Riders

59.21

51.39

-7.82

All Unconstrained Riders

16.36

39.17

22.8

Restricted 2010

65.53

47.54

-15.9

Restricted 2011

71.7

66.92

-4.78

Restricted 2012

73.85

78.26

4.42

Constrained 2010

49.84

50.06

0.24

Constrained 2011

59.15

49.07

-10.07

Constrained 2012

67.97

55.14

-12.82

Unconstrained 2010

10.4

39

28.6

Unconstrained 2011

15.51

38.46

41.34

Unconstrained 2012

21.47

34.76

31.01

As you can see projected Efficiency almost doubled over three years indicating much more aggressive pricing. This made finding value a lot easier since many riders were able to outperform their costs. While actual efficiency is relatively stable that number is dragged down by the massive number of doughnut 1 pointers. Eliminate them and there is an overall 7 point rise in actual efficiency.

The drop in efficiency outperform comes from larger numbers of Bottom end riders. Almost 200 more in 2012 than in 2010. Otherwise the top categories of riders perform better each year. There has been some good work going on at the bottom end. Productivity of 1-6 point riders has actually been on the down, I think where we will see the correction is in the 8-24+ riders. I expect we will see projected effiency numbers in 2013 closer to 60's for Restricted riders and 50's for the Constrained riders.