The 2024 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[Earns1985]

Crazy though how DJ Sprtsch has the following Top-3 and is still 10th overall
GEOGHEGAN HART Tao: 696 -> 122 / 17,53%
UIJTDEBROEKS Cian: 574 -> 166 / 28,92%
EWAN Caleb: 542 -> 98 / 18,08%
Total: 1812 -> 386 / 21,30%

Yeah, having Cosnefroy helps a lot compensating that and also Narvaez as a unique pick.

He is with these three most expensive riders still the third best Cosnefroy owner.

Except of Shalgo all other Cosnefroy owners missed some pretty popular good picks.

Even adamski101 (right now in 4th) doesn´t have Carapaz as the only player out of the Top25 overall, which he might regret in the upcoming races...

 

[DJ Sprtsch]

Speaking of Cosnefroy, what is he up to?
It's been two weeks since he won a race. I'm getting worried.

 

[Squire]

Yeah, having Cosnefroy helps a lot compensating that and also Narvaez as a unique pick.

He is with these three most expensive riders still the third best Cosnefroy owner.

Except of Shalgo all other Cosnefroy owners missed some pretty popular good picks.

Even adamski101 (right now in 4th) doesn´t have Carapaz as the only player out of the Top25 overall, which he might regret in the upcoming races...

Stuff like this is what allows me to still be up there somehow without Cosnefroy, Girmay or Ayuso.

My team is solid without any massive holes like missing Del Toro etc., but nobody is really popping off like Cosnefroy either. I really need Pidcock to out-Ayuso Ayuso in his June WT stage race.

Van Uden in a league of his own in ZLM Tour today is great for my team, just a shame that his bad opening TT means he won't score that many GC points.

 

[Panda Claws]

On the topic of missing riders, has there been an accepted metric developed yet for deciding what riders were most important?

I played around with Last years' results using a very basic formula. It multiplied both a riders' cost and score by '#of Teams minus popularity'. Essentially if you were the only one to pick a rider you would therefore face greater risks (increased costs) but also higher rewards (greater score).

Using that metric to generate a profit score you can quickly identify picks like last years' Kuss as gamebreaking while a pick like Bernal very much was not (as everyone had it).

However, NOT having Bernal, would still be a major detriment so that might still need to be taken into account more.

Of course all of this neglects the reality that the top-20 or so players are often the same. Picking Del Toro this year goes a long way towards finishing in the upper half of the table but if you want to win it's more important not to MISS him.

Curious to read what else people have come up with.

 

[Earns1985]

Speaking of Cosnefroy, what is he up to?
It's been two weeks since he won a race. I'm getting worried.

Scheduled for the Belgium Tour since yesterday..

Another race, which is not too difficult without a lot of competition... in other words perfect to score for him..

Really hope as a not Cosnefroy owner, that his team will send him to the tour afterwards...

 

[RedheadDane]

When the "Storm at Ineos" transfer was first announced, I kinda regretted not having picked him.
Now, I'm quite glad I didn't pick him.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

When the "Storm at Ineos" transfer was first announced, I kinda regretted not having picked him.
Now, I'm quite glad I didn't pick him.

At this stage, he wouldn't have been a worse pick than Adam Holm and Kasper Andersen.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

When the "Storm at Ineos" transfer was first announced, I kinda regretted not having picked him.
Now, I'm quite glad I didn't pick him.

Apologies for getting mathematical, but he has an incalculable return rate both on investment and race days, and you can't get better (or worse) than that.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Ayuso out of the Dauphiné... would be nice if something could go my team's way for once.

 

[Earns1985]

Ayuso out of the Dauphiné... would be nice if something could go my team's way for once.

Yeah, with the Tour de France as his next race coming up where he has to mainly ride for Pogacar, doesn´t look like a very profitable summer for the Ayuso owners.

In spring I already thought, that it will be impossible to have a good result here without having Ayuso. Seems that this now changed a bit..

 

[Panda Claws]

Watch Mas being the real good pick out of the 3 Spaniards now

 

[Squire]

On the topic of missing riders, has there been an accepted metric developed yet for deciding what riders were most important?

I played around with Last years' results using a very basic formula. It multiplied both a riders' cost and score by '#of Teams minus popularity'. Essentially if you were the only one to pick a rider you would therefore face greater risks (increased costs) but also higher rewards (greater score).

Using that metric to generate a profit score you can quickly identify picks like last years' Kuss as gamebreaking while a pick like Bernal very much was not (as everyone had it).

However, NOT having Bernal, would still be a major detriment so that might still need to be taken into account more.

Of course all of this neglects the reality that the top-20 or so players are often the same. Picking Del Toro this year goes a long way towards finishing in the upper half of the table but if you want to win it's more important not to MISS him.

Curious to read what else people have come up with.

There was some discussion on this topic at the beginning of the year.

Nobody came up with your formula, I think. Sounds interesting. However, if a cheap rare pick made 1000 points profit I wouldn't call it important if all the people who picked him finished in the bottom half. But as a general formula, yours is very promising, I think. Maybe especially if applied to, let's say, only the top 20 finishers in the game or something like that.

Your Del Toro argument makes a lot of sense, and is pretty much the same as one that I made in the discussion I linked.

 

[Panda Claws]

There was some discussion on this topic at the beginning of the year.

Nobody came up with your formula, I think. Sounds interesting. However, if a cheap rare pick made 1000 points profit I wouldn't call it important if all the people who picked him finished in the bottom half. But as a general formula, yours is very promising, I think. Maybe especially if applied to, let's say, only the top 20 finishers in the game or something like that.

Your Del Toro argument makes a lot of sense, and is pretty much the same as one that I made in the discussion I linked.

Thank you for linking it. I guess we could indeed look at how much it influences the optimal team.
I think this should still be linked to popularity in a sense but it's a good starting point for sure.

Still that would have netted us this:
Optimal team score last year was 25734
Without...

1. Sep Kuss: 25125 / 246 to 1263
2. Ben Healy: 25156 / 167 to 1097
3. Primoz Roglic: 25166 / 1240 to 2744
4. Marc Hirschi: 25224 / 684 to 1833
5. Romain Gregoire: 25365 / 108 to 784
6. Felix Gall: 25396 / 238 to 967
7. Ilan Van Wilder: 25430 / 232 to 933
8. Filippo Ganna: 25477 / 574 to 1418
9. Sören Waerenskjold: 25487 / 168 to 766
10. Rui Costa: 25508 / 236 to 855

My method would basically look at the profit of a rider and then increase/decrease it based on how much of a unique pick they were. You'll therefore see someone like Vingegaard perform very well there (massive profit for a massive price tag).

Results:

1. Marc Hirschi: 118,70
2. Jonas Vingegaard: 98,63 (unique pick) -> Note: Vingegaard is not on the best possible team so without him its score would stay 25734.
3. Sepp Kuss: 95,60
4. Ben Healy: 91,18
5. Filippo Ganna: 81,02
6. Mattias Skjelmose: 77,12
7. Felix Gall: 72,90
8. Primoz Roglic: 69,18
9. Florian Vermeersch: 62,11
10. Matteo Jorgenson: 58,70

Egan Bernal: 3,34

If they all became unique picks (=ranking them by profit):

1. Primoz Roglic: 158,41
2. Marc Hirschi: 122,30
3. Sep Kuss: 103,73
4. Jonas Vingegaard: 98,63
5. Filippo Ganna: 86,09
6. Mattias Skjelmose: 79,46
7. Felix Gall: 74,36
8. Ilan Van Wilder: 71,50
9. Romain Gregoire: 68,95
10. Florian Vermeersch: 65,99

Egan Bernal: 26,21
Rui Costa (wasn't picked): 76,40

So essentially Primoz Roglic went to 8th place because so many picked him.


I think to further complete this though there should be some accounting of how picking a rider will decrease its value for all other teams.
E.g. Imagine Roglic being picked by every team but years. His 'value' would then drop to just 1,5 but that really is his value for the other teams that already have him. Your team would still be much better off by picking him rather than an imaginary unique Alaphilippe pick (489 -> 618; worth 13,16).

It might be sufficient to take in account how many points other teams would lose if you also picked Roglic (102*1,5 = 153) which is far better than that Alaphilippe pick.

Perhaps we would need to circle back and take a leaf out of Hugo Koblet's book instead. Then we would complete the formula with aforementioned score * the amount a rider was picked. I don't propose looking at how close popularity is to the middle because the first value already was corrected based on popularity.

For 2023 this would lead to:

1. Primoz Roglic: 69,18 * 57 = 3943,49
2. Romain Gregoire: 29,07 * 60 = 1744,08
3. Ilan Van Wilder: 48,37 * 34 = 1644,55
4. Joshua Tarling: 30,74 * 45 = 1383,30
5. Lenny Martinez: 18,41 * 58 = 1067,49
6. Jonathan Milan: 24,05 * 38 = 913,90
7. Sepp Kuss: 95,60 * 9 = 860,38
8. Cian Uijtdebroeks: 11,56 * 67 = 774,25
9. Mathieu Van der Poel: 50,42 * 15 = 756,36
10. Joao Almeida: 44,26 * 15 = 663,90

Biggest stinkers

1. Andrea Piccolo: -33,62 * 22 = -739,53
2. Peter Sagan: -17,39 * 29 = -504,31
3. Biniam Girmay: -56,24 * 8 = -449,92

That seems like more of an overview of who the most important riders were across the board rather than what riders carried the hardest.


Ultimately though I'm going to concede that this is indeed likely too complex to put into some simple equation. We'd at least need to more clearly define what important means exactly.


Edit: The idea regarding seeing how much value other teams lose is really only applicable when it concerns a situation where literally every team would have a certain pick. In other situations a pick in e.g. 55/104 teams is equal to said pick being in 56/105 teams.

As a final note. We could also turn the formula around so that it looks at how many teams have a rider rather than how many teams do not (this is actually just equal to PROFIT * POPULARITY but I just split it in 1000 to get lower numbers).

This would lead to:

1. Primoz Roglic: 85,73
2. Romain Gregoire: 40,56
3. Kasper Asgreen: 24,44
4. Joshua Tarling: 23,85
5. Ilan Van Wilder: 23,83
6. Lenny Martinez: 23,72
7. Egan Bernal: 23,13
8. Thomas Pidcock: 22,19
9. Cian Uijtdebroeks: 21,51
10. Sören Waerenskjold: 14,06

So to conclude, we can try to calculate how much of an impact riders had by looking at how many 'unique points' they (didn't) score when compared to other teams. Using that approach you would get members of the Basque Street Boys scoring high/low.
We can also try to calculate a pick's impact on the game as a whole by taking into account all teams they were part of and how much profit/loss they generated for those.

I'd think we'd need a way to combine both approaches.

 

[Squire]

Thank you for linking it. I guess we could indeed look at how much it influences the optimal team.
I think this should still be linked to popularity in a sense but it's a good starting point for sure.

Still that would have netted us this:
Optimal team score last year was 25734
Without...

1. Sep Kuss: 25125 / 246 to 1263
2. Ben Healy: 25156 / 167 to 1097
3. Primoz Roglic: 25166 / 1240 to 2744
4. Marc Hirschi: 25224 / 684 to 1833
5. Romain Gregoire: 25365 / 108 to 784
6. Felix Gall: 25396 / 238 to 967
7. Ilan Van Wilder: 25430 / 232 to 933
8. Filippo Ganna: 25477 / 574 to 1418
9. Sören Waerenskjold: 25487 / 168 to 766
10. Rui Costa: 25508 / 236 to 855

My method would basically look at the profit of a rider and then increase/decrease it based on how much of a unique pick they were. You'll therefore see someone like Vingegaard perform very well there (massive profit for a massive price tag).

Results:

1. Marc Hirschi: 118,70
2. Jonas Vingegaard: 98,63 (unique pick) -> Note: Vingegaard is not on the best possible team so without him its score would stay 25734.
3. Sepp Kuss: 95,60
4. Ben Healy: 91,18
5. Filippo Ganna: 81,02
6. Mattias Skjelmose: 77,12
7. Felix Gall: 72,90
8. Primoz Roglic: 69,18
9. Florian Vermeersch: 62,11
10. Matteo Jorgenson: 58,70

Egan Bernal: 3,34

If they all became unique picks (=ranking them by profit):

1. Primoz Roglic: 158,41
2. Marc Hirschi: 122,30
3. Sep Kuss: 103,73
4. Jonas Vingegaard: 98,63
5. Filippo Ganna: 86,09
6. Mattias Skjelmose: 79,46
7. Felix Gall: 74,36
8. Ilan Van Wilder: 71,50
9. Romain Gregoire: 68,95
10. Florian Vermeersch: 65,99

Egan Bernal: 26,21
Rui Costa (wasn't picked): 76,40

So essentially Primoz Roglic went to 8th place because so many picked him.


I think to further complete this though there should be some accounting of how picking a rider will decrease its value for all other teams.
E.g. Imagine Roglic being picked by every team but years. His 'value' would then drop to just 1,5 but that really is his value for the other teams that already have him. Your team would still be much better off by picking him rather than an imaginary unique Alaphilippe pick (489 -> 618; worth 13,16).

It might be sufficient to take in account how many points other teams would lose if you also picked Roglic (102*1,5 = 153) which is far better than that Alaphilippe pick.

Perhaps we would need to circle back and take a leaf out of Hugo Koblet's book instead. Then we would complete the formula with aforementioned score * the amount a rider was picked. I don't propose looking at how close popularity is to the middle because the first value already was corrected based on popularity.

For 2023 this would lead to:

1. Primoz Roglic: 69,18 * 57 = 3943,49
2. Romain Gregoire: 29,07 * 60 = 1744,08
3. Ilan Van Wilder: 48,37 * 34 = 1644,55
4. Joshua Tarling: 30,74 * 45 = 1383,30
5. Lenny Martinez: 18,41 * 58 = 1067,49
6. Jonathan Milan: 24,05 * 38 = 913,90
7. Sepp Kuss: 95,60 * 9 = 860,38
8. Cian Uijtdebroeks: 11,56 * 67 = 774,25
9. Mathieu Van der Poel: 50,42 * 15 = 756,36
10. Joao Almeida: 44,26 * 15 = 663,90

Biggest stinkers

1. Andrea Piccolo: -33,62 * 22 = -739,53
2. Peter Sagan: -17,39 * 29 = -504,31
3. Biniam Girmay: -56,24 * 8 = -449,92

That seems like more of an overview of who the most important riders were across the board rather than what riders carried the hardest.


Ultimately though I'm going to concede that this is indeed likely too complex to put into some simple equation. We'd at least need to more clearly define what important means exactly.


Edit: The idea regarding seeing how much value other teams lose is really only applicable when it concerns a situation where literally every team would have a certain pick. In other situations a pick in e.g. 55/104 teams is equal to said pick being in 56/105 teams.

As a final note. We could also turn the formula around so that it looks at how many teams have a rider rather than how many teams do not (this is actually just equal to PROFIT * POPULARITY but I just split it in 1000 to get lower numbers).

This would lead to:

1. Primoz Roglic: 85,73
2. Romain Gregoire: 40,56
3. Kasper Asgreen: 24,44
4. Joshua Tarling: 23,85
5. Ilan Van Wilder: 23,83
6. Lenny Martinez: 23,72
7. Egan Bernal: 23,13
8. Thomas Pidcock: 22,19
9. Cian Uijtdebroeks: 21,51
10. Sören Waerenskjold: 14,06

So to conclude, we can try to calculate how much of an impact riders had by looking at how many 'unique points' they (didn't) score when compared to other teams. Using that approach you would get members of the Basque Street Boys scoring high/low.
We can also try to calculate a pick's impact on the game as a whole by taking into account all teams they were part of and how much profit/loss they generated for those.

I'd think we'd need a way to combine both approaches.

Love how this game lends itself so nicely to super nerdy stuff like this!

To dive into the mathematical intricacies here, I really need to be in the mood for it, and I'm not at the moment. But just using the 'eye test', your final list seems to have the riders needed to fight for the win, but doesn't really say much about which riders could have made the final difference between good teams.

The fact that Kuss and Healy top the list of the riders (among those who were picked, I assume?) that made the biggest difference to the optimal team, and the fact that BitB had them both as rare picks, says a lot about how impactful they were.

I guess a possible conclusion to make is that it's near impossible to have one formula cover all the important metrics to look at when analyzing which picks 'made the difference', and as you say, 'important' can mean a lot of things. Some riders are essential picks that you need to keep up with the field, and others are important to separate you from other front-runners.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

I've come up with my own algorithm to determine which riders are the most important to have on your team. Granted it only works for 2024 but I think it's pretty accurate. Let me know what you think.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

To give a more serious answer to the question, I appreciate the efforts by Panda Claws and the numbers are certainly interesting but I think it's impossible to come up with an answer to the original question. What makes a good pick is so context dependent: cost, score, popularity, who exactly picked the rider, general scoring environment (scoring 500 points on a 200 price means two different things if you need 16k or 19k to win the competition), possible alternatives at the same price (and how popular those alternatives were *)... I don't really know how or if that context can be easily boiled down to a number or even a set of numbers.

* Say you have a unique pick that costed 200 and scored 800 points when everybody else went for another rider that you don't have and that costed 200 and scored 800 points also. Does it matter that your rider has a different name if it ends up canceling out the obvious pick. Do you get more credit for finding the overlooked gem or do should you get dinged for missing the easy pick ?

 

[RedheadDane]

According to EITB's scientific approach, my good pick:

---

I really wish Lazkano would have slowed down a little...

Anyway, my riders for next week. No good picks, unfortunately.
I was wrong! My good pick is racing!

Amdi
Andersen
Asgreen
Bendixen
Blume
Foldager
Honoré
Kragh
Lund
Norsgaard
Price-Pejtersen
Skjelmose
Stokbro
Søjberg
Wandahl

 

[Earns1985]

Yes, 6 places up and now again in the top10 overall.

Thanks to C.Rodriguez and my not so good rarer picks Meintjes and Teuns, who also scored some GC points in Dauphine. Meintjes showed some improved form, so perhaps a good sign for the tour..

C.Rodriguez seems to become a similar good pick as Ayuso, although in autumn the tight could turn again..

 

[ingsve]

C.Rodriguez seems to become a similar good pick as Ayuso, although in autumn the tight could turn again..

Just a typo or a misunderstood saying? It's the tide that turns.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

my not so good rarer picks Meintjes and Teuns, who also scored some GC points in Dauphine. Meintjes showed some improved form, so perhaps a good sign for the tour..

As a fellow Meintjes owner, I'm quite a bit more positive about his prospects. Yes, he's a bit behind where I would have liked him to be at this point, but I don't think he was ever breaking even by June with the schedule he's raced and the part of the season that makes or breaks him as a pick is yet to come. Meintjes his way to a top-10 at the Tour, cobble something together at the Vuelta, and he will have turned out perfectly decent.

 

[Earns1985]

Just a typo or a misunderstood saying? It's the tide that turns.

I wanted to say like in german "kann sich das Blatt wieder wenden", which means something like "things can change again", but I think you don´t say it in that way in english.

 

[RedheadDane]

I wanted to say like in german "kann sich das Blatt wieder wenden", which means something like "thinks can change again", but I think you don´t say it in that way in english.

I suppose you can say it like that, but it's not so much a figure-of-speech, as just... a statement.

 

[Earns1985]

As a fellow Meintjes owner, I'm quite a bit more positive about his prospects. Yes, he's a bit behind where I would have liked him to be at this point, but I don't think he was ever breaking even by June with the schedule he's raced and the part of the season that makes or breaks him as a pick is yet to come. Meintjes his way to a top-10 at the Tour, cobble something together at the Vuelta, and he will have turned out perfectly decent.

Well in 2022 he had with a similar schedule already 329 points at this time of the year. Now he is at 135 points, which is for me a bit behind schedule, but I agree with you and I hope, that his major points will come in the second half of the season.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

According to EITB's scientific approach, my good pick:

---

I really wish Lazkano would have slowed down a little...

Anyway, my riders for next week. No good picks, unfortunately.

Andersen
Bendixen
Foldager
Kragh
Lund
Price-Pejtersen
Skjelmose
Søjberg
Wandahl

I have two of Shalgo's picks, but Higuita has been, as we say in Danish, mega rings.

If Skjelmose performs well in Switzerland, you might overtake me this week.

 

[RedheadDane]

If Skjelmose performs well in Switzerland, you might overtake me this week.

One can only hope!

You're probably not hoping.