I'm in a work league with some not-so-sophisticated players. This year, the commish added a keeper to the mix. To keep it simple, everyone gets 1 keeper, and has to forfeit the round the player was drafted in last year.

One of the players in the league told me he was going to keep Adrian Peterson, who he drafted in the 2nd round last year. He figured keeping the consensus #1 player was the best move. He also had CJ Spiller on his roster, who he got in the 11th (!) round last year. I advised him that keeping Spiller in the 11th represented far greater value than getting Peterson in the 2nd.

My question is: if I was just trying to maximize my chance of winning the league, should I have tried to steer him to keep Peterson or Spiller? Draft order is randomized right before the start, so I don't know where I pick, but I would have a 1/10 chance of drafting AP if this owner doesn't keep him. However, obviously his team is going to be stronger if he keeps Spiller. I think the answer is that a 10% chance of landing AP < 100% chance of a rival team in essence getting 2 1st round picks and a 2nd (Spiller + his draft choices). However, it seems like this should be a zero sum game, and so if I'm increasing my chance of drafting AP from 0% to 10%, then the EV of my team goes up, and therefore the rest of the league has to go down to compensate. Any thoughts? Thought it was interesting enough to ask anyway