To me Stanton is the cheapest elite mid that doesn’t carry much risk at $369,000. You could probably make a case for Daniel Cross at $345,600, but I’d like to see a bit more of his Darwin form before making that call (his specialty in years past has been his amazing ability to pull 40-50 point last quarter to salvage lower scores, but that’s not been so common this year). The reason I preface this with the lack of risk, is that I know there was a bit of talk on our video last week about Steven Salopek, who I would classify as an elite but I worry a bit about his durability (only once has he made it past 16 games in a season).

Stanton will always have a place in my heart after his second half of the year last year. He was super cheap when I jumped on and he blitzed for most of the run home, including an insane 174 in Round 15 against Brisbane. Stanton has a bit of a habit of really chopping when he scores big. I find that if you get a ton from Stanton you’re looking more at a score around 120. He can get tagged out of games, so these monster scores he can post importantly make up for his down weeks.

Stanton Fortunately for those looking for a cheap mid, he had three down weeks in a row just recently. I wouldn’t be too concerned about this as a long term thing. In fact, he had a run last year in Round 7-9 where he scored 44, 58 and 64. This season it’s been Round 8-10 that has seen him end up in the bargain bin with scores of 56, 73 and 77. He responded with a 123 and 94 to follow up those average scores, so he does break out of these slumps pretty well.

The thing I like about Stanton as a DT’er is that he’s not really damaging with his disposal, so even though he’s the Bombers #1 midfielder, he’s not a huge priority to cop a heavy tag. Some teams will even allow him to kick the ball a fair bit, because it’s more his run that will hurt teams. As long as they can restrict his run some teams would even be happy for him to rack up some disposals, since he’s prone to the odd skill error.

You’ll get the highs and lows with him, but at that price I’d be happy to take that, especially feeling pretty confident that he can make up for a 60 with a 140. As an example, this year he’s already scored 120+ in four games, but sub 80 in five.

Another massive benefit you get with Stanton is that he’s quite durable. He’s only missed two games in the last four seasons and certainly durability is something I want out of my players as the trade numbers start to get uneasily low.