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When does your fantasy team look best?



Go ahead take a minute and think...(Jeopardy music cued and playing)...



For most folks, it is before the first pitch is thrown. So far, we haven't been proven wrong with any of the 30 players we have taken.



Of course that feeling ends with the first blown save, or injury, or whatever other malady occurs to our team once play commences. It is all in the hands of the baseball Gods and our draft is an afterthought.



But, let's go back to the time of afterglow. We look at the roster, some of us anyway, and see value in them thar names. We see players that had a higher adp than where we got them. Ah, value, sweet, sweet, value.



BLLLECHHH! There is no value there!

If anything, we are selling ourselves short by not realizing that that player should have been taken later in the first place.



Here is an obvious example. Last year Jason Bay and Carlos Gonzalez were adp'd as fifth or sixth rounders.

If we wanted 'value', we would have gotten Bay in the seventh round, if not, CarGo in the fifth.

Although the Bay trippers can brag they got value, CarGo'ers were picking up checks.



The adp is a number made up from a conglomeration of drafts. If we pick Bay in the seventh round, maybe the folks we're drafting with have a little brighter bulb than the groups that comprised the adp.



Value in fantasy baseball is 90% perception, 10% opportunity. In 10% of drafts, Bay slipped down to the seventh round, our perception did the rest. It takes a stronger player to realize, that even at that price, Bay was a loser of a pick.



Although we pat ourselves on the back after a draft and before the season for our 'value' picks. It is a practice that should be done after the season has played. It is only then, that we know that we got true value.

Value to me is not getting a player later than "ADP" has him ranked, but later than "I" have him ranked. ADP should be used as a tool to guage when a player should be taken by consensus so that you can maybe save a round or two based on your own rankings.



Utilizing the Cargo example, I know a certain player who passed me on his way to a 2nd overall finish who had Cargo ranked as high as Braun. Braun was regularly going 3rd or 4th overall in during the drafts. Does that mean this player should have taken Cargo 5th overall? No. Using Cargo's 6th round ADP, he'd grab him in the 5th round.



That's the proper use of ADP, nothing more, nothing less.



Glenn

Perfect reply.

Most folks will base value on adp, instead of our own thoughts that led us to our own rankings. Not good.



Our current pay draft is just a kick in the pants. No adp, no publications, just our own perceptions on how a player will perform next year. Really a lot of fun.



I just took Jason Bay in the ninth round which prompted me to write the above post. Somebody had the nerve to say that I got 'value'.

I thanked him for the compliment, but told him to watch the MB's



Bay has proven nothing, other than he falls in with the other Mets, right Glenn



Seriously, Bay has little value as is. He's coming off a concussion, in a big park, playing for a franchise that has had little heart in years. To top things off, he has money in hand, so incentives are few, other than the will to achieve.

Originally posted by Glenneration X:

Value to me is not getting a player later than "ADP" has him ranked, but later than "I" have him ranked. ADP should be used as a tool to guage when a player should be taken by consensus so that you can maybe save a round or two based on your own rankings.



Utilizing the Cargo example, I know a certain player who passed me on his way to a 2nd overall finish who had Cargo ranked as high as Braun. Braun was regularly going 3rd or 4th overall in during the drafts. Does that mean this player should have taken Cargo 5th overall? No. Using Cargo's 6th round ADP, he'd grab him in the 5th round. Spoken like an employee at Gekko Industries!

How else do you describe a good pick, or a pick that you like. If you cant use value, whatever that term implies to its user, why even attempt to evaluate before opening day?

Good question.

It's funny, VALUE-wise, some drafters go into the draft thinking of the 450 players to be picked as an upside down pyramid The more we slide down the pyramid, the lesser the player. It is not the case. Down near the bottom are the Jose Bautista's and the Jaime Garcia's of the world. They have/had lots of VALUE, but few knew the possibilities.



For me, the word is eliminated completely. It is only perceived during a draft. There were a lot of folks ecstatic with the VALUE of getting Aaron Hill or Jason Bartlett in the sixth round last year. VALUE became toilet paper, made in China, and purchased at the Dollar store, you ended up with poop on your hands.



Compare it with the NFL. Nobody gets VALUE till those players earn their bones on the field. Same with our draft.

so dough- are you saying that the "value" of stanton in round 5 in 2010 vs the 2009 value of taking kyle banks (blanks) in; say, round 16 of every single team someone had in 2009 is unknown at this point?

Not unknown. We're still using our tools in trying to get the most of our picks.

Last year, I liked Blanks. I ended up with poop on my hands. No VALUE.

It turned out that Blanks was not VALUE in any round, same as Grady Sizemore.



We don't know if Stanton will be a good pick or have VALUE. That is the mystique of drafts. Some will think that Stanton would be a good fifth rounder, while others would not think about him till the eighth, or ninth, or not at all.



I do know, that magazines and sites love throwing around the SLEEPER word and the VALUE word and the EXPERT word, and unless we are talking Shawn or Steve or a few others, those words are meaningless in a fantasy sense.



[ October 19, 2010, 01:21 PM: Message edited by: DOUGHBOYS ]