Rating the NFBC drafts

[rmurph3]

I just reviewed Ray Murphy's draft (baseballhq) to see where he lost points. His picks of S.Green in round 3, A.Jones in 5, K.Matsui in 6 and Jenkins in 9 were all the earliest that those players went in any draft. He may have gotten the players he valued but he valued those players more than everyone else did. In addition, his picks of Rollins in 2, Foulke in 4, Iguchi in 10 and Lieberthal in 11 were all among the earliest those players went in any NFBC draft. The rankings I posted value your team based on how the population values the players so if you take players ahead of everyone else, you will receive a low score. Considering this study ranked me 245th and I sit currently in 266th, I'm not exactly in a position to refute the findings. Plus there's the minor matter that most of the guys mentioned above (that I drafted early or "reached" for) have sucked. But it's awfully early yet.



That said, it seems to me that the methodology would favor those who actually participated in the auction leagues, wouldn't it? They saw the auction values, may have tweaked their draft ranking accordingly.

[Edwards Kings]

Puffins, as has been discussed before in so many threads, it depends. Was there a 2B/MI run? Was the sixth round pick from an early, middle or late pick (i.e. me at 14 initially would have to wait 26 players between my 6th round and 7th round pick).



Of course, when I got Roberts last year, he was about the last 2B picked (19th round). And of course, I also had last year Hunter (7th), C. Jones (5th), Suzuki(2nd), Tejada (1st)and Alfonzo (20th). Oh well, that was last year and I finished 79th. I guess was just ahead of my time.

[ToddZ]

Of all the ideas discussed in this thread, something nydownunder talks about interests me the most and in my mind tells us the most about how to prepare in the future.



I am paraphrasing, but I am referring to the notion of



A. Using a risk avoidance strategy, trying to accrue as much value as possible, but with as little downside (and upside) as well, using several sets of professional projections as a guide.



B. Taking players you personally feel will produce better than the norm, perhaps earlier than they would have gone, hoping more work out than bust.



As mentioned quite early on, the winner of each league will earn in the neighborhood of $375 of player value, using the standard $260 base. You need to pick up that profit somewhere.



The study I plan on conducting is one talked about in the thread already, "scoring" each draft based on comparison to the average draft position of the 20 main event drafts, and seeing if the winners tended more towards A or B above.



It will be an interesting conundrum for those that rely primarily on their own projections (cough cough) if it turns out the winners basically did a superior job applying data "publicly" available as opposed to creating it themselves.

[ToddZ]

To quickly follow up, one way to assign value by ADP is to make player #345 = $1, then add a fixed incrementally all the way to player #1, such that the total of the top 345 players is $3900, equal to 15 x $260. The amount that needs to be added is $.0599, making the top player worth $21.61.



There are some bugs with this idea, mainly the rule saying that you don't have to draft a legal lineup with your first 23 picks.



Then there is the fact that if you graph a draft using post-season values, the difference between consecutive players is greatest at the high end, and the system I am suggesting keeps the difference linear.



We'll see how it all flushes out in October.

[nydownunder]

I don't think there is any one simple way of confirming the accuracy of projections from a team perspective. One idea would be to take a smaller sample size of teams, preferably teams which have had no significant injuries (ie Khalil Greene for me would not count as Vizquel is a more than suitable replacement) throughout the season and freqeunt bench shifting, and compare the overall team projections with actuals at the end of the year. I will glady keep everyone abreast how my team is tracking throughout the year, as my team thus far would be a good example. I suspect you could run a correlation comparison on this as well. I think the simple BUY and HOLD strategy will hold fairly true. So this would mean drafting projections for a team has some serious significance. The problem is most teams have far too much noise throughout the season to know whether or not these projections held true. This noise I refer to are injuries, FA pickups, and trying to time the market (ie sitting superior players over inferior ones for a week or two just because of slumps or hunches).



It's only been 3 weeks, but this is how my team pitching stacks up against its projections:



IP W SV K ERA WHIP

P 164 11 12 134 3.909 1.276

A 187 11 15 132 3.664 1.270



The top is Projected and the bottom is Actual for up to this point in the season which is approx. 19.5 games.



The batting numbers are still way off, but keepo in mind I have some major players slumping such as E.Chavez.

[nydownunder]

Batting

887 139.0 35.8 134.2 15.7 0.2884

929 115 26 121 14 0.2583

42 -24 -10 -13 -2 -0.0300



Top Projection, bottom is actual.