ADP Crowdsourcing: Brandon Morrow
After the success Dave had with the Contract Crowdsourcing series on the other side of the FanGraphs pond, we’re going to give it a shot over here at RotoGraphs. Of course, ours won’t deal with contracts, but rather with a players’ average draft position (ADP). Below I will present you with a brief profile of the player in question, and you’ll cast a vote for where he’ll be drafted in 2011. If you, the influential reader, like this idea, then we’ll keep it going throughout the offseason.
First, and possibly last, in our ADP Crowdsourcing series is Brandon Morrow. After being handled poorly by the Mariners organization, the Blue Jays acquired Morrow for Brandon League and a prospect.
In his first full season as a starter in the big leagues, Morrow was impressive, striking out almost 11 batters every nine innings. While his control wasn’t always pretty, Morrow ended up with a K/BB of 2.70, and an outstanding FIP of 3.16. While his ERA was substantially higher than his FIP or xFIP, a .348 BABIP gives hope for some nice regression next year.
Morrow is still only 26-years old, and the Blue Jays did a nice job of limiting his innings this year in an effort to avoid possible injuries. If the Blue Jays increase his innings limit by 25%, we’re looking at 180 innings from Morrow next year, which should result in 200 strikeouts.
Coming into the 2010 season, Morrow wasn’t even drafted in a majority of leagues due to all of the uncertainty surrounding him. That won’t be the case this year, but it’s hard to tell how high owners may reach for him.
Now, for the fun part. Below is the (link to the) form to enter what round you think Morrow will be drafted in. Notice the wording, as this is not “Where would you draft Morrow,” or “How high would you reach for Morrow.” And, so help me God, if this isn’t a normal distribution, I’m going to throw a fit. For the voting, please assume this is a 12-team, regular old 5×5 standard league.
To submit your answer, click here.
UPDATE: It looks like you fine folks like this idea, and we’ve gotten more than enough votes to keep this going. Another player will be up for voting later this week, and in an attempt to keep this streamlined, I’ll look at Morrow and the next players’ results all at once on Friday. Thanks for the support.
Zach is the creator and co-author of RotoGraphs' Roto Riteup series, and RotoGraphs' second-longest tenured writer. You can follow him on twitter.
How deep a league are we talking about here and how many starting pitchers?
Good catch, forgot to include that. Updated now: “For the voting, please assume this is a 12-team, regular old 5×5 standard league.”
I like, too, that you added the caveat of “where you think he will be drafted, not where you would draft him” on the voting page. Thanks for that clarification.
It looks like you fine folks like this idea, and we’ve gotten more than enough votes to keep this going. Another player will be up for voting later this week, and in an attempt to keep this streamlined, I’ll look at Morrow and the next players’ results all at once on Friday. Thanks for the support.
Nice first choice. With his ridiculous strike out rate yet middling production elsewhere, Morrow figures to be a high variance selection. League parameters are very important leagues with easily achieved innings caps should be more interested in Morrow than those without caps. In a standard 12 team H2H league with no cap, he probably is an end rounds lotto ticket. In no cap roto, I’d guess 18-20. In a 1450ish IP cap roto, he actually appears on my board as a target rather than someone I’ll settle for. Maybe 12th-14th round. I’ll throw my vote on 15 as the average since I think of the roto cap leagues as “standard.”
Zach, should you be asking voters to pick the expected round rather than the round they would choose him? Shouldn’t the mean or median of where the voters would choose him more accurately represent where he’d be selected?
By way of quick explanation…In an innings cap league, the strikeouts category is effectively K/9. This is why Morrow is more valuable in those leagues. A no cap league can use 1 open roster spot on rotating waiver wire match ups and get just as many K’s with similar ERA and WHIP* and higher expected W for free. Morrow’s skill set isn’t particularly valuable under those conditions.
*Those categories are hurt some thanks to higher IP. i.e. If Morrow throws 9 IP and allows 4 runs, a ww duo throws 18 IP with 8 runs, and all other pitchers average 3 R/9, the ww duo hurts those stats more. Obvious but worth illustrating. Still the net cost of employing a duo in a league like this is ~0…so long as you are decent at picking matchups.
No, I don’t think it would, and that’s a complement to you guys, the readers. It’d be like if Dave asked “how much would you pay Jayson Werth,” opposed to “how much will he get.”
I assume everyone here is smarter than the average joe, and the projections change because of it. His ADP will mostly be dictated by the average person, so we need to guess that, instead.
Make sense?
Do most of us play against the average person though? I think if you took the average skill level of all rotographs readers and compared it to the average skill level of those they played against (which would double count quite a few of the readers) and then compared both against the Yahoo average owner, you would find the competition level to be waaay above Yahoo average (or whatever ADP source you want to use).
Nevertheless, I take your point. From a research angle it’s an excellent way to keep things simple.
I was in a position last year where ADP’s were of no use to me with that linear weights league of ours being the only non-auction I participated in. Needless to say, I’m a little out of touch with ADPs.
Love this idea and Morrow may be the perfect player to crowd source first. I was thinking somewhere in the middle (round 12 or so), but he’s definitely a candidate for the hype machine to push up even further.
ADP currently 260 on Mock Draft Central