ADP Draft: Rounds Nine to 12

Previously, I analyzed the first eight rounds and did an overall comparison at the various ADP’s. Today, the draft continues with various ADPs disagreeing even more.

As a reminder, the draft contains 14 teams with each website’s ADP collected by FantasyPros. No effort is made to balance each team in any way. Just the top player is picked but I had to ignore some picks. To get going, here are the results.

Overall

• The biggest adjustment came from Real Time Sports (RTS) who had Randy Arozarena at 117, Tarik Skubal at 119, and Randy Dobnack at 122. I’m not sure what happened for the three to be so high. If I was to guess, They got boosted from an AL keeper league that had a draft, and three haven’t been drafted otherwise.  I grouped the trio together for one pick and then started taking the top player from then on.

• Fantrax continues to accumulate pitching with 16 of their combined 24 picks being pitchers. As I noted in the ADP comparison article, the max difference in the hitter-pitcher split is only 3% points to get to this level. ESPN on the other has only 3.5 combined pitchers.

Round 9

• The variance between rankings seemed to explode in this round and just continued throughout the draft. Few players had a consensus ADP. Here are some examples from this round.

Name: ADP Picked, Range From Others

• Michael Brantley: 89, 111-141
• Max Kepler: 107, 114-147
• Kyle Schwarber: 102, 124-163
• Corey Seager: 108, 120-156
• Oscar Mercado: 114, 122-149
• Max Fried: 102, 128-137

I’m not surprised about this finding at all. The talking experts rehash to death the early picks and a consensus gets formed across the various sites. After the early obvious picks, who to roster seems to be more random. Some of these players have a range of 2-4 rounds and it’s still relatively early in the draft. The variance will only increase.

For me, the draft is getting to the point where I stop ADP gaming and top-ranked players on my draft board. I’ve started noticing owners utilizing an ADP that is not from the website hosting the draft and I don’t want to miss on the top talents. For example, say I have Miguel Sano rated as the 110th overall player and I’m drafting at Yahoo where he’s going at pick 135 on average. If I pick at 110, I could pass on Sano, hope to get with my next pick. But if someone else uses the NFBC ADP for a reference, they see Sano has a 107 ADP and could pounce early.

Round 10

• I love the starters available in this range (Ray, Gallen, Fried, Lynn, Rodriguez, Lamet). It sucks that they are so bunched up that I’m lucky to roster one, maybe two in a draft. In an auction, it’s nice to be able to grab three to four of them.

• Also, I’m a fan of rostering the last decent closer here and they are coming to end at the same time as the starters. I might go a little earlier with my first closer to not miss out on the starters going here.

Round 11

• Amed Rosario … the reason I need to play on other formats besides the NFBC. I like Rosario as a sleeper (steals and growth), but his 132 ADP is right where I have him valued. Also, it’s right around where I like the starting pitchers discussed in round 10. The 162 to 190 ADP from the other websites are perfect roster points.

Round 12

• And maybe I’m happy I’m not playing ESPN where Adam Eaton (increased launch angle, max exit velo, and sprint speed) is going at pick 132 which is right where I value him. On the other websites, his ADP is between 200 and 213.

• Salvador Perez has two groups, one from 149 to 159 and the other from 173 to 177. The other catchers drafted so far don’t have such a difference but how about a simple test. Here are the averaged ADPs from the top-12 overall catchers.

Website: Avg ADP
RTS: 140
NFBC: 142
CBS: 147
AVG: 149
Yahoo: 152
ESPN: 170
Fantrax: 186

A reasonable difference exists except with ESPN and Fantrax where catchers are going one to three rounds later. The difference could be explained by the number of one or two catcher leagues, but I don’t have the inside scoop on the actual number of one-catcher leagues.