I introduce to you today the third part of an ongoing and rather aimless series regarding my research on average draft position, or ADP. Yesterday, I reprised an earlier piece of work in which I look at how often players “busted,” on average, in certain points of drafts. A bust included both low production by (1) poor performance, (2) lack of playing time due to injury, or (3) both.

Before I proceed, I’d like to make a quick acknowledgment. I’ve been asked on multiple occasions how often busts are attributable to injury rather than poor performance. Unfortunately, I would have to comb the data and handle each red flag on a case-by-case basis. While it’s not totally unruly, I don’t really have time to tackle it right now. I was also asked how age might play a part in ADP. I don’t have an answer for that yet, but I do have future research planned that examines the upward bias regarding organizational (or universal) top prospects. Again, it’s something for a future post, but not today.

Lastly: scroll to the bottom for quick results on yesterday’s poll and for another pseudo-interactive segment.

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Three weeks ago, I compared 2015 average draft position (ADP) numbers to end-of-season (EOS) rankings. I intended to ascertain which fielding positions are more reliable in terms of fantasy utility relative to their draft position. In other words: I wanted to calculate the probability a player drafted within a particular tier at a particular position would bust.

Granted, the probability that a specific player will bust depends a lot on the player himself: age, recent performance, injury history, and so on. But if you wipe all names from the draft board, looking at only the overall draft slot, the player’s defensive position and his end-of-season rank, we can establish not only which positions are riskiest but also when in the draft they appear to be riskiest.

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2/14/16

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

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Strategy Section

• Pick a Hitter
  • J.T. Realmuto (172 ov, 10th C) v. Yan Gomes (176, 11th) (3:30)
  • Carlos Santana (187, 16th 1B) v. Byung-ho Park (188, 17th) (6:49)
  • Starlin Castro (196, 14th 2B) v. Ben Zobrist (200, 15th) (11:45)
  • Adrian Beltre (99, 9th 3B) v. Maikel Franco (106, 10th) (14:05)
  • Xander Bogaerts (60, 4th SS) v. Francisco Lindor (64, 5th) (17:25)
  • Starling Marte (24th, 7th OF) v. George Springer (25, 8th) (20:45)
  • Billy Burns (153, 39th) v. Kevin Pillar (156, 40th) (26:28)
• LABR Talk (35:28)
• Email
  • Shea – Keepers (46:30)

We have a new email address for questions: sleeperpod@gmail.com. Send your fantasy-relevant questions. You can send keeper questions, but those are much better for Twitter. Questions most likely to get selected are those that apply more broadly, as opposed to specific trade or keeper queries. However, if you do ask a league-specific question, please include the league size and categories.

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Approximately 57 minutes of joyous analysis.

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Everybody has their sleeper lottery tickets. By that, I don’t mean known quantities like Adrian Beltre who may be slightly underpriced. Players like Lance McCullers, Corey Seager, and Xander Bogaerts have flashed impressive talent, but they’ve yet to truly prove it’s sustainable. We’re making informed guesses when we reach for them in the draft. Today, we’ll talk about three reaches that I just don’t get.

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I ran the 2016 Steamer projections through Zach Sanders’ Fantasy Value Above Replacement system and compared the results to early ADP data. Below I’ve got a player at each infield position that the Steamer projections think are unlikely to live up to their draft day price.

Matt Wieters, C, Baltimore Orioles

Wieters coming off the board as the ninth catcher on average makes little sense. For one, drafters are counting on a big bounce back in health from a now 30-year-old catcher. Wieters has a combined 394 plate appearances in the last two seasons. Staying healthy and getting enough PA to be a relevant fantasy option in shallow mixed leagues will be Wieters’ biggest obstacle this season.

But let’s not forget that he wasn’t that great in his last healthy season in 2013. Per our end of season valuations for that year, Wieters was barely starter-caliber in 12-team mixed leagues. His biggest issue that season was a .235 batting average, which was undoubtedly somewhat affected by some bad luck on balls in play. But since that time Wieters has been striking out more, as his strikeout rate was was a career-high 23.8 percent last year in 282 PA. So even assuming better health and an absence of bad luck on balls in play, Wieters seems unlikely to hit for much average. Steamer has a low-but-reasonable projection for Wieters’ BABIP and a 20.3 percent projected strikeout rate with a projection for his average of .244.

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“Death, taxes and fantasy baseball ADP attrition.” — Benjamin Franklin, probably

In his infinite, albeit cryptic, wisdom, Ben sagely alluded to a particularly critical truth: about 40% of the rosters you draft this March will turn over during the season.

Indeed, whether it’s by poor performance or injury, about two in every five players will be bad (or injured) enough to warrant being replaced by another. Some will generate enough value to justify owning but not doing so at their respective costs. It’s inevitable, unavoidable — no one drafts a perfect team, period. The only thing you can hope to do is (1) maximize your return on investment (ROI), and (2) minimize your risk.

For this exercise, I compare FantasyPros’ composite average draft positions (ADP) to their end-of-season (EOS) rankings for 2015. (If you happen to know where I can find historical ADP data, or if you happen to have some on hand and are willing to share, please let me know!)

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Let’s throw some hyped names into the equation. After each name, I listed their NESN NFBC Average Draft Position (ADP) as of 1.15.16 followed by where I have them ranked without a position adjustment according to Rotochamp composite projections (1.12.16):

• Luis Severino: 158.50 ADP vs. 391 (-233)
• Raisel Iglesias: 166.72 vs. 148 (+19)
• Joe Ross: 209.61 vs. 358 (-148)
• Lance McCullers: 129.39 vs. 120 (+9)
• Aaron Nola: 233.39 vs. 288 (-55)

Rotochamp and Steamer grounds our expectations. If you adhere to their projections/these rankings, you might not land Severino, Ross or Nola. ADP on the other hand will make you reach at times. Eno provided a KPU-BB leaderboard (K% + Pop-up% – BB%) this past Tuesday. Here is another approach to ranking starters in addition to our Pitch Repertoire Scores.

Look to their peripherals and rank them by skills. Here is one subjective approach. I z-score the following skills and weigh each one by it’s correlation to expected ERA):

• zGB/FB+zIFFB%
• Average z-score between Ct% and SwStr%
• zK-BB%
• Average z-score between Soft% and Hard%

Summing up these four z-scores, we’re left with the following leader board (50 IP Qualifier):

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Looking over some recent real and mock fantasy drafts, one name which is coming up as a potential sleeper is Jose Reyes. His fantasy value is unknown with his projected value being quite a bit different than the position he is being taken in fantasy drafts. Dan Swartz had him ranked 34th using Steamer projections while he was actually going 151st in NFBC drafts. The reason for the huge difference comes down to his pending criminal charges for domestic abuse. While the legal, ramifications may take a while to go to court, MLB has enacted a new domestic violence policy which has yet to be tested. I can see why people are reluctant to draft Reyes. Well, here is an attempt to put a reasonable fantasy value on him for 2016.

Estimating games missed

To get the expected games suspended, I went with two methods to find the answer, asking the crowd and asking the expert. Both sources generally agree with the time missed.

For the crowd, I asked my Twitter followers how much time they expected Reyes to be suspended. Most people put the value between 25 and 50 games with an average value near 35 games.

Then I moved on to FanGraphs legal expert Nathaniel Grow. When I asked him how he expected the situation to play out, here is his response.

While Reyes’ status remains uncertain, a suspension somewhere in the 25-50 game range would probably be a reasonable, conservative estimate of the punishment he is likely to face from the league.

So somewhere between 25 and 50 games, which is around where the crowd put the number. I will take the view of a conservative owner and go with a 50 game suspension to figure out his value. If an owner wants to take a chance, they could assume fewer days missed.

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That headline is not the slogan for Twitter, but it could be!

I got home from softball last night and really wanted to draft a baseball team. I wasn’t sure if anyone else was feeling the same, but figured I’d see if Twitter could fill up a mock draft over at CouchManagers and I was surprised when it filled in minutes. I was just doing their default setup which I didn’t realize was a non-standard roster construction of 18 rounds: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, OF, OF, UT, P, P, P, P, P, and Bench x4. To be honest I was a little bummed by that because I don’t play in any leagues with that format making it tough to draw much from the exercise.

So I decided to set up a second draft to run concurrently that ran a standard 23 rounds with the usual C, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CI, MI, OF, OF, OF, OF, OF, UT, P x9. I figured the first draft would be just a feeling out of where players are going very generally while the other draft would offer a better idea of team construction and give a bit more info about the market. By the way, I’ll be doing more evening (and even some midday) mocks over at CouchManagers during the winter so stay tuned on Twitter for info.

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If you don’t have an issue with position scarcity adjustments, then I already furnished 2016 Fantasy Baseball Rankings with Steamer Projections and highlighted sleepers last week.

Naturally, position scarcity remains an argument, but there is one solid way around the argument: find the best value (projections relative to average draft position) within the scarcer positions and prebuild a roster with options heading into the draft; then you can focus on best available value and not position scarcity. I will explain and provide options below.

Below, is an embedded file of updated (1.5.2016) NESN NFBC Average Draft Position and Rotochamp Composite projections (Rotochamp & Steamer). This time, I did not adjust the rankings for position scarcity. Everyone is ranked simply by their relative value (hitters to all other hitters and pitchers to all other pitchers). That value is then compared to ADP. I also included the sorting capability so that you can manipulate the file:

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