A fan of the Yankees, Red Sox, and large sample sizes.

 
IDEAL DRAFT POSITION

Todd Zola made a fantastic yet simple observation over at Mastersball.com about ideal draft position. If you look at dollar distribution of a theoretically typical player pool, the prices decrease exponentially, which is basically linear after the first couple rounds. So, the earlier you pick, the better. The advantage of having the first pick versus the 12th pick in the first round is bigger than the advantage of having the first pick versus the 12th pick in any later round. Number one RULZ!

Anyways, that's all well and good when everyone's on the same page as far as player values go - like you'd have if you were drafting a fantasy team based on the previous year's stats. However, since you're drafting going forward, not everyone values players the same. Thus, it might actually be advantageous to draft somewhere like 5th, where you can hopefully pick up one of your top three ranked players that happens to slip a couple spots. It's like getting to pick 2nd in the first round, but 8th in the second round (or higher since someone else you value higher is likely to drop.) In the end, it always comes down to how well you can predict player performance, not how high you pick.

That being said, I just got the first overall draft position in a Yahoo league draft that starts in 30 minutes. I think I might go with Baseball Prospectus' values with very little of my own thoughts and see how it turns out in 7 months.

Posted by Sky at 9:11 PM | 0 comments