Last Player Picked

Let’s take a look at the players with the largest difference in ADP compared to the rankings given by the Price Guide.

I took the Yahoo League ADP rankings from Mock Draft Central and compared them to the rankings from the Price Guide, using the Marcel projections for a Yahoo league. Here are the 15 players that biggest gap between the Price Guide and ADP rankings:

1. Dan Haren
2. Roy Halladay
3. Magglio Ordonez
4. Joe Mauer
5. CC Sabathia
6. Joe Nathan
7. Cole Hamels
8. Brandon Webb
9. Jake Peavy
10. Bobby Abreu
11. Chipper Jones
12. Brian McCann
13. Russell Martin
14. Jonathan Papelbon
15. Francisco Rodriguez

Notice a trend there? 9 P, 3 C, and 3 others.

First off, I’m not sure what drafters don’t like about Ordonez, Abreu, and Jones. Maybe they expect Abreu to continue to decline, maybe they expect Chipper to get hurt. I’m not sure exactly, but those players make up the minority of the difference.

The catchers are a slightly bigger group. I continue to maintain that people undervalue the top-tier catchers. I think that they get tied up on the absolute stats and forget that what really matters are the stats relative to the replacement level. Factor in the baseline, and a catcher who can hit 20 HR is worth more than a lot of guys who can hit 35. (And this is a one-catcher Yahoo-style league.)

I’ll keep preaching that and keep taking catchers in the 2nd-3rd rounds until someone can convince me otherwise.

And then we have the most significant discrepancy: Pitchers. For a Yahoo league, the Price Guide puts CC Sabathia and Johan Santana as the top two overall draft choices. Clearly that doesn’t square with the ADPs, which don’t have any pitchers in the top 16.

However, the Price Guide isn’t alone in its love for pitchers: Razzball’s Player Rater puts 4-5 pitchers in the first round, including SP at #2 and #4.

And in my experience with auctions, it doesn’t seem unusual for the top pitchers to be equivalent to the top hitters. (Note that the Price Guide’s hitting/pitching split lines up with what you expect for auctions.)

I don’t think this is Price Guide vs. ADP; I think it’s auction strategy vs. draft strategy.

Which still leaves the questions: Why don’t drafters go after the top pitchers?

Brilliant observation, huh? People pay more money for good players than bad ones. How long did it take me to realize that? Actually, that’s not what I’m talking about here.

It’s clear that people pay more for top-tier players than for lesser players. However, it’s not immediately obvious why the Price Guide tends to understate what people tend to pay for the top-tier players. Why do people spend more for top players than what the Price Guide recommends?

As quick as I am to defend the Price Guide’s methodology, this is one case where I think people’s behavior might be more accurate. I don’t think my methodology is flawed, I just think it’s leaving out a couple of factors that come in to play in a draft:

Sleeper Mentality
Fantasy players tend to pay less for low-end “consistency picks,” and instead target late-round high-risk/reward sleepers. By targeting sleepers late, they are able to spend more money early.

So instead of spending $6 on a veteran platoon-OF or a journeyman SP, most teams will go after a rookie player valued at -$2, knowing that he has the potential to beat that projection. If he doesn’t, that’s OK, because there’s no problem with dropping him when someone better comes along during the season.

Divergent Opinions
Fantasy players tend to have more divergent opinions about late round players, which means these players go cheaper. Guys that the Price Guide projects for $6 will often go for $2-3, because there will be some owners who have them ranked below replacement level.

The top-tier guys are more predictable–everyone has a very similar ranking for the top ten players. Owners will take their savings from the late-round players and spend the money at the top instead.

Open Positions
Related to that, owners may be willing to spend money on late-round guys, but can’t because they have already filled a certain position. Compare that to the first few bids, when every team has money and open positions. The opening bids are also where the top-tier players are usually brought up.

Add all of those factors up, and I think it enough to maybe skew the values to give an extra 10-15% to the top players. And while that may work as a rule of thumb, I’d really like to be able to quantify some of these factors into the Price Guide.