"No plan survives first contact with the enemy."
The process of projecting and ranking players is something I believe to be separate enterprises - you should first try to project what the player will do *before* seeing how he slots. Sometimes I change my mind about a particular player - on occasion I'll upgrade or downgrade a guy after seeing a guy "out of line." It's not that I'll adjust the projection to the slot, but instead I'll take a closer look and see if there's any aspect of that projection that's wrong. My goal isn't to match up with a player's ADP by any means, but more to make sure that there's an aspect that I haven't overlooked.
But ranking players in the abstract is one thing. Once you get in the middle of the draft and test out your projections, you can find that what at once was logical might not make sense any longer. Mock drafts and mock auctions are one thing and helpful, but when a league counts and you're on the clock and I just don't want to take that player at the top of the queue, it's a lot more instructive, especially if you play in multiple leagues. I don't want to sacrifice one league, but that first league is always going to illustrate where I need to make changes.
Such was the case last week, when I participated in the LABR Mixed League draft. The full results of the draft can be seen here. My experiences in that draft also helped influence my input in the latest RotoWire Roundtable.
During the draft, I kept a list of players I wanted to review, to see if being out of step with the rest of the industry was a matter of me missing something about the player, or whether I'm happy about finding an outlier. In many cases I'll be adjusting the projections for the player this week. Here's a few of the players that stood out the most.
Significant Upgrades
Nolan Arenado (ADP: 57; Original Rank: 112) - Arenado went 56th overall in LABR after going in a similar place in the MLB411 Mock Draft that I'm doing, which made me check my assumptions about him. This is as good a place as any to discuss the projections process. I start off with a three-year weighted average for those players with three years of service time, and in the case of minor leaguers I use his latest minor league season with a bit of a discount. But that's just a baseline - I'll factor in the player's pedigree, his playing time situation, his environment and try to see if I'm missing out on any other predictive factors.
But in this case I missed out a little bit, because Arenado missed so much time last season. As a result, I underestimated his upside. His projected .280 batting average is fine, if maybe a little bit ungenerous, but the counting stats are too low. He's going to be in the middle of the lineup, and he should hit for more power than he did after recovering from a broken finger last year. I haven't yet decided if he'll go all the way to his ADP in my rankings, but at least he'll be a couple of rounds higher.
Matt Harvey (ADP: 68; Original Rank: 159) - Pitchers returning from Tommy John elbow surgery are pretty challenging to value, especially when they were so good before the injury like Harvey and Jose Fernandez were. On one hand, they frequently struggle with their command after they return, even after they get their full velocity back. On the other hand, the technology involved with the procedure has measurably improved, and Harvey had his procedure done 16 months ago, a longer period of time than most pitchers coming back. There's less risk of him having a first-season-back like Adam Wainwright did, where the ratios were worse.
However, the Mets said that they intend to keep his innings below 200 this year, and have already suggested that they'll hold him out until their home opener on April 13, as one indication of their caution. I have him projected for 185 innings - which will be 15-45 innings below the first-tier pitchers for the most part this year. I'll be watching his velocity reports in spring training carefully, though obviously he can still increase his velocity (and not just on his fastball, but also on his slider) as the season progresses. My upgrade on him will almost certainly fall short of his ADP, but at least it will be in the same neighborhood.
A.J. Pollock (ADP: 190; Original Rank: 147) - I lost out on Pollock in LABR by one pick by the devil, Fred Zinkie, in the 12th round, with the 179th pick. Had I taken him at my original ranking, I would have gotten him, but I had taken two other hitters previously that had ranked even higher (Neil Walker, Gregory Polanco). And that happens all the time in drafts - the deeper you get, the greater the variance in the picks by your opponents. You're way more likely to find a "bargain" with each successive round, though those players are a lot more volatile. But that also means sometimes it's harder to find the player that exactly fits your need - more players that you might otherwise pass on are at the top of your queue, and you're under the clock, and meanwhile that upside play that really fits your teams needs sits just beneath the fold.
It might seem that this is an artificial boost - perhaps it is. But I really am high on Pollock's potential with a full season of health. The wild card is that Arizona changed management and he might not have a backer, but then again Kirk Gibson jerked his playing time around early last season, so he probably wasn't Pollock's biggest advocate anyhow. I'm already ahead of ADP, but not sufficiently enough. However, if you don't want to change a projection, you can still highlight the players you want to target for certain needs before the draft. Our Draft Apps have a Watchlist feature that I'd highly recommend using, so long as you're confident that you'll refer to it in the heat of the draft. And if you're a pen-and-paper guy, you already certainly have your methods of highlighting a player.
Significant Downgrades
Khris Davis (ADP: 203; Original Rank: 119) - It's actually pretty easy to identify downgrades after a draft. They are the players that remain at the top of your ranking queue pick-after-pick, even using your own ranks, as the middle rounds of the draft trudge on. If I'm not willing to take a player even 30-45 slots after where I have him ranked, if I have spot/need for him, then clearly his projection/ranking needs adjusting. That, or I need to re-examine why I have him there in the first place. Davis was the player that stood out the most in this category in the LABR draft, at least for me.
Chris and I talked some about Davis on today's show. One big problem I had for him is that I gave him too many plate appearances. The Brewers have four viable outfielders in Carlos Gomez, Ryan Braun, Davis and Gerardo Parra, though Davis is the general starter in left field. But he's an inferior defender and on the wrong side of the platoon. He also really faltered down the stretch in 2014, with a .527 OPS over his last 30 days. Despite all that he hit 22 homers in 501 at-bats last year, and of course had a great small sample stretch after his callup in 2013.
Who is the real Davis? His minor league numbers indicate he can rake, yet he was old for his level each step of the way. Some of that isn't his fault - he was a college draftee, so by definition he started off that way. He was a seventh round pick, so he didn't have the pedigree to push up the chain early, but had to climb each rung of the ladder. I tend to think that 2014 was more representative of his talents, and thus he merits a downgrade.
John Lackey (ADP: 284; Original Rank: 145) - I have some regrets about not getting Lackey in LABR. While realizing that I probably overrated him (his 1.17 WHIP projection doesn't seem too sustainable, given that he's been below 1.20 once in his career, in 2013), he's exactly the type of pitcher that gets undervalued in industry drafts. He's a veteran and doesn't have a huge strikeout upside. But he's also going to be pitching for a good NL team in a good ballpark for a full season. He's got a weird contract situation that might work against him (or, alternately, it might inspire him to do better to ensure his next contract - guessing at motivation is fun!). And he doesn't walk many hitters. I'm going to give him a little bump in his hit rate to push his WHIP higher, but when I went through a slew of starting pitchers in the middle-to-late rounds in LABR, I shouldn't have pushed him as low as I did.
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There are many others to re-examine on my list, but those are a few that stand out. Whether you do your own projections or rankings, use our rankings and/or our draft tools, you should do your own audit, especially if you are in multiple leagues. You may find that this exercise better prepares you as you approach Draft Day.