In fantasy football drafts, it's common knowledge you don't draft a quarterback in the first two rounds because there are plenty of good quarterbacks available in Rounds 6-10 and no reliable receivers or running backs in those later rounds. In short, the opportunity cost of drafting a quarterback (instead of a RB or WR) is steep, so even if that early-round QB ends up being Aaron Rodgers 2016, you're likely behind someone who took Jordy Nelson in Round 2 and Drew Brees is Round 6. The question I'm exploring in this post is whether this issue exists in fantasy baseball and if so to what extent?
Looking at the NFBC ADP, early-round starting pitchers like Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Madison Bumgarner Noah Syndergaard, Chris Sale and Corey Kluber all either meet or exceed their Steamer projections - at least as determined by my formula using a 70/30 hitting/pitching split. The next tier of pitchers are a mixed bag with Jake Arrieta and Yu Darvish overpriced relative to Steamer and Jon Lester, Stephen Strasburg, Carlos Carrasco, Johnny Cueto and David Price turning out to be relative bargains. (Justin Verlander, oddly, is the one pitcher priced exactly the same on both lists.) But let's set aside the difference of opinions for a second. Broadly put, drafting a top-three tier starting pitcher early is more or less a good value overall, assuming you put stock in Steamer's projections for them.
The question, however, is whether taking a starting pitcher in Rounds 1-5 and a hitter in subsequent rounds has a hidden opportunity cost, i.e., what kinds of starting pitchers and hitters are we looking at in Rounds 6-10, and how well do those fare value-wise?
Starting at pick 64 (early Round 6 in a 12-team league), the NFBC has Kyle Hendricks (64), Carlos Martinez (68), Jacob DeGrom (71), Cole Hamels (83), Masahiro Tanaka (87), Zack Greinke (95), Kenta Maeda (97), Danny Duffy (99), Aaron Sanchez (102), Jose Quintana (108), Rick Porcello (109), Julio Teheran (110) and Gerrit Cole (113). With the exception of Cole, who Steamer has at 109, every one of these pitchers is bad value according to Steamer.
In other words, taking a pitcher early is a good value, while taking a pitcher in Rounds 6-10 is not - again, presuming we're using Steamer's projections through my formula as the barometer.
Conversely, the hitters in Rounds 6-10 show a profit more often than not. Excluding catchers for whom my formula fails to adjust for scarcity, 23 of 44 hitters in the 61-120 NFBC ADP range (round 6-10) are ranked higher on the Steamer list than on the NFBC one. That's as opposed to only 1 of 13 pitchers in that range.
That means, according to Steamer (run through my formula), you want to get your pitchers early where they're profitable and take hitters in the middle rounds. Put differently, the opportunity cost of drafting a hitter in Round 2 (even if profitable) is a pitcher than shows a loss later on rather than a profitable hitter.
Of course, once again, this assumes the Steamer projections, using my particular - and flawed in some respects - formula is a reasonable barometer.