One thing someone needs to invent is a way to figure out who had the best draft. I've occasionally come away from a draft feeling I got all the guys I wanted, didn't get any that I hoped to avoid and got solid value throughout. Then through injuries, bad luck, poor management or a combination thereof, that team will wind up in sixth place.

But maybe it wasn't poor management, maybe other teams ahead of me had just as many injuries, and my draft just wasn't as good as I had thought. Either way, I'd like to |STAR|know|STAR|.

Just as sabermetricians have come up with stats like FIP (Fielding-Independent Pitching) to isolate how good a pitcher did apart from the ostensible results, I'd love it if someone came up with a way to evaluate your draft independent of the good and bad luck and in-season managerial moves. Otherwise, you're in danger of judging the success of your strategy by results only, and doing that is like drafting pitchers based solely on last year's wins and ERA.

One thing we sometimes do that's fun is a no-moves league where you draft a team, and leave the players in the whole season. The problem with that is only the healthiest teams have a chance. We had another variation for football this year, a best-ball league where you draft a deep bench and you just take the best results each week. For baseball, you could take the best results per roster slot at the end of the year. Still, injuries play a big part in that, too, and much of the strategy is accounting for their possibility.

What I'm looking for is a formula at the end of the year that looks at FIP, BABIP, etc. for pitchers, BABIP/career BABIP, line-drive/fly-ball percentage, K/BB, etc. for hitters, figures out their luck-neutral stats, and if a player is out, uses an appropriate measure of luck-neutral stats from the last few years, given that player's age and expected growth, and then when the season's over tells you who had the best draft.

This might be impossible, because players play through nagging injuries that suppress production, particularly pitchers, and it's hard to know what's playing hurt and what's just a decline in skills.

But if someone could come up with even a decent tool for this, you could do 10 drafts every March, not have to deal with managing those teams all year, and over time, you'd get better feedback for each strategy you tried and whether you executed it well.

After all, the draft is the highlight of the season.