I was flipping through Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster on a flight to Los Angeles on Wednesday and there was a particular table that caught my eye on page 5. The table included the top 276 players based on Average Draft Position (from Mock Draft Central) from Opening Day last season and also whether or not each player missed time due to injury, suspension, or demotion at any point in 2009. That data in and of itself is pretty interesting, especially as the number of DL days (also covered in the Forecaster) continues to rise and playing time is spread out over an increasingly large player pool.
If you haven't ever read the Baseball Forecaster, I recommend at least checking it out during your next trip to Barnes & Noble - there's a lot of interesting stuff in there - and Ron Shandler & co. have been at it for 24 years now. One of the main points it attempts to drive home is that as prognosticators and industry folks, we're all still wrong about things and there's plenty of room for improvement within our methods.
In case you've forgotten about how many drafts were unfolding around this time last year, I'll provide a fresher:
- Prince Fielder had an ADP of 26 (by comparison, Lance Berkman was at 14th overall).
- Alex Rios, Vladimir Guerrero and Alexei Ramirez were all being drafted as top-50 players.
- Chris Davis (65th overall) was the earliest drafted player to be sent down to Triple-A.
- Geovany Soto (68th overall) was being selected ahead of Victor Martinez (78th) and Joe Mauer (95th).
- Garrett Atkins (72nd overall) and Aubrey Huff (83rd overall) were being drafted before Ryan Zimmerman (87th overall).
- People still believed in B.J. Ryan (123rd overall).
- The 13th round was a very good time to draft starting pitchers in a 12-team league (Javier Vazquez, Josh Johnson and Zack Greinke were all available that late).
You get the point. Last season, all of the following players had ADPs below 200:
207. Justin Upton
217. Pablo Sandoval
223. Adam Lind
235. Wandy Rodriguez
247. Chris Carpenter
252. Mark Reynolds
276. Shin-Soo Choo
>276. Aaron Hill
With the exception of Carpenter, that group stayed healthy enough to avoid a DL trip in 2009, and I doubt you'll find a Carpenter owner complaining about the return they got on their investment in him last season. Yes, Aaron Hill wasn't even drafted in most leagues (Ben Zobrist wasn't either, although his lack of a clear path to playing time during spring training was a pretty significant obstacle). For grins, here's that group's current ADP rankings:
18. Mark Reynolds
24. Justin Upton
40. Pablo Sandoval
50. Aaron Hill
51. Adam Lind
71. Shin-Soo Choo
73. Chris Carpenter
119. Wandy Rodriguez
So what compelled us to draft Corey Hart (53rd) over Jayson Werth (134th)?
Here are their respective 2008 stats:
Hart - .268/.300/.459, 20 HR, 91 RBI, 76 R, 23 SB in 612 at-bats
Werth - .273/.363/.498, 24 HR, 67 RBI, 73 R, 20 SB in 418 at-bats
Even on the surface, there was a pretty significant red flag with Hart's meager .300 on-base percentage. Underneath, he had fallen from a seven percent walk rate in 2007 to a dismal four percent in 2008. Generally, a regression in batting eye at age 26 should at least make you think twice about considering a player in the fifth round of your draft. Meanwhile, Werth was coming off of a year where he saw more than 400 at-bats for the first time in his big league career (at age 29). Previously a platoon player, Werth saw more time against right-handed pitching, which likely caused his walk rate to slip from 15 percent in 2007 to 12 percent in 2008. Given the very logical explanation for that shift, the decline shouldn't have been nearly as much of a concern as Hart's.
More than likely, it was Hart's consecutive 20-20 seasons that made him more desirable for most fantasy owners. After all, Werth had only hit eight homers in 255 at-bats in 2007, so we were looking at a one-year track record with a large number of at-bats and new-found levels of success. Still, everything else - his lineup, home park, and supporting numbers - were hints that his 2008 production wasn't a fluke.
Bottom line: Don't be sucked into drafting players in any round based on what happened last year - or - simply because cheat sheets and ADP data suggest you should go a particular direction. There are many instances where a player drafted two or three rounds earlier than his ADP slot will be profitable. Can you every really err by simply taking the player you want? I don't think so. Most owners in your league are fixated too much on 2009 when they're building their team. If you think that the market still hasn't caught up to properly value Ubaldo Jimenez (ADP - 100), don't feel bad about taking him instead of Alfonso Soriano (ADP - 78) in the seventh-round of your draft. If you think Soriano is toast and won't even be a top-200 player this time next year, why draft him and suffer through another injury-plagued season of his decline?
I'm about to head out for the second leg of my west coast trip for the WCOFB in Vegas. Good luck in your drafts this weekend and enjoy the final weekends of March Madness.
Follow me on Twitter @DerekVanRiper