How did your Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide do in 2007?

In order to become a dominant fantasy baseball owner, you have understood all aspects of the game. Experience is the best teacher when it comes to a specific fantasy baseball league, since each league has their own set of custom rules that allow nuances to form.

Since most fantasy baseball draft guides are customized for each specific league, it’s hard to determine their value to the purchaser. In an effort to show RotoRank users how effective my system was in 2007, I will use my National Fantasy Baseball Championship draft guide to determine how well it performed against the Average Draft Pick (ADP) list that many owners referred to during their NFBC drafts.

In order to make the comparison between the 2007 RotoRank Projections and 2007 ADP Projections, I will use the National Fantasy Baseball Championship’s final player rankings for 2007. The NFBC Rankings are based on their scoring system and use their own independent mathematical calculations. Now, the NFBC rankings may not be any better than the RotoRank or ADP fantasy baseball draft rankings, but it is customized to the rules of the NFBC, which make it a viable benchmark.

Average Draft Pick Projections

The ADP fantasy baseball draft list was compiled by me from a variety of sources and the mock drafts that I did during my 2007 preparations. It was included on all of my reports to allow RotoRank users to make tough draft day decisions between two similarly graded players that they were considering for a given selection.

RotoRank Fantasy Baseball Projections

The RotoRank fantasy baseball draft list was generated using a series of mathematical calculations that I have been developing over the last 15 years. Each year I make minor adjustments the formulas based upon the feedback I receive from adding the most recent season’s actual statistics to my regression testing pool.

Best Fantasy Baseball Predictor Comparison

For the purposes of this data analysis, I will utilize 4 different categories to indicate which fantasy baseball draft guide performed better, RotoRank or ADP.

N/A – Represents any row that could not be fairly benchmarked due to the ADP fantasy baseball draft guide not assigning a rank to a player prior to the season. (RotoRank ranks 1100+ major league players available at the start of the season, where as the ADP only focuses on the top 500 players most commonly drafted by fantasy baseball owners.)

Tie – Represents that both the ADP and RotoRank prediction had a similar level of error. The error ranges were grouped by increments of 15, representing the number of players selected during 1 round of the National Fantasy Baseball Championship Draft.

ADP – Represents a player ranking where the Average Draft Pick list out-performed the RotoRank Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide for the NFBC by 1 or more error groups.

RotoRank – Represents a player ranking where the RotoRank Fantasy Baseball Draft

Guide for the NFBC out-performed the Average Draft Pick list by 1 or more error groups.

Summary of Best Fantasy Baseball Predictor Results

The first analysis will be focused on the first 20 of 30 rounds of the NFBC draft. There is more likely to be wider variances in the Average Draft Pick list beyond the core rounds, since drafters are forced to build a complete roster, so they will be forced to select marginal players in the final 10 rounds of their fantasy baseball draft.

Tie	135	45%
ADP	53	18%
RotoRank	67	22%
N/A	45	15%
	300

The first row indicates that 45% of the picks made by the ADP and RotoRank had the same level of error when compared to the final 2007 NFBC Rankings.
The ADP out performed RotoRank 18% of the time. When you examine the details, you will see exactly how which fantasy baseball draft picks were closer to the benchmark versus RotoRank. Many of these draft picks are what I would consider medium to high-risk picks.
22% of the time, RotoRank Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide out performed the ADP. RotoRank compared better to the NFBC benchmark by 14 more players. This may not seem like much, but if you consider that most of my picks feature pitchers, you can see how RotoRank users can gain an advantage by drafting good pitchers later than when they are usually valued.
There were 15% players that were not compared, since the ADP never assigned a 2007 fantasy baseball value to them. All of these players were surprise performers that got an opportunity to play due to injury or another player’s poor performance. The number of "N/A" values shows the unpredictable nature of forecasting fantasy baseball draft picks.
Of the 45 N/A players in the Top 300, 8 were closers, 10 were hitters, and the remaining 27 were starting pitchers or middle relievers. This seems to reinforce the idea that you can get good pitchers from the free agent pool, so many drafters focus solely on hitting during the draft. The flaw in this logic is that if you build an entire roster of bad pitchers waiting for free agents to surface, you will likely get buried before you can get the replacements needed from Free Agency.

Doing an analysis of the entire draft pool, you can see that the rankings hold up down the line.

Details of Best Fantasy Baseball Predictor Results

The following list of 470+ players allows you to compare each fantasy baseball draft ranking system on a player-by-player basis. I made comments on each player who did not have a predictor value of “Tie”. Hopefully it’ll give you some more insight into the RotoRank Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide.

NAME	TEAM	FINAL 2007 NFBC RANK	2007 ADP RANK	2007 Roto Rank	2007 ADP Error	2007 Roto Rank Error	Best Predictor	Comments
Rodriguez, Alex	NYY	1	4	4	-3	-3	Tie
Ramirez, Hanley	FLA	2	27	32	-25	-30	Tie
Reyes, Jose	NYM	3	3	3	0	0	Tie
Rollins, Jimmy	PHI	4	23	24	-19	-20	Tie
Wright, David	NYM	5	12	14	-7	-9	Tie
Putz, JJ	SEA	6	73	53	-67	-47	Tie
Holliday, Matt	COL	7	19	13	-12	-6	Tie
Byrnes, Eric	ARI	8	139	277	-131	-269	ADP	I did not want to gamble on Byrnes, when ARI had so many young outfielders in the mix. Byrnes was one of the main reasons ARI went to the playoffs.
Saito, Takashi	LA	9	115	83	-106	-74	RotoRank	RotoRank doesn't determine value of a player based on a fantasy baseball strategy. Most people draft hitters before pitching, so they often miss good value picks in pitching!
Ordonez, Magglio	DET	10	105	131	-95	-121	Tie
Phillips, Brandon	CIN	11	92	89	-81	-78	Tie
Peavy, Jake	SD	12	49	49	-37	-37	Tie
Crawford, Carl	TB	13	6	10	7	3	Tie
Fielder, Prince	MIL	14	66	113	-52	-99	ADP	I often like to see a young hitter put up 2 consecutive years of great stats before I rank them as a top 50 fantasy baseball pick. Prince Fielder will likely be a Top 25 fantasy baseball pick this year.
Papelbon, Jonathan	BOS	15	147	115	-132	-100	Tie
Ortiz, David	BOS	16	11	18	5	-2	Tie
Beltran, Carlos	NYM	17	9	8	8	9	Tie
Sizemore, Grady	CLE	18	16	29	2	-11	Tie
Valverde, Jose	ARI	19	184	141	-165	-122	RotoRank	Many owners undervalue pitchers in fantasy baseball, especially when they are injury prone.
Nathan, Joe	MIN	20	44	25	-24	-5	RotoRank	A stud closer is more valuable than many people think in fantasy baseball, especially in leagues that rank ERA and WHIP.
Braun, Ryan	MIL	21	444	516	-423	-495	Tie
Roberts, Brian	BAL	22	47	69	-25	-47	Tie
Suzuki, Ichiro	SEA	23	22	35	1	-12	Tie
Granderson, Curtis	DET

Introduction

Average Draft Pick Projections

RotoRank Fantasy Baseball Projections

Best Fantasy Baseball Predictor Comparison

Summary of Best Fantasy Baseball Predictor Results

Details of Best Fantasy Baseball Predictor Results