Baseman and I have had a couple of discussions about the upcoming draft. Mostly this is a "pick your opponents brain" session disguised as insightful fantasy discussion. Oh the lengths we will go to in order to try and gain an edge. LOLSomewhere in our discussions draft position will come up. Just how important is draft position? What is the best draft position? What is the worst draft position? According to those who responded to a recent poll on this site, picks 3 through 6 seem to be the most desired positions. Just about any fantasy manager will say they don't want the 1st pick. Most complain when they are near the bottom of the order.
But is there REALLY any difference?
Well I decided today to take a look at Hardball Heaven's 6 year history and see if it held any clues. I might point out that we are finally starting to get enough history in our league that one can look back and make many statistical assumptions or identify trends. Thank you Yahoo for keeping that info archived for us!
So what I did was take every season and compare draft position with regular season finish. I did not consider final playoff standings as we all know that is somewhat of a crap shoot. Another "x" factor that I did not factor in was manager ratings. I think it goes without saying that some managers are more apt to overcome a poor draft position than others merely by how they manage their team. That being said, 6 years of history should pretty much average out the anomalies and render some fairly accurate assumptions.
The chart below ranks draft postition (DrftPos) by average finish (AvgFin). It also shows the deviation (Dev) which shows + or - from draft position. The year columns reflect the regular season finish for each draft postition for each year. The last column shows the number of seasons the postition has made it to the playoffs (PO).
So without further ado, here is the chart.
DrftPos | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | AvgFin | Dev | PO |
1 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 3.8 | -2.8 | 6 |
5 | 2 | 5 | 12 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 4.5 | 0.5 | 5 |
11 | 3 | 2 | 9 | 6 | 2 | 6 | 4.7 | 6.3 | 5 |
10 | 11 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 7 | 4 | 4.8 | 5.2 | 4 |
8 | 5 | 1 | 6 | 8 | 3 | 11 | 5.7 | 2.3 | 4 |
3 | 12 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 7.0 | -4.0 | 2 |
6 | 9 | 8 | 1 | 4 | 11 | 9 | 7.0 | -1.0 | 2 |
2 | 6 | 12 | 2 | 10 | 8 | 7 | 7.5 | -5.5 | 2 |
4 | 1 | 10 | 4 | 11 | 12 | 8 | 7.7 | -3.7 | 2 |
12 | 10 | 7 | 11 | 3 | 10 | 5 | 7.7 | 4.3 | 2 |
9 | 8 | 4 | 10 | 12 | 6 | 12 | 8.7 | 0.3 | 2 |
7 | 7 | 11 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 9.0 | -2.0 | 0 |
Wow! Put that in your pipe and puff on it awhile. Apparently there is nothing wrong with the #1 pick after all as it has never failed to make the playoffs and in fact shows the highest final ranking of all.
Looks like there is not a problem at draft postitions 8, 10, or 11 either as they show the greatest positive deviation.
Picks 3-6? Better hope it is #5 if you are looking to make the playoffs. Pick #2 suffered from a dead team in 2004 but even so it doesn't have a very good track record at making the cut.
Most predicitive pics? #5 and #9. Looks like if you draft 5th or 9th you will probably wind up 5th or 9th respectively.
The kiss of death? Postition #7. No one who has drafted #7 has ever made it to the playoffs!
One more disclaimer for manager ratings. The above chart does not factor in a manager rating. I am currently working on a way to measure that numerically so I can apply to things that it might effect. For those of you who have been around awhile and remember Eagles you probably realize that a #1 pick wouldn't help him at all. Likewise REDS took pick #11 all the way to the championship in 2007.
I am not prepared to say that your final outcome is predetermined by your draft postition. In fact far from it. The waiver wire in HH is very forgiving and can help a manager overcome a multitude of shortcomings. What I am prepared to say though, your draft postition will go a long way toward determining just how much effort you are going to have to invest if you want to succeed in this tough league!
Compliments, complaints and critisizms welcomed :)
Randy
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