"Useless Info".... Draft Position

I feel like I am all dressed up with nowhere to go.....

With weeks to go before draft day I am looking for something to pass the time in a semi-constructive way. So I went through some of my old spreadsheets and found one that I did a couple of seasons ago that focused on draft position and decided to plug in the last 2 seasons and see what shook out.

Everybody looks forward to draft day. Weeks of study and mock drafts has come down to this. Flanked with cheat sheets, spreadsheets, highlighter and whatever else we can come up with we settle in for the single most important event of the season. The adrenaline begins to flow as we get ready to face a succession of "The Fastest 90 Seconds in Sports" (or so it seems round after round when its your time to pick). This is the day that our waltz to the playoffs begins because NOBODY is as prepared as we are.

And so it goes. The only small detail we have to concern ourselves with is where we wind up in the draft order. Most prefer to stay away from the first couple of picks, and of course no one wants to be relegated to the tail end of the draft order. "Just give me something in the middle rounds and I am home free!"

Ya think?

I took the draft order from each of our 8 seasons and compared it to the final standings of the regular season. Below is a chart that ranks draft postition (DrftPos) by average finish (AvgFin). It also shows the deviation (Dev) +/- from draft position. The last column (PO) shows the number of times that draft position has made it to the playoffs.


How ya feeling about that #1 pick now? Not such a bad deal is it? Anybody want to volunteer for pick #11? History suggests there is a 75% chance you make it to the promised land. Rounds 3-7? Give me round 5 and you take the rest of em.

Interesting to see the deviation being the lowest for picks 5 and 7 which suggests that if you draft 5th or 7th you will wind up... well ... 5th or 7th.

What about that 4th pick? Looks like the kiss of death to me. Maybe Champs will get it this year.

Obviously this little exercise does not take into consideration the person doing the drafting. I still contend that a good manager can make the playoffs from any draft position. But if there is anything to be learned at all from this little exercise, it may infer that your challenge could be a little greater from some draft positions than others.

..... or not ;)

Anybody want to opine on this little bit of "Useless Info"?

Hardballers