Fantasy Freestyle: A Look at Preliminary ADP Data

As you’re hopefully aware, over the next several weeks we here at Baseball Prospectus will be getting all down and dirty on just about every possible split, projection, and angle in our positional series. For the full syllabus I encourage you to take a gander here, and it’s worth noting that our own George Bissell will be penning a position-by-position look at ADP trends. To kick things off, I figured it might just be worthwhile to take a stroll through the preliminary ADP data that’s starting to trickle in for early-drafting NFBC leagues. A couple procedural notes, NFBC leagues play in a 15-team format, so the language below regarding rounds reflects that league depth. The data is also both relatively thin and updating in real time at that link, so by the time you read this the draft position number I reference may have migrated minimally.

Getting to it, it is abundantly clear at first glance that there is a startling changing of the guard underway in the second half of the first round. Once you’ve traversed the top five, the next four players exiting draft boards (Carlos Correa, Nolan Arenado, Manny Machado, and Kris Bryant) are all unable to rent cars. Combined with Trout and Harper at the top, this is a remarkably young top 10 that skews three full years younger than last year’s list (25.2 years old versus 28.2 in 2015). Only Josh Donaldson will play the season at age 30, so managers in the early going are betting on the young wave of elite talent to anchor their teams.

The youth movement opens up opportunities to generate value with a veteran focus. Despite one of the elite on-base, power, and lineup context combinations in the game, Jose Bautista tumbles all the way to 27^th in early drafting, a year after going ninth overall. Bautista performed as an extreme pull-side and flyball hitter last year, which is something he’s done in past years when he has generated additional home-run production. He always has and likely always will be a low-BABIP guy, but the batted-ball gods treated last year’s sell-out particularly harshly, to the tune of a paltry .237 mark that dragged down his overall standard league value. Still, even at 35 you can pretty well book him for 30 homers and, in that park and lineup, 200-plus Runs-plus-RBI. As a potential $30 bat at the approach of the third round he looks like one of the more significant potential “old-man” bargains in the top portions of the draft.

Additional old-timer value potentials in this mold include Nelson Cruz (43^rd), Ryan Braun (44^th), and Lorenzo Cain (52^nd). While Cruz’s BABIP and HR/FB rate both screech for regression, the power output isn’t quite as unstable as it may be assumed. He hit less flyballs last year, but he also hit ‘em farther than all but six other big-leaguers and has now posted three consecutive seasons of elite HR/FB rates north of 20 percent. Even if he takes the steps back you should probably price in, his 2014 line (.271/40/108/87) was that of a $30 player and 13^th-most valuable hitter, which leaves some wiggle room for surplus value creation at his current draft slot. Braun was solid straight through last year in spite of the layoff and thumb issues, but managers in the early going aren’t buying last year’s stats at full freight. But other than swinging at (and making contact with) more strikes, there wasn’t anything particularly wonky with Braun’s performance relative to past healthy seasons, and expecting similar production in his age-32 season doesn’t appear unreasonable. He was 17^th among hitters last year, returning $28 of value, and I have no problem investing in him for similar return at that draft position. And finally, after a year in which Cain became the guy we thought he could be, managers aren’t acting as if the performance is a new normal for Cain. While reasonable skepticism is probably wise, given his thick medical file and approaching 30^th birthday, he was a top-10 hitter in standard leagues last year with a sustainable profile of production, and if he’s able to hit 600 plate appearances again this draft position will likely seem foolish.

The other notable offensive development that jumps out—and this gets back to the youth movement at the top of the field—is the amount of shortstop upside suddenly roaming the countryside. In 2013 just three shortstops earned $20, with only Jean Segura cracking the top-25 hitters. In 2014 it was more of the same: Only three guys hit $20 again, and one of them (Josh Harrison) wasn’t really a shortstop. Last year? Xander Bogaerts stood alone. In early drafting, however, managers have been paying five shortstops with the expectation of that kind of production: Correa, fresh off producing $17 as a 20-year-old in barely half a season’s worth of at-bats, is obviously on his own level. But then Troy Tulowitzki, Francisco Lindor, and Corey Seager are nestled into the fourth round with Bogaerts nipping at their heels a round later.

We know about Tulo’s medical history, and a huge shift—largely for the worse—in his approach last year adds an additional layer of question marks as to what kind of a hitter he’ll be in his post-prime days. And or their part, the young troika of Lindor, Seager, and Bogaerts has its own share of risk relative to draft position. The first two have yet to withstand the rigors of 600-plus major-league plate appearances and face making dreaded Year Two adjustments to their shiny new scouting books on the fly. Bogaerts’ value of a year ago was built on the traditionally more volatile categories (AVG, R, RBI), and as Ben Carsley examined over at BP Boston yesterday, there are any number of ways Bogaerts’ game can develop from here.

On the pitching side, the depth of the SP1 field stands out as a rather staggering development, and it has produced a significant shift in how starting pitchers are being handled in the early rounds. Here’s a breakdown of where the top-100 starting pitchers were taken in 2014 relative to how they’re going off the board so far this winter.

Early drafters are adjusting to a year in which there was far greater production at the top of the SP ranks than there had been in the season prior. Per Mike Gianella’s values, 2015 saw nine starting pitchers earn at least $25 in standard mixed-league formats, with 16 reaching the $20 threshold. That stands in contrast to 2014, when only five starters brought home $25 in earnings and just 12 earned an Andrew Jackson. Relatively poor top-shelf production in 2014 led to fantasy managers adjusting towards a top-heavy (or at least top-heavier) approach to landing their aces last year, but it’s a new ballgame thus far for 2016. Where a run on aces happened last year in the low-20s, the second-to-third-round turn is instead serving as the jumping point for clustered SP1 investment this year.

Given the depth of the class, one name that sticks out for his aggressive draft position early on is Jose Fernandez, currently going 30^th overall as the sixth starting pitcher off the board. Yes the performance once he returned last season was stellar, and the stuff didn’t skip a beat. But he pitches his first rehab game 12 ½ months after undergoing Tommy John, so this is a more “standard” recovery timeline, not a Matt Harvey situation where he had an elongated rehab process. Paying for the expectation of a jump from last year’s 89 1/3 innings up into the 220-plus range that a top-shelf ace needs to produce seems an awfully risky proposition, particularly given both Fernandez’s particular situation of simmering-to-open hostility towards his present franchise. The Marlins are unlikely to be involved in a playoff sprint, and Fernandez is equally unlikely to jeopardize a gargantuan payday a couple years down the line for relatively meaningless innings next summer. As sexy as the per-inning rates may be, I’d gladly pass in favor of pretty much any other starter in the top 50.

Something interesting appears to be in motion with relief pitcher valuation either, as managers appear to be taking cues from the real free agent market (or maybe they just read Russell Carlton’s seriously outstanding research on the improper valuation of elite relief pitchers) and grabbing their first closers inside the first seven rounds of the draft. Check out a similar breakdown of where relievers are currently going in the top-100:

Interestingly just four relievers returned $20 of value last year, and only one (Wade Davis) is currently among the top four closers taken. All in all there were 16 relievers to return at least $15, however, and of the seven relievers taken in last year’s top-100 all but Greg Holland were included in that sample. The shift in early draft strategy does not appear to correspond to a better allocation of draft resources, however, as the $6 gap between numbers one and sixteen in last year’s sample speaks to the relatively low ceiling to closer production. No reliever has earned more than $22 in each of the last three seasons, meaning that even if we bracket the associated volatility and risk of year-to-year performance by a 70-inning pitcher, the cost/benefit of popping a reliever with one of your first six picks just doesn’t make for a beneficial strategy.

2016 ADP data courtesy of stats.com, 2015 ADP data courtesy of fantasypros.com