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Draft Pick Value Chart


kevinkris
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I should of been more specific, I meant for fantasy football purposes. Yeah I have the link to the tool, but I thought I saw a chart that had all the information and was looking for that.

The one flemingd posted is the only one I know of and, honestly, I'd be very curious to know what their rationale is before I put any credence into it. Otherwise, it's just a thing that spits out a number.

 

For instance, have they done extensive research that correlates ADPs with success rates? Is the data consistent enough to be useful? After all, averages don't mean dick in this case. In order to make a blanket statement about what the 1st pick is worth relative to the 5th pick or the 36th pick is relative to the 50th, a curve of reliability needs to be established and that curve can't change much from year to year. Otherwise, there's a big "well that depends" stuck right in the middle of that metric.

 

As in, "that depends" on where the quality drop-offs are each year. For instance, there are many people this year who simply want to have a pick in the top 5 but don't care which one they get. Because they are of the opinion that AP, Foster, CJ, Rice, or J Charles are about as nice as the next. However, when I put in trading the 1st and 40th for the 5th and 25th, it says that's a bad deal for me. Well, not if I don't care which among those 5 I end up with it isn't. Because I just moved up 15 spots on the back-end of that trade, essentially for free.

 

Of course, if the data is consistent, if year in and year out it tends to follow a trend where guys picked at 20 have a 65% (give or take an acceptable margin of error) chance of being solid starters and guys picked at 35 have a 57% chance or something, then sure, this calculator makes perfect sense. My guess, however, is that it doesn't follow that curve neatly enough to make that kind of determination.

 

Then again, maybe it is.

Edited by detlef
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I must of mis read the chart, only glanced at it before.

 

Yeah I get what your saying Detlef and I kind of assumed that they used several years worth of data and did it based off a percentage. I probably shouldn't assume that. Just wanted to use it as a reference and see what the best spot to draft is on average, but it obv differs every year as like you said this year many like spot 3-5 as they rank 1-5 all very close.

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I must of mis read the chart, only glanced at it before.

 

Yeah I get what your saying Detlef and I kind of assumed that they used several years worth of data and did it based off a percentage. I probably shouldn't assume that. Just wanted to use it as a reference and see what the best spot to draft is on average, but it obv differs every year as like you said this year many like spot 3-5 as they rank 1-5 all very close.

Even if they were able to do this, it's a flawed theory because it assumes people perform exactly as drafted. We all know that's not the case so the "value" is based on a statistical analysis of the likelihood of a given outcome. The top 5 are top 5 because they have a far more likely chance of being the most valuable performer. Sure, Felix Jones could be the top RB it's just not nearly as likely as a CJ or AP doing it.

 

If you saw a chart it was probably the NFL one - I don't know of one done for fantasy value. It would only take you about half and hour to create this from the tool linked above - just plug in trading 1 for 2 (1889 vs. 1823), trading 3 for 4, etc.

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I must of mis read the chart, only glanced at it before.

 

Yeah I get what your saying Detlef and I kind of assumed that they used several years worth of data and did it based off a percentage. I probably shouldn't assume that. Just wanted to use it as a reference and see what the best spot to draft is on average, but it obv differs every year as like you said this year many like spot 3-5 as they rank 1-5 all very close.

 

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but DMD creates one of those every year. I copy, dump in excel, insert columns to multiply the percentages by my auction amount and am off to the races.

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Even if they were able to do this, it's a flawed theory because it assumes people perform exactly as drafted. We all know that's not the case so the "value" is based on a statistical analysis of the likelihood of a given outcome. The top 5 are top 5 because they have a far more likely chance of being the most valuable performer. Sure, Felix Jones could be the top RB it's just not nearly as likely as a CJ or AP doing it.

 

If you saw a chart it was probably the NFL one - I don't know of one done for fantasy value. It would only take you about half and hour to create this from the tool linked above - just plug in trading 1 for 2 (1889 vs. 1823), trading 3 for 4, etc.

It's not flawed. It's just "past performance does not guarantee future gains." It's an average of value at those spots (assuming they are doing some analysis of ADP to year end rankings).

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It's not flawed. It's just "past performance does not guarantee future gains." It's an average of value at those spots (assuming they are doing some analysis of ADP to year end rankings).

But average values don't make that an effective tool unless those average values hold very consistent. If the results are all over the board from one year to the next, then the average doesn't mean crap. Because that means, one year, the 6th pick is a great place to find a solid starter and the next year it's not. Which likely has a ton to do with where the tiers fall.

 

And this doesn't even take into account the wrench that positional scarcity throws into the equation.

 

Picking Payton Manning at #5 may be the best way to insure that you get a guy that is going to be a starter for you every week of the season, but that doesn't make him the best pick there. So, by taking a RB there, like many feel is typically the best way to use a pick that high, you're inviting risk into that pick that could be avoided, with that specific pick, if you went with a guy like Manning. Of course, you do that because you're going to have to deal with RB at some point and, as bad as the odds are in round 1, they're far worse in round 2 and 3. So, if your simply looking at how likely a certain pick is going to yield a solid starter, your numbers are going to be skewed by the fact that the spot in the draft where the first QB run is going to look more appealing than it should.

 

After all, if you go by ADP, the draft typically looks like this: 1-12 usually has 9 RBs, 1 QB, and 2 WRs. Something of that sort. Well, at least 2 of those RBs are not going to pan out. Happens all the time. Doesn't mean it was a bad idea to make that pick, because the odds there are still way better than they were going to be for the next batch of 9 RBs. At any rate, that's going to drag down the efficacy average of the first round (likely the back half). On the other hand, usually around pick 20-30, everyone starts taking the rest of the top tier QBs. So, those 10 picks are going to look, as a whole, better because Brady, Brees, Manning, and Rivers are almost certain to be locks. So, should you trade the 10th pick for the 20th? I'd say not. But the numbers according to the above theory might say it's not that bad a deal. Even if it is.

 

But there's an example of how random it is and how useless such a tool would be. Unless you had a very slick equation and I would want to see how they determined it before I gave it any credence.

 

On the other hand, such a tool could, in theory, be effective in the NFL draft because there aren't any slam-dunk positions. Unlike FF, you're not going to pass on a sure thing QB for another position because, unlike FF, you can't assume that there's enough good ones to go around. Is there any position like that in the real game? Where you just don't bother using a high pick on them because it's so easy to find a good one? So, there may actually be consistent and universal drop-offs in terms of pick reliability.

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It's not flawed. It's just "past performance does not guarantee future gains." It's an average of value at those spots (assuming they are doing some analysis of ADP to year end rankings).

It's flawed. Assigning value based on any mathematical simulation is flawed when the actual object cannot be correlated. If you were drafting "whoever finishes as the best RB" instead of "Chris Johnson" at the first pick, then you'd have something. As is there is nothing preventing the 12th pick, the 120th pick, or some undrafted donkey from being the highest scorer in the league.

 

There is no perfect tool, no chart, no system that's flawless and that's one of the fun things about it. We come up with all kinds of bells and whistles and charts and systems and philosophies and they are entertaining at least, semi-accurate at best. It's all we have so we go with it. That's what makes it Fantasy football and not Statistical Analysis football.

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Even if they were able to do this, it's a flawed theory because it assumes people perform exactly as drafted. We all know that's not the case so the "value" is based on a statistical analysis of the likelihood of a given outcome. The top 5 are top 5 because they have a far more likely chance of being the most valuable performer. Sure, Felix Jones could be the top RB it's just not nearly as likely as a CJ or AP doing it.

 

If you saw a chart it was probably the NFL one - I don't know of one done for fantasy value. It would only take you about half and hour to create this from the tool linked above - just plug in trading 1 for 2 (1889 vs. 1823), trading 3 for 4, etc.

 

Would you trade your 1.01 pick for my 1.12 even up? Probably not although it's entirely possible that the 1.12 pick could out-perform the 1.01 pick.

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Btw, I had the numeric values for the FBG's draft trade calculator. (probably lost when my computer crashed) I'm not saying that it isn't a flawed system, I'm just saying that i had to use it. It isn't flawed if members of your league follow it. If they follow it, then you should know what they are following.

Edited by MikesVikes
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Would you trade your 1.01 pick for my 1.12 even up? Probably not although it's entirely possible that the 1.12 pick could out-perform the 1.01 pick.

Correct. I didn't mean to indicate it was worthless, just flawed, and that we need to take it as such. Absolutely it's not completely random and there is a measure of educated guessing going on, I just intended to point out it's not a definitive tool.

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Would you trade your 1.01 pick for my 1.12 even up? Probably not although it's entirely possible that the 1.12 pick could out-perform the 1.01 pick.

That's not the point. Simply pointing out that "you never really know" let's these guys off the hook for quite possibly promoting a tool that is essentially useless. And that is not a knock on their football knowledge because this isn't about football knowledge. Football knowledge is about which specific players are going to be good, not some blanket statement on likelihood of the kind of player you can get at pick X doing well as opposed to the player you can get at pick Y.

 

And useless doesn't mean "never right". It means that it's no better than just blindly guessing. After all, if just blindly guessing yields as good of results as a system, what's the point of the system?

 

For instance, if you have a system that can predict a coin flip with 50% accuracy, it's a pretty worthless system. In fact, it's actually more worthless than one that consistently gets it wrong less than half the time. Because, at least with that one, you can beat the math by always choosing the opposite.

 

And that's my issue. You say you "had to use this calculator". Well, to what end? What if the calculator is just some wild guess that spits out a number that is based on something that holds no actual value and is not based on any real data? Or worse, data that is totally circumstantial? Would you be no better off just using your own intuition or flipping a coin?

 

Sure, if you're trying to sell a trade to someone and dude's calculator says it's a better deal for him, go ahead and use it. But, just because someone on-line says he's found a system, doesn't mean it's worth a damned.

Edited by detlef
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That's not the point. Simply pointing out that "you never really know" let's these guys off the hook for quite possibly promoting a tool that is essentially useless. And that is not a knock on their football knowledge because this isn't about football knowledge. Football knowledge is about which specific players are going to be good, not some blanket statement on likelihood of the kind of player you can get at pick X doing well as opposed to the player you can get at pick Y.

 

You're trading picks not players so it is the point. It's logical that you would want to pick a player when it is your turn and not tell somebody that it's ok to pick ahead of you. When the Vikes get skipped in the draft, they wouldn't look stupid if there was no logic of diminishing values of picks. Same difference in Fantasy Football. But I wasn't defending that you should or could attach a numeric value to a pick. I wasn't defending the FBG Trade Calc.

Edited by MikesVikes
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It's flawed. Assigning value based on any mathematical simulation is flawed when the actual object cannot be correlated. If you were drafting "whoever finishes as the best RB" instead of "Chris Johnson" at the first pick, then you'd have something. As is there is nothing preventing the 12th pick, the 120th pick, or some undrafted donkey from being the highest scorer in the league.

 

There is no perfect tool, no chart, no system that's flawless and that's one of the fun things about it. We come up with all kinds of bells and whistles and charts and systems and philosophies and they are entertaining at least, semi-accurate at best. It's all we have so we go with it. That's what makes it Fantasy football and not Statistical Analysis football.

It's law of large numbers. If the data shows that the 10 or 100th drafted player has the same odds of scoring as much as the 1st, then the chart would show that there is no difference in value from the 1st pick to the 10th, etc. I highly doubt that is the case. Take ADP compared to total points scored at year end for the past 20 years and see what it shows (20 years probably doesn't qualify for LLN). If someone points me to the data, I'll do the crunching.

Edited by kcmast
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