Oak's Corner: A Focus on Draft Day and ADP Fades

Well, here we go again. After a long winter (well, except for Jimmy Garoppolo!), it's awesome to have fantasy baseball draft season back and to be back writing Oak's Corner. Many thanks to everyone at RotoWire for asking me back for another season. Hopefully, I can help you draft better this March and then manage better during the season, all while having a lot of fun. In season, I'll stick with the formula from last year, posting on Fridays to recap the week that was in baseball and then previewing the weekend with a focus on free agency, which typically runs for most leagues on Sundays. In the preseason, I'll start with some general draft talk and then discuss some targets and fades in comparison to ADP.

Draft Day

I tend to be a late preparer for drafts as opposed to many players who've studied since November. It's a super long season, and I find if I jump in too soon I tend to burn out in the dog days of the summer of the season. I'm still nailing down my personal draft rankings as I prepare for my NFBC drafts in late March, but I've been thinking a lot about draft strategy with the goal of improving myself as a drafter. I feel confident about my work in FAAB and in-season strategy, but am always trying to improve with the challenge of piecing together the right squad on draft day.

The main thing I've been trying to implement at draft time is to stay flexible throughout the draft. This is especially true with regular drafts (rather than slow drafts) when you're forced to make quick decisions, and those decisions can change fast based on what the teams ahead of you just did. Taking a plan into a draft is always good, but because so much changes in a draft, you have to be willing to veer off your plan, either when a player you don't expect to be there shows up in your lap or someone you had targeted gets snagged by someone else. The ability to shift off your plan effectively comes from a strong knowledge of the player pool.

The most important piece of advice I can give when breaking down the player pool is to develop your own rankings. I'm not of the belief that you need to do a full set of projections, although that can be beneficial, and I respect the effort of those who do. I don't do my own projections, but I spend a ton of time on my positional rankings each spring. Deep diving into these rankings gives me a real answer of who I prefer when push comes to shove and I have to make a decision under the gun as the clock ticks down. Relying on someone else's rankings or projections or even a consensus ranking can give you a solid start, but will lead to a lot of uncertainty come draft day.

As part of breaking down the player pool and building my rankings, I think constructing tiers within each position is extremely valuable. It's important to see how players group together and where the drop offs are as you try and figure out how to complete your team in the back half of the draft. When looking at my tiers, I often do it from the bottom up to not only determine position depth, but also to figure out what positions have my targeted players in the second half of the draft. When I'm making a determination on two similar players in the first half of the draft, knowing where my targets lie later in the draft can help me work toward building an overall team I will like. I won't not take a player just because I like someone late at the same position, but, for example, if there are five shortstops I like late, it could alter an earlier decision between a shortstop and a similarly ranked player.

One of the biggest changes in the last five to seven years is the prevalence of ADP as not only a draft tool, but in how readily available strong ADP lists are. With the growth of NFBC and particularly the early draft season Draft Champions leagues, it has given us a large sample of drafts completed by smart drafters paying real money to draft. In my initial years of NFBC, I would get together with a couple friends and we would share our drafts and come up with an ADP based on five drafts, which yielded some value but obviously would get very skewed based on one outlier pick. Gone are the days when people would guess on draft price based on mock drafts or the results of expert leagues.

With the growth of this information, the real question is how to use it. The key is to use it as a tool, but not to rely on it either for setting your actual rankings or determining where to draft someone. As drafts get deeper and deeper into March, the popular draft targets will move up more and more, especially in drafts like the NFBC Main Event where people aren't afraid to eschew ADP to get their guy. Most importantly, never draft someone just because of their ADP, an error that I have made many times. If your research led you to think someone was over-drafted by a significant margin, don't move off your research because a guy slips off his ADP unless it gets so low that he's no longer over-drafted in your evaluation. I have found that the most painful thing in fantasy baseball is not missing out on someone you wanted, but losing with someone you didn't want, but drafted anyway because he was a "value pick."

ADP Fades

As we get deeper into the preseason, I'll highlight some players I like, but for now, I'll focus on a few players whom I won't be drafting anywhere near their current price tag.

Buster Posey: The ADP for Posey during the past month of NFBC drafts sits at 56.5, a price I'm not willing to pay. Posey's batting average (.288 or higher in six straight years with four of those year over .300) presents a large edge at a very thin position, but Posey's recent power numbers give me many concerns. After homering 22 times in 2014, Posey now has played three straight seasons with under 20 homers, an especially low number in the current home run environment. And while the half dozen steals each of the last two seasons do give him value a boost, I'm not counting that number from a 30-year-old catcher.

At a fourth-round price tag in 15-teamers, I can't see taking a shot on a guy who likely won't hit 20 homers or steal double digit bags, even with the batting average and his catcher eligibility. Even more concerning was how hard the power fell off for Posey in the second half of 2017. Over 219 second half at-bats, Posey managed a mere two homers to go with 32 RBI. He did increase his fly ball rate in 2017, but it still only touched 33 percent, and his hard hit rate fell to a four-year low of 33 percent. Posey has been amazingly durable, especially considering his position, with 140 or more games in each of the past six seasons, but hitting the age of 30 and playing catcher concerns me a bit as we enter this season. Buster is no doubt a stud hitter, but for fantasy purposes, he's a hard fade for me anywhere near his current ADP.

Corey Knebel: Over the last month of NFBC drafts, Knebel has fallen a little bit to pick 64 and recently moved from the third highest relief pitcher to fourth, as Aroldis Chapman passed him by a slim margin. My fear with Knebel mostly stems from the high walk rate, a trait that always worries me with closers. Knebel walked 4.74 batters per nine in 2017 in 76 innings, a year after he walked 4.41 batters per nine in 2016. He posted a sparkling 1.78 ERA as he took over the closer role for the Brewers in 2017, while striking out an incredible 14.9 batters per nine, a jump of more than four batter per nine. The strikeout numbers were supported by a massive jump in his swing strike rate to 13.9 percent. His strand rate was a sky high 91.9 percent, which clearly aided the final ERA, but my concern mainly goes back to the walks.

A closer comes in with a small lead, and I hate to see guys on the bases via free passes. A walk in a one-run game suddenly allows a double to tie the game, whereas a team would need a big fly or to string together multiple hits without the walk. Further, Knebel has a short track record as a closer, and any stretch of hiccups could lead to some worries about his role, especially on a team trying to win this season. If his price were 30 spots later, I'd be interested, and the strikeouts might be enough for me to stomach, but at pick 64, there are too many players in that range whom I trust more, including a number of relievers currently being drafted after Knebel.

Eric Hosmer: Hosmer has been the subject of a lot of debate recently as he remained unsigned for much of the offseason before signing a large multiyear contract with the Padres. A year after setting a career high with 25 homers but only hitting .266 in 2016, Hosmer matched his homer total in 2017 but boosted the average more than 50 points to .318 while dropping his strikeout rate more than four percent to 15.5 percent. Coming off back to back 25-homer seasons along with the 2017 average bump, Hosmer is being drafted with an ADP of 79.5.

My main issue with Hosmer comes from the fact that I think the homers aren't going to repeat. His already meager fly ball rate dropped even more in 2017, settling in at 22.2 percent. Further, his hard hit percent fell under 30 percent for the first time in six years. Even with the hard hit drop, his HR/FB rate managed to stay high at 22.5 percent. The move to San Diego is not the negative that it would be for most hitters, as he already was playing in a poor hitting environment in Kansas City. The .351 BABIP from 2017 isn't likely to repeat, and with the drop in hard hit rate, I fear that not only will the power drop off, but the average will as well. I wouldn't be surprised by a .275 season with 18 to 20 homers, which would be very disappointing at the current price tag, so I'm a big fade on Hosmer in 2018.

Thanks again to everyone for reading the column last year and I'm excited to back for 2018. Baseball draft season is a fantastic time, enjoy every second of it, as we will be lamenting the missed breakouts soon enough! Here's to a great draft season!