Average Draft Position: Making Sense of ADP for Fantasy Baseball

ADP, or Average Draft Position, is one of the most commonly cited statistics in fantasy baseball discourse. It allows owners to look at a single number and quickly determine a player's market value, making it easier to identify potential value picks in a draft. Furthermore, fantasy analysts can use it to determine how a particular player is perceived in the industry, helping them identify both breakouts and busts.

We've all grown so accustomed to working with ADP that we don't think about it anymore. In truth, we probably should. One of the most common traps for novice fantasy owners is to draft based on ADP, leaving them unable to respond to the nuance of a specific draft. There is also no universal ADP, so everybody who uses it has to choose which source to draw from. It's relatively rare for the sources to diverge substantially, but it does happen and can generate an advantage for the perceptive owner.

Let's take a closer look at what ADP means and how it's used in fantasy baseball.

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A Brief Overview of ADP for Fantasy Baseball

ADP may be defined as the average pick number with which a player is taken in a standard redraft league. If a particular platform hosts fantasy drafts, it likely publishes ADP data based on the behavior of owners on the site. For example, ESPN, CBS Sports, Yahoo!, Fantrax, RT Sports, and the NFBC all have distinct ADP data. RotoBaller is also worth mentioning here, as we aggregate various ADP sources to produce a single composite number.

Most sites also show you ADP in the draft room, creating the temptation to pick whoever has the earliest ADP remaining as opposed to the best fit for your roster. This can help you early on in a draft but turns into a problem later on.

For instance, most fantasy analysts agree that Ronald Acuna Jr. is the clear number-one pick in fantasy baseball, he's ranked #1 at all six of the sites I mentioned earlier. But then there's a pretty healthy debate about who goes second with strong cases being made for Mookie Betts, Corbin Carroll, Julio Rodriguez, and Bobby Witt Jr.

Everybody agonizes over who should go first, so ADP is quite uniform at the beginning. It's much more of an inexact science as the draft goes on though, and you can probably stop looking at ADP completely once 150 or so selections are made.

For example, Christopher Morel slashed .247/.313/.508 with 26 HR last season. Fantasy owners are generally skeptical of his performance, taking him around pick 197 overall per consensus ADP. That rank may say that you can wait on him, but Morel could be selected much earlier if he has another believer in your league. If you feel that Morel is the best available option for your roster, you should take him regardless of ADP. You don't want to miss your guys.

What Differentiates ADP Sources From One Another?

Two significant factors can change a player's value from platform to platform: a site's default format and a player's default ranking and projection on the site. Some people assume that all sites have the same default format because it says "5x5 roto," but roster construction matters. For example, standard CBS leagues include two catchers, while ESPN and Yahoo! only use one catcher. Catchers are generally drafted earlier on CBS as a result.

Likewise, the NFBC (or National Fantasy Baseball Championship) structures most of its leagues differently. While most other platforms focus on individual leagues that have no bearing on each other, NFBC leagues frequently have a large overall prize for the best team regardless of league. This encourages owners to select risky, high-variance players earlier, as you need to spike a few lottery tickets to get the 100th percentile outcome and win the top prize. Finishing in the 80th percentile in every category is generally enough to dominate a single fantasy league, reducing the need for variance plays.

Similarly, rankings can affect when players are selected on a site. For example, here is the ADP data for a really interesting stretch from 60-66 in the rankings.

ESPN's ranking (the first column) for Jones, Abrams, Lewis, and McLain are all major outliers compared with the rest of the sites. We usually see differences in rankings between sites based on differences in scoring systems or the sites' specific projections, but these huge differences are affecting the overall consensus ADP quite a bit even as only one of five inputs into the average.

For example, if you are drafting on CBS, Yahoo, or in the NFBC and expecting to get CJ Abrams around pick 60, it's not happening. Nolan Jones will be long gone by then, too. Make sure you pay attention to outliers like those illustrated here and pay particularly close attention to the site-specific ADP instead of the consensus.

Which ADP Should I Use?

You should look at two different sources of ADP for most drafts: your platform and a second one based on how competitive your league is. If you're drafting on CBS, you should have a rough sense of that site's ADP and rankings. Not only do they control who both you and your rivals see on your screen by default, but anybody who leaves the draft or disconnects may end up auto-selecting based on default rankings. Since everyone else can see your site's ADP too, you need another source to act as a differentiator.

Your other source depends on how competitive your league is. If it's full of owners who know the player pool, this author recommends NFBC draft data. All NFBC leagues are high-stakes, so its player base tends to be better prepared than other platforms. If your league has owners who prioritize players from their home team or are more interested in the social aspects of fantasy baseball than hardcore analysis, then our fantasy baseball ADP consensus is likely a better source than the cutthroat NFBC environment.

Ultimately, ADP is a tool you can use to predict a rival's behavior and inform your own decisions. You should never make a pick based on ADP alone, but instead, utilize it as one factor among many in your decision-making process.

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