Points Leagues: Overall Rankings, Pick Nick Under the Stars

Ladies and gentlemen, the moment you’ve all been waiting for is just a few sarcastic and synergistic sentences away. With draft season about to explode on us like animals in heat, I thought it was time for me to publish my position-adjusted overall rankings before some of you found out where I lived and started beating on my door. I actually got an email from someone asking me if my rankings would be ready in time for his draft and if I expected them to be good. I replied “unsubscribe”. Well without further ado allow me to reveal the name of the top ranked player. That player is Ryan Braun! Wait, what??!! Can’t be! Sorry about that I stepped away to grab a beer and Steve Harvey swooped in a typed that. That will teach me to leave my MacBook unlocked. The actual number one player, for two years in a row, is Clayton Kershaw.

Okay, so for those of you wondering how I came to such a conclusion I will explain my methods of madness.

The first step is get your hands on a reliable set of projections. Without projections you are more or less dead in the water. Next, apply your league’s scoring system to said projections to generate projected fantasy points for every player. The beauty of points leagues is that, at the end of the day, everything boils down to one category. POINTS. And here’s a very important thing to remember. Not all points are created equal, but it doesn’t matter (at all) how they were created. If player “A” scored 5 points by getting 5 singles and player “B” scored 5 points by taking 5 walks, they are both equal. Or are they?

Their contribution to your team’s cause is equal, but depending on each player’s position, one contribution will likely have more value than the other. The reason Troy Tulowitzki has been ranked so high for the last many seasons was because he did what he did as a shortstop. If he was a first baseman, he would have been ranked much lower. Position matters. So does size. If she tells you otherwise, she is lying. Oh, and my condolences for being in the position that she felt she needed to tell you as much.

The key to determining position-adjusted rankings is trying to figure out how much more valuable each player is than the replacement level player at his primary position. The replacement level player is the guy that can be typically found on the waiver wire. You always want to make sure you have a player better than this player.

My calculation assume the following roster: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, Util IF, OF (4), SP (4), RP (2), Bench (7)

This gives each team a total of 23 players. In a 12-team league that’s 276 players. Based on my findings here are the number of players at each position I am using to find the replacement player.

C (14), 1B (20), 2B (14), 3B (16), SS (14), OF (60), SP (62), RP (28)

The nth+1 player at each position is the replacement player. Once we have our list of players at each position completed we can calculate each player’s z-scores.

Z-SCORE = (Player’s Projected Points – Average Projected Points For All Players At That Position In Our Pool) / Standard Deviation For That Data Set

The next step is to determine each player’s fantasy value over replacement. We do this by taking the replacement player and subtracting his z-score value from everyone else at his position. The result is fantasy value over replacement. Once we’ve done this for each position, we can then start to compare players across positions.

Before we jump into the results I’d like to point out the scoring system used in this post.

RUN (+1), RBI (+1), 1B (+1), 2B (+2), 3B (+3), HR (+4), BB (+1), KO (-1), HBP (+1), SB (+1), CS (-1), SF (+1)
WIN (+5), LOSS (-5), IP (+3), K (+1), BB (-1), SAVE (+5), BLOWN SAVE (-3), ER (-1), HIT (-1)

Here are the top 227 position-adjusted fantasy point earners:

Here’s quick explanation of some of the columns.
FPTS=fantasy points, FVARz=fantasy value above replacement based on z-score, RK=rank, ADP=average draft position, ADPR=rank based on ADP, ADPD=difference between ADP and overall rank, ADPRD=difference between ADP rank and overall rank

Yes, just like last year Buster Posey has first round value. But again, just like last year, it would be foolish to draft him in the first round when his ADP (25.22) has him being selected in the early third round in 12-team leagues and mid third round in 10 teams. This leads me right into the best way to use the above chart. This chart ranks all of your “draftable” players. Based on the league’s scoring system, this is the order (more or less) that the players “should” be drafted. But it’s not reality. First of all, no one else in your league is going to have this list. Instead they will have some other set of rankings, perhaps ADP, and be using that to guide them through the draft. Your list is optimized for your league. There’s is not. But not only do they not know this, but they don’t care. Especially since everyone else in the league is likely using a very similar set of rankings. Heck, if you’re doing a online draft (which most do), the majority of your league mates will just use the cheat sheets provided by the site’s draft software. And this means they are all using the same rankings.

If you know how your opponents have the players ranked, you can use this to your advantage. Here’s how. Let’s use Robinson Cano as an example. According to my rankings Cano is the 29th ranked player, meaning he should be selected with approximately the 29th pick. His current ADP is about 63. That means if you get him with any pick after 29, you are getting value based on these rankings. The trick is being able to play the game of chicken and seeing how long after, but before his ADP you can wait until you draft him. My suggestion is to take him with whatever pick you have between 48 and 60. The closer to 60 you go the better the value, but the bigger the chance someone else is going to scoop him up a few picks early. But remember, if you believe in your rankings, then even taking him with the 45th pick is still a value pick.

This principle can be applied to many players in this list. The best way to identify players that fall into this category is to look for players with high ADPD and ADPRD values. You can just sort those columns in descending order. Now might be a good time to explain the difference in those columns. ADPD is the difference between my ranking and the player’s ADP. As you will notice ADP values are usually fractional as they represent the average position in a draft a player is being picked. My column “ADPR” stands for ADP Rank. What I did here was order the players in ascending order based on ADP and then ranked them based on this order. Clayton Kershaw has an ADP of 2.25, but that is the lowest ADP of all players. Therefore, based on ADP, he is the top ranked player. ADPRD is the different between my ranking and the player’s ADPR. Got it? Good.

When you sort by these columns you will notice a lot of RP come to the top. This is because RP is often a position that gets punted in drafts. Then there will be a run on closers and POOF the top 10 RP are off the board. This list should help give you an idea of where each RP ranks amongst everyone else.

Ignoring closers for now, let’s look at the hitters with a high ADPD. These are players that can be drafted at a discount and prove to be well worth their weight in points when compared to where you were able to draft them.

Nick Markakis is at the top of the list. His ADP is around 235 and I have him ranked 107. Do yourself a favor and grab him in the 18th round. And you might want to consider grabbing Melky Cabrera in the 17th. Other, more relevant players, that I think can be drafted at a discount in points leagues include Prince Fielder, Nori Aoki (ignori his ADPRD), Adam Eaton, Kole Calhoun, Gregory Polanco and David Ortiz. Ortiz is one of the most underrated players in points leagues. His ADP is about 109. I’ve got him at 70. I’m drafting him around 85. You’re welcome.

On the flip side, we can also use our list to identify players to avoid. These are players that based on our rankings and ADP are being drafted much earlier that we have them ranked. If your rankings have a player at 60 and he is being drafted in the 2nd or 3rd round, let him go. I usually cross those players off before the draft even starts. It is one thing to reach for a player that you feel strongly about, but when you need to reach several rounds based on how you’ve ranked a player, it might not be worth it. Fantasy players that let emotion overrule intelligent decision making often end up falling short of the championship. To find some of these jabronies, just sort by ADPR in descending order.

Okay, so here’s the deal. I’m attaching my spreadsheet to this post, but calculating specific rankings for your league like I’ve done above are not going to be easy unless you have at least a small set of Excel skills. You do not have to be an expert, but you need to have some working knowledge. I will try and spell out the steps as best as I can.

Step one is to update the “Points System” worksheet with your league’s scoring system. This will automatically update each player’s FPTS on all applicable worksheets. It will also update their FVARz values. If you go to the “Overall” worksheet and re-sort the FVARz column in descending order, this should re-rank the players. But here’s the catch, if your league has more than 12 teams or employs a larger starting lineup that would require your calculations to account for more players at a specific position than I am using in this post, then you are not going to be able to update that. At least not without my help. If you are in that situation, let me know in the comments and I will see what I can do. No promises.

That’s about it. Good luck, and Baba Booey to you all!

Download the spreadsheet.