So a common theme this draft season at Razzball is “ADP is a trap.” In fact, I’m gonna lobby for t-shirts and mugs to commemorate. Mi amigo Blair dropped a bomb Monday that turns the idea of drafting pitchers in the 1st or 2nd round on its head, which I’m proud to say I had a part in, and needless to say, it is a form of scientific validation (logos) for the ethos that has been the mantra of Grey here since the great Razzball awakening. You don’t have to draft a pitcher in the first two rounds just because someone that setup the draft platform says you should. It’s the power of suggestion, groupthink, or even FOMO that compels you. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. After this article of course. It’s the 95 theses nailed to the church door of the fantasy baseball establishment.

You need to look at it like negotiations. When you want to make a good deal in your favor, you have got to set the initial parameters to negotiate from. You plant the flag at your starting point so every point conceded or won becomes a function of that starting point. When you are in a platform’s draft lobby, all draft values begin at the starting point of somebody else’s rankings. When you get picks at an ADP value or premium, what is that based on? True value? Your value? or THEIR value? Don’t get pulled into the game of taking someone at a certain cost just because of the number presented before their name and where they sit in the queue. Stop it. You’re getting caught up. What you can do though, is use it to your advantage and capitalize on the sheeple in your draft conforming to the system.

That was a super-long intro to talk about Patrick Corbin, but here we are. Welcome to the desert of the real. Patrick Corbin, along with some others I’ve highlighted this spring, represents a disconnect. What to do with ADPs and not fall into traps? Many of these rankings are overcompensating for what happened in the 2020 hellscape and under-compensating for track records. Years of experience are thrown out for what happened in a 60-game sample, and not even a normal sample but a mutated and grotesque shortened season, where the data sample was tainted. The same routine and environment that players usually go through to start the season was non-existent, so how can you relate it to what has happened before when there’s no constant for comparison.