Questioning the reliability of ADP data for online drafts... (1 Viewer)

[Magnus_CA]

Has anyone done a study of what percentage of fantasy sport owners come to a draft having done no preparation whatsoever?

Like most here I'm a big fan of using ADP data to get an idea of right time to draft a player. What I'm wondering is how much the predraft rankings (PDR) provided by the Fantasy Draft Site (i.e. Yahoo, ESPN, Sportsline, etc.) you're using for the draft skew the draft positions of the players in the pool. Assuming 3 or so owners in a given 10-12 team leagues come to the draft with zero preparation I'm not sure ADP data is the best indicator of when a player will be drafted. What I'd like to do is fudge my ADP values, even if it's by a little, to account for that Fantasy Site's predraft rankings. I'm just struggling with how much of a fudge factor is a good idea. With a 70/30 weight applied the formula would look like...

Expected Draft Position = (0.70*ADP) + (0.30*PDR)

Perhaps 70/30 is too much?

Has anyone taken a similar approach? If so how did you tweak your ADP numbers?

 

[nzranger]

That's a very good point.

Possible software upgrade to the DD to import and bias based off of specific site rankings? That's not a hard piece of code, it would be whether the Footballguys think it's relevant.

I'd be interested to know if Joe and Co have been down this road already?

 

[Dragon1952]

Yahoo seems to be a little slow with updated info. It took them forever to bump Burleson up, and if you wanted Chris Henry, even 5 days after he was resigned, you had to do a search for him.

 

[Magnus_CA]

Customizing the ADP in DD is not difficult. It's just a matter of exporting the ADP data to a csv, making your changes and then re-importing. To avoid this topic being sent down to another forum I'm just asking in general terms. It comes down to how good is ADP and how to make it more accurate. I've been skewing ADP data based on league pre-draft ranking for my baseball drafts for the past 2 years but I always struggle with just how much to skew it.

 

[nzranger]

Customizing the ADP in DD is not difficult. It's just a matter of exporting the ADP data to a csv, making your changes and then re-importing. To avoid this topic being sent down to another forum I'm just asking in general terms. It comes down to how good is ADP and how to make it more accurate. I've been skewing ADP data based on league pre-draft ranking for my baseball drafts for the past 2 years but I always struggle with just how much to skew it.

I understand you can do it manually, I thought what you were getting at was a "quick import" type option.

 

[Butters]

Tangentially, I wonder about sites like FantasyFootballCalculator.com. It's a great site and has mock drafts kicking off every few minutes for months before Week 1.

But therein lies a potential issue, in my eyes. Once a player's "set point" is established early in camp, most people using the site are looking at the draft list that is provided by the site. That tends to lock players in a certain tier. Furthermore, in some of these drafts there is only one or two humans participating, so all that's happening, essentially, is the computer is reinforcing the draft position for most of the players.

 

[crnerblitz]

Tangentially, I wonder about sites like FantasyFootballCalculator.com. It's a great site and has mock drafts kicking off every few minutes for months before Week 1.

But therein lies a potential issue, in my eyes. Once a player's "set point" is established early in camp, most people using the site are looking at the draft list that is provided by the site. That tends to lock players in a certain tier. Furthermore, in some of these drafts there is only one or two humans participating, so all that's happening, essentially, is the computer is reinforcing the draft position for most of the players.

This guy gets it! Its just one big feedback loop stuck on what ever the programmer seeded the rankings with.

 

[Binky The Doormat]

Tangentially, I wonder about sites like FantasyFootballCalculator.com. It's a great site and has mock drafts kicking off every few minutes for months before Week 1.

But therein lies a potential issue, in my eyes. Once a player's "set point" is established early in camp, most people using the site are looking at the draft list that is provided by the site. That tends to lock players in a certain tier. Furthermore, in some of these drafts there is only one or two humans participating, so all that's happening, essentially, is the computer is reinforcing the draft position for most of the players.

This guy gets it! Its just one big feedback loop stuck on what ever the programmer seeded the rankings with.

Couldn't agree more. I did a ton of mocks this year for the first time and found them to be a total waste (other than some mindless fun as I was watching TV. IF, but if, these sites could do a fee-based deal to eliminate all the kids and no-showin' puds, mocks might be more helpful. The big thing are the real mock results. Go to MFL or Antsports (though their restrictive scoring system selection sometimes skews results a bit if you aren't a full pt. PPR) and only use the result from actual drafts for people's real leagues. Much better results. Also it is good to see the shifts in players from day-to-day. I use the day before for my final draft paper.

 

[Magnus_CA]

I'm not going to deny ADP data based on actual drafts is the way to go...however my original question still applies.