So sometime within the last 24 hours, Yahoo decided to completely overhaul its fantasy rankings. Because I love humanity so much and apparently have so much time on my free hands, I just completely redid the numbers for Yahoo. 95% of the MDC data is still from 2/17/10, but some is from today (3/11/10) because I obviously cannot look back to the 2/17/10 data for players that were left out of the Yahoo top 300 rankings a month ago (I only have the top 300 or so from MDC's 2/17/10 data saved on my computer). The data should still be useful for fantasy planning purposes and it is now much more usable than it was about an hour ago.
Click here to download my UPDATED Draft Comparison Rankings - this file compares Mock Draft Central (MDC) rankings to those of Yahoo fantasy sports (Y!) and ESPN.com (ESPN). The theory behind this file is that MDC rankings represent free market player valuations (courtesy of mid-February data). By comparing MDC rankings to those of Y! and ESPN, one finds who is under/overvalued in each service. Nelson Cruz seems to be perfectly ranked in both Y! and ESPN!, while Y! seems to underrate Max Scherzer and ESPN seems to undervalue Dan Uggla.
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There is a flipside to this analysis.
ReplyDeleteYou are assuming that the people taking part in Mock Drafts know what they are talking about.
My guess is that players who have "name recognition" also have inflated MDC numbers... so, the Yahoo / ESPN projections may be correct and the MDC number may be the inflated value in the equation.
One that sticks out to me is Andy Pettitte... yes, maybe he is undervalued by Yahoo or ESPN... that said, I'm sure he is overvalued by MDC because people know Pettitte and remember him being good.
Thoughts?
JT-
ReplyDeletethere is definitely credence to this argument. Some guys will be overvalued by the market on the basis of brand recognition and users of the data should be wary of this. However, I would argue the marginal players valuation are irrelevant in the standard set up. Except for deep or AL/NL only leagues, Pettite won't be a guy to factor in.
You definitely cannot just look at the ESPN/Yahoo/MDC differential and proclaim "Overvalued!" or "Undervalued" >> some sense certainly must be used. This is why I supplemented the data in a previous post with xBABIP-based 2010 hitter projections and xFIP data/SP value rankings. Certainly, it is also important to look at projections like CHONE to see if the "name" matches the value and/or whether or not that "sleeper" is really not just an overperformer last season.
So yes, brand name influence probably exists, but I think common sense and a full list analysis will aid the intelligent users like you or I. What the data is important for is mining for brand names on the low >> Liriano, Chris Davis, Max Scherzer. These are all post hype sleepers with legitimate potential who are being undervalued BECAUSE people recognize them; the reverse brand association you assert.
Plus, seeing guys who you know the names of being over/under valued should raise a red flag in your head. You should be asking why when you see them?
Agreed... and your point about negative brand recognition for "post-hype sleeper flops" is very valid (although my term for such cases may not be!)...
ReplyDeleteObviously you can't base your straight up draft on this list alone... it's just interesting to peek into the multiple reasons for value skewing contained within this list.