Fantasy Beat: Expert ADP Shifts

I have pointed out some of the early ADP returns from Mock Draft Central a few times this off-season,but have not really focused on the expert mock draft results. The main reason for that is that they’ve only recorded seven expert mock drafts, and it is a safe guess that all of those were done for the different magazines or ezines that are currently on shelves, as mock drafts are a staple of draft guides.

However, a new expert mock draft has begun, being coordinated by the great guys of MLB.com’s Fantasy411 and including other participants such as my Tout Wars colleagues Todd Zola and Lawr Michaels, Ray Flowers from Sirius XM Fantasy, Jeff Erickson and Derek Van Riper from Rotowire, Eno Sarris (who writes more places than I do), Paul Sporer of RotoHardball, USA Today’s Steve Gardner, and Baseball Prospectus alums Joe Sheehan and Will Carroll.

Given that it has been nearly three weeks since the last of those seven expert mock drafts was run, I thought it would be interesting to compare those results to how this latest expert mock draft (which is now early into round 8) is going.

Is it me or does this look a lot like the Hall of Fame voting process. None of these players have taken a single swing with a bat this off-season, but their ADP status has seen some rather wild swings. The five wildest all went to closers, as this group of experts clearly values closers more than previous ones. Craig Kimbrel, Mariano Rivera, Jonathan Papelbon, Drew Storen, and Joel Hanrahan have all been drafted anywhere from 30 to 65 spots head of where they went in the previous seven expert drafts.  Conversely, Chase Utley has seen his stock drop 33 spots, Aramis Ramirez 29 spots, and Dan Uggla 26 spots.

 In all, 16 of the 92 players drafted thus far have seen their ADP drop at least 10 spots in this draft, and most of them have been position players. Tim Lincecum and Yovani Gallardo were the only pitchers in that pool of 16 players to see their ADP drop while Alex Rodriguez, Asdrubal Cabrera, Rickie Weeks, Carl Crawford, Brandon Phillips, Jimmy Rolllins, Paul Konerko, Dan Uggla, Aramis Ramirez, and Chase Utley made up the rest. Interestingly enough, Crawford is the only player in that pool who has had any injury news come out since the last draft.

The early trend in this draft appears to be more attention being given to pitchers. Twenty-two pitchers have been taken so far, with 14 of them being grabbed above their ADP from the earlier expert drafts. David Price has seen the biggest jump of all starters, going 24 spots earlier. I took James Shields 23 spots earlier while Cole Hamels went 21 spots earlier.

It has been discussed a bit on Twitter how some of the early mock drafting in both mainstream and expert leagues is trending toward an emphasis on starting pitching. So far, that is how this draft is playing out. I will do another story next week once this draft is over to see how that trend held up.