The SSDS Drafting Method: Part 3 of 3
"The Results"
published December 15, 2006

Having taken you through the system and an actual entire draft in the first two parts of this series, here's the team we ended up with in terms of 2007 projected statistics. Remember, that we've drafted players basically in terms of what's worse between their 2007 projection and their 2006 season. That is, these players could easily overachieve beyond these expectations. Totals are based on the non-rounded detailed projection totals published last Saturday:

I make no claims about how competitive this team is. I will tell you that it's similar in structure and style to the team that won me a league in 2005 using this experiment the first time. That team ended up finishing in the middle of the pack in steals but dominated the power categories and four of the five pitching categories. It's hard to tell when you're dealing only with a 12-team fantasy league (the 2005 league was a 20-team league) but at first glance, this team looks strong in home runs, runs scored, RBI, wins, strikeouts, ERA and WHIP and looks pretty good in batting average. In fact, if the ERA looks high, remember that this is based on the forecasts for 2007, which tend to have few sub-3.00 ERA types. In fact, in our 2007 forecast set, there are a grand total of just fifteen pitchers who are projected to pitch at least 162 innings and have an ERA below the 3.79 mark this team is forecasted to have as a whole.

I'll bet many readers would be surprised to see a projected team total of 72 steals (which still isn't that good for a 12-team league) yet only one player projected to steal more than 7 bases. In other words, our ranking sheets are incorporating the boost in value that players offer when they steal 5-10 bases and this is important in the long run of a thirteen or fourteen man hitting roster.

Again, I won't make a claim about how good/bad the mock draft team is. After all, it's not a real league and we can't make any roster adjustments. I do plan to return to the rosters later in the year to see how good the draft was in terms of what ended up actually happening.

Oh, and I don't put much faith in single season statistics but here's how this team shapes up in terms of what it did last year. Because the skip method avoids almost all rookies, unless they have an extremely wide gap between projected value and the next candidate player left, all of our players saw plenty of action last year:

The combined team batting average from 2006 is likely to surprise at least a few folks considering how many power hitters we drafted (only one player hit fewer than 19 home runs).  One thing I don't believe would be useful at this stage is adding up the projected values of all fantasy teams. This SSDS approach deliberately skipped projected value in many cases and we could have gotten much more projected value if we had decided not to take this safe approach. In other words, I would not want to measure the success of a draft by a method that gives importance to something we deliberately avoided for the sake of safety. The only way to measure how well this system works is to look back at the end of 2007, not just for one league but for many leagues.

By the way, if you'd like to see the entire draft grid, you can view it at:

http://www.mockdraftcentral.com/draft_grid.jsp?id=24548

Just on an instinct basis, I felt that the teams from FantasyBaseball.com, Baseball HQ and Creative Sports came out strong in this draft but that's guesswork and not based on any statistical analysis.  With no trades, roster moves or any other possible transaction when you make a mock draft, I felt that some of the other teams took higher risk players who could easily end up back in the minors or on the bench if something goes wrong.

I never like to rate a draft immediately after it's done. Everyone, naturally, thinks they got the best of it and in private leagues, I usually enjoy watching the one or two guys who want the league trophy handed to them there and then. In a mock draft rather than a real one, that would be even more pointless.

If any users out there have the courage to try applying the SSDS to their own leagues, by all means share the results with me as I'd be eager to see how you ultimately do compared to how you performed in previous years.