Waiver order correlation to winning

[FUDU]

I think you'd need to come up with a specific definition of a good draft.

For EG: twice now in my short strat career I've obtained every player I drafted in ATG (except for 2 players both those times).

Does that equate to a good draft?...LMAO.

Thankfully it didn't take me long to learn that lesson.

[Honyox R Us]

The 4 teams at the top of the waiver wire in the league I mentioned in the other thread finished with a 47% winning rate. I don't buy the theory about the deep talent pool either. This league ended in late December. It's not like I'm talking about something that happened a year ago... To correct my post in the other thread, I was 2nd in the waivers order, not first.

The first player taken in waivers was Paul O'Neill. My first selection in waivers was Albert Belle. Contrary to opinion, there were zero players above $10 mill left. There were none above $9 mill for that matter.

What else needs to be considered is that there are a large number of us who only play 1-3 teams at a time. I usually have two that overlap a little. For example, I have one in the first round of playoffs and the other team is 24 games into its season. This is usually tied to budgetary constraints that some of us have. I personally would be in divorce court if I spent the money that some of you do on this game. No slam at all meant; I wish I had that much disposable income to play with but it's not the case. It's not too difficult to figure out that some have spent tens of thousands of dollars playing this game. And again, no slam intended because I'd be doing the same if I had that kind of 'fun-allocated' cash. 8-) But the fact is I don't.

Those of you who play 8, 10, 15, 20 teams at a time can easily live with a stinker of a team, because there's bound to be a good one in your stable to make up for it. Plus, you can't physically devote a lot of time to each and every team.

An owner like myself, on the other hand, wants to ENJOY his team. With the ability to 'fix' crappy drafts being much more feasible in lower cap leagues, that's where I gravitate. I don't want to spend my limited budget on the very real probability that my team is going to suck from the get-go. I at least want a chance of enjoying a competitve team.

For the big-time players, $25 on a losing team is no big deal. For me, if I'm buying maybe 5 teams/yr, it's a sizeable chunk of my Strat budget being blown. I'm guessing that there are a lot of guys out there who feel the same way.

[dharmabums]

I've been wondering about this too Valen, the relationship of autodraft success and league success for the $200M teams. I don't think we're going to get anything more than anecdotal data for looking at this thing. My impression is that the autodraft is still important, but not as important as it was before all the card additions. Even with the card additions, in my experience most of the $200M autodrafts pretty much clean out the >$8M position players, and most of the >$8M SPs and >$4M RP-onlys. As nev said, you sometimes get the odd autodraft where nobody picks Ruth or Gibson. But that is because guys decide to not jump into the Josh-lottery, and go for some of the many other perfectly good catchers. Personally, the last three times I've gotten Mays is as a HAL-replacement for Mantle or Speaker; every time I put him in my autodraft list I never get him (go figure). But those situations tend to be the exception to the rule. At the $200M level, the autodraft strategy is important, at least it seems like it "should" be important. I personally like the stategizing about the autodraft. It's an appealing aspect to the game. The addition of the new cards has meant that I can pick some players lower in my draft card than I used to -- Lincecum is still a decent pitcher, but I've been able to get him in the lower half of my draft card lately, whereas a while back he had to be pretty high up. At the lower caps, creating a team after the autodraft is fun too. A couple of times, when a low cap league was about to fill, I've done the "pick it for me HAL" routine, and built a team from the remnants. I would never try that at the $140M or $200M caps. Just a different aspect to the game. I remember a poll sometime back asking about the different parts of the strat game players liked, and a pretty good number preferred the draft and preseason time.

Anyway, JMHO on the topic.

[Salty]

200 Million Draft to me is
70% Skill and maybe 30% Luck +/- 5-10%

If you have 0-9% luck then yeah, maybe its difficult to win with the other 70%.
But if you have even 10%-30% luck or more, IMO most teams are very playable;
assuming you used a good drafting strategy of course.
LIKE anything- TRIAL and ERROR- Learn from mistakes (ive made plenty)

and as JK said- one can pick 1st in waivers and still have had a very good draft- depending on who fell to them and who is on waivers.
Ruth, Maddux, Gibson, Bonds,Wagner have all been left on waivers at times- and with more cards, those chances only increase.

One other alternative is to do LIVE drafts which will hopefully be available at EVERY cap level soon.
BUT IMHO- some will complain about how terribly unfair it is that they lucked into the 11th or 12th pick for those too.

[sschu]

It would be interesting to measure the winning percent by Live draft position. I have the info for drafts where I participated (about 40 of them), maybe I will do a study.

My WP in Live drafts is about 500, not especially good. But the drafts are fun!

Any predictions on the best Live draft spot? I say #4, but for no other reason than a guess.

sschu

[Valen]

If I remember right in the previous thread discussing live draft positions and winning percentage the highest percentage slot was #6.

[quote:ded3ca5e2c]The 4 teams at the top of the waiver wire in the league I mentioned in the other thread finished with a 47% winning rate.[/quote:ded3ca5e2c]
A lot of things are the eye of the beholder. But if I accept that top of waivers means a bad draft then 47% would be considered by me a reasonable bounce back. If the bottom of that waiver list won at 53% clip then that would only be a 6% separation. I doubt any cap level has a much narrower gap than that.

[Honyox R Us]

53% is not 6% separation, that's 6 percentage points which is actually a 12% spread. I did go back and look at that league. Top record was 95-67 and he was #9 in waivers. 2nd best was 94-68 and he was #7. 3rd and 4th best (both at 90-72) were #10 and #5 in waivers.

Ironically, one of the most 'successful' in terms of getting who he requested in the draft had the worst record in the league. 64-98 at the #11 spot. Bolsters the opinion that just because you received who you wanted doesn't mean you had a good draft for your park. He only had 186 manager points so was a relative newby...

[Valen]

If anyone is able to access the data and aggregate it in addition to seeing it broken down by cap levels it would be interesting to see how it is trending.
Is the gap between winning percentage for those with top 4 waivers and those with bottom 4 shrinking as the player pool grows.

The assumption is that if you truly cannot recover from a bad draft the regular introduction of more stars should mean better stuff left over after a draft and thus a decreasing difference.

In the end for any capped version what really makes the difference is how well you do 2 things, match up to your ballpark and identify/draft players who deliver above their stated salaries. In other words you get move value than you pay for based on knowledge of the cards (underpriced cards) or the right players to match ballpark (McLain worth less in big HR park than in Petco).

[Mr Baseball World]

Quick point: The difference between 47% and 53% is 76-86 vs. being 86-76. That is no small difference.

More on the topic later......too complicated for a quick answer.

[rburgh]

[quote:d7732136cb]Half the time I do not agree with myself. [/quote:d7732136cb]

That's OK Valen, as long as the other half of the time it's not yourself disagreeing with you.