Drafting with your rankings in a Yahoo draft?

[Eagle Baseball]

12 team league. It's a pretty knowledgable league. Last year I looked at my rankings and compared them to yahoo's and attemped to let a couple of players fall to me that I wanted while I drafted others that I wanted but had higher yahoo rankings. It didn't work perfectly as others targeted some of the same players I did.

How do you balance trying to get the best team while also trying to get the most value for your picks?

Do you just say these are my rankings and I believe in them so I will take my highest ranked player or do you attempt to play the yahoo ranking a bit and hope players fall to you?

Take a player like Josh Hamilton. I have him at approximately 120 while Yahoo has him at 181. In rounds 10 & 11 I have picks 119 & 122. If I use one of those picks on someone I have ranked in that area I may have gotten my best player but I did not get the most value with my pick.

I assume we all attempt to use some combination of the two but just curious if others have a rock solid way to get the best value without missing out on every player you target.

[Bloody Sox]

Its really just a modification of the ADP comparison you should do with your rankings. Use the Yahoo ranks that are going to be very visible in the draft room (assuming an online draft) in conjunction with the ADPs (or MDPs that someone posted in another thread) to determine where you can find values. But you need to find that happy medium... you can't assume a player you have ranked highly will drop to his ADP, you have to split the difference - in Hamilton's case that you just gave, you have him ranked at 120, Yahoo ranks him at 180, and I'll guess his ADP is around 140. So take the average of the ADP and Yahoo rank (160) and split the difference, targeting him at 140.

[J35J]

Every draft is different...if you try to play around with getting guys at certain spots of the draft you will likely get burned a few times. I generally go by my rankings and won't even pay attention to any other rankings. I know when to reach and when not to reach for the most part without the aid of other rankings or ADP. Just do what you do...if there is a guy you really want don't let him fall thinking you can get him later....don't neccessarily reach for him either though! I guess just having draft experience helps alot here...but like I said, every draft is different....draft using your rankings but don't go crazy...use common sense!


That was obviously harder to put into words than I thought...

[rookies and cream]

Its really just a modification of the ADP comparison you should do with your rankings. Use the Yahoo ranks that are going to be very visible in the draft room (assuming an online draft) in conjunction with the ADPs (or MDPs that someone posted in another thread) to determine where you can find values. But you need to find that happy medium... you can't assume a player you have ranked highly will drop to his ADP, you have to split the difference - in Hamilton's case that you just gave, you have him ranked at 120, Yahoo ranks him at 180, and I'll guess his ADP is around 140. So take the average of the ADP and Yahoo rank (160) and split the difference, targeting him at 140.

Actually's Hamilton's ADP according to Yahoo is 189.10. Note, this is the lowest ADP of all sites.

MDC = 145.81
CBS = 154.41
ESPN = 124.30
Couchmanagers = 170.30

Overall, his MDP is 160.01

(This is a sneak preview to my MDP report update which will be out later tonite after a little more data entry )