The Power of the Market in Best Ball Mania

I’ll get ahead of it: Today’s thrilling discovery is that taking players before ADP is worse than taking players after ADP. Groundbreaking stuff.

Still, I think it’s an idea worth quantifying and exploring. Last week, I wrote an article that concluded, given what little information (a few years of Best Ball Mania data) we have, it’s best to save your BBM bullets until late in the summer, as teams drafted later have higher mean outcomes and higher ceiling outcomes. This runs contrary to what many people believe since ADP sharpens as the offseason progresses. Theoretically, you can form an all-star squad by correctly predicting which players are inefficiently priced too low, but that’s far easier said than done.

I think there’s a similar phenomena with ADP, where many drafters think they’re uniquely equipped to identify undervalued players. To be clear, I’m certain there are some best ball drafters who really are gifted at finding mispriced players, but most people don’t fall into that bucket, and I think it’s useful to be aware of what you’re forgoing on average every time you reach beyond ADP for a player (or, conversely, what you gain if you grab a falling ADP value).

Methodology-wise, we’re using pick-by-pick data from Best Ball Mania V. I rounded each player’s ADP (at the time of each specific draft — so the same player will have many different ADPs depending on when a particular draft happened) to the nearest whole number. From there, I assigned each pick a “Draft Capital” value based on their ADP, which I took based on The Solver’s Draft Assistant tool. Then, I assigned a “Draft Capital” value based on the actual pick at which they were selected and subtracted the two numbers. For example, the first row in my data set was Underdog user “millese” picking Russell Wilson at pick 209 on May 27 when his rounded ADP was 212. The Draft Capital value for that ADP is 1, and the Draft Capital value for that pick is 2. Therefore, the value on that pick is -1.

Now, let’s dig into the data to quantify what you’re sacrificing when you reach on a player vs. ADP.

VALUE IS GOOD

In total, only 44.0% of teams got positive value vs. ADP last year using our methodology. Teams with positive ADP value averaged 1,557.09 points in Round 1 and advanced out of the group stage at a 19.4% rate. Teams with negative ADP value averaged just 1,530.49 points and advanced past the first round just 14.5% of the time.

The difference gets even more drastic when you sort into more groups. I split the data into 10 groups, with the top bucket getting the most ADP value and the 10th bucket getting the least ADP value.

Average roster points in Weeks 1-14 goes down in perfect sequence, as does Advance Rate and Semifinal Rate. Week 17 qualification rate doesn’t go exactly sequentially downward, as is expected given how few total teams make the final week, but the top four buckets boast the three highest scores in that category.