Draft Picks
Published August 2022
Does draft order decide your fate?
Should you bother paying your league dues if you have the 4th pick?
Should you spend time on things that really don't matter?
These are the questions on our minds on the eve of the draft. To answer them, I used data from the last 7 seasons to compare draft order to points scored in the regular season.
Analysis
Below is a chart that shows the frequency of finishing at each Points For Rank (columns) given your Draft Position (rows).
Note the thicker line after the 6th position, which rougly approximates the finish you need to make the playoffs.
As we can see the bottom of the table is much more concentrated with better finishes. Meanwhile, the first 5 or so picks don't seem so predicitve.
There's a very rough negative correlation between draft order and points scored as highlighted below.
Who cares about finishing in the bottom half of the league, though? Let's isolate results to top-5 finishes.
Interestingly, only 4 draft slots have finished as the top overall scorer. In fact, in 5 out of 7 seasons (71%), someone with one of the bottom three picks finished as the top scorer.
The 4th pick has never finished in the top 3 in scoring and the 6th pick rarely even finishes in the top 5.
The person drafting in the 8th position has never finished outside the top 5 in scoring.
10th picks either end up scoring the most points or finish mired in the bottom 5.
Conclusion
So where does this leave us for this season?
Well, Drew (4th pick) and Tarun (6th) might as well quit now.
James (10th) is either gonna dominate or embarass himself (I know what I'm betting on...)
Meanwhile Wesley (8th) and Tushar (9th) are in the best position to win it all according to the numbers. Which... uh... well maybe data isn't everything. And maybe this was a waste of my time.
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