Year in and year out the Matthew Berry’s of the world (who, two months into CubicleGM, still have amazing, enviable jobs) always tout that its much less important what you do with the first five picks in your fantasy draft than what you do in the middle and late rounds of the draft. The thinking is that anyone can pick Hanley Ramirez, Johan Santana, Alfonso Soriano, etc. and which players you end up with isn’t going to make or break your squad. Its finding Zach Greinke in the 8th round, Nelson Cruz in the 14th, and Adam Lind on the waiver wire that will win your league for you.
You could have had me completely and utterly fooled at the end of the ’08 season. Following the advice of almost every fantasy baseball pundit I chose to keep David Ortiz, Robinson Cano, Chone Figgins, and Victor Martinez as 4 of my 5 keepers heading into ’08. All were unanimous top 50 guys on everyone’s board. All put up absolute flops. I was in a major hole. A hole that I never managed to dig out of.
Was that an anomaly, or are the first five rounds really of utter importance? I took a look at my league this year and now that I am in a points league can much more easily quantify production from each team’s first five picks. Vlookup Vince ran some correlation analysis, and based on the first month of the ’09 season, there is absolutely no correlation between production from the first five picks and number of wins at this point in the season.
The team with the least production from its top 5 picks is 2-2, as is the team with the most production from its top 5. 2nd most points is 4-0, while 3rd most is also 2-2. Obviously its very early in the season, and we will continue to track, but early results indicate that production from your top picks does not make or break your team. Matthew Berry may be right with this one.
Bloggged Do the First Five Rounds of Your Draft Make or Break Your Team: – http://tinyurl.com/cpwy8h
This comment was originally posted on Twitter