Downloadable data: 2009 ADPs

One of the most important stats in fantasy baseball is Average Draft Position, or ADP, because it accurately shows how a player is valued by the fantasy community at large. ADP numbers can be compared against end of season numbers to show which players outperformed expectations the most, or be used to identify the optimal time for taking certain players.

The main reason, I think, that you do not see this type of analysis being done is that nobody has the ADP database to do so. Even though the big sites like Yahoo ang ESPN have the numbers up on their sites for free, nobody seems willing to put in the time to copy and store them down.

That is where I came in last year, when I decided it would be a good idea to get an ADP database started. One year’s worth of data would not be very valuable, but a few years’ worth and I knew I would have a valuable resource on my hands that could lead to new and interesting analysis being done.

With the 2009 drafts in the books, I spent the time this weekend compiling all of the ADP numbers from ESPN and Yahoo into compact spreadsheets for you to download at your convenience. The links to download the spreadsheets containing the 2009 data are found below:

Yahoo_2009_ADP.xls

ESPN_2009_ADP.xls

And now here are the links to download the 2008 numbers if you did not last year. Even if you downloaded them last year, you should replace those with the spreadsheets I am providing now because this year I put in a little extra effort to make the list with every position mixed include the players’ positions.

Yahoo_2008_ADP.xls

ESPN_2008_ADP.xls

There you have it. I’ll let you all go with a disclaimer about these numbers I said in my article last year:

The biggest issue with these numbers is the bias that come along with them. If you recall your fantasy baseball draft on either site, you will remember that Yahoo and ESPN (and all drafting sites for that matter) list the available players by their—the site’s own personal—rankings. Not only does this influence people when drafting, but it also inflates the ADP of higher ranked players when auto-picking occurs, which happens surprisingly often. That is the major flaw in these numbers.

Download away! And if anyone happens to have ADP numbers from season before 2008, let me know.