I’m going to begin a trip around the baseball diamond with a look at value scarcity at each position. Understanding talent curves is fundamental to going into drafts or auctions with a healthy sense of knowing the best times to lock up a player at a given position and alternatively, the moments when reservation is warranted.

Sabermetricians have invented many tools with neat acronyms including VORP,  WARP, and WPA to figure a player’s relative value. For the purpose of this series, I’m only concerning myself with projected fantasy value of players in draft or auction context. I’m taking CHONE projections (because they are freely available and have stacked up well against other projection services), employing a custom-built player-rater that translates these projections into fantasy value (for basic 5×5 leagues). I am also looking at mock draft data. I hope to identify the slopes and valleys of projected value at a given position and throughout a draft.

First up is catchers.

The first interactive bar chart below (java required) shows how the projected value descends moving from the catcher who is forecast with the most fantasy value (Russell Martin) to those with lesser CHONE expectations. I only included catchers who are among the top 20 catchers being drafted at the moment (leaving off Pablo Sandoval who likely won’t qualify there and a few prospects like J.R House and Angel Salome). As most fantasy baseball enthusiasts already appreciate, there is a significant talent drop after Geovany Soto. From Mike Napoli through Chris Iannetta, though, the slope isn’t very significant, perhaps demonstrating the needlessness of grabbing a non-Top 4 catcher in middle rounds or paying significantly for them in auctions.

The second chart below shows how projected value changes at the catcher position as a draft moves forward. The first position all the way to the left is held by the catcher who by average, goes first (Brian McCann). The draft evolves, rightward. Here, we can recognize that the slope in general goes downward, happily, though according to the CHONE projections, those who are drafting Mike Napoli and Ramon Hernandez are getting much better value than those who are drafting catchers immediately before them. These two catchers represent the biggest “spike-ups” on this chart.

Finally, we have a stack graph that measures value in relation to draft position.

Here’s the key to deciphering the draft grades: A=round 1-2, B=3-5, C=6-10, D=11-15, E=16-20, F=21-25