Last week we asked whether those with a high fantasy baseball IQ are more likely to be risk-taking or conservative in drafts.

After more than 100 votes, 60 percent of you believe that fantasy baseball experts tend to be risk-takers – unafraid to defy conventional wisdom by fearlessly drafting players based upon merit rather than reputation. The vote outcome was far from overwhelming, but the majority clearly believes that fantasy baseball experts will take players they believe are worth the investment several rounds before they are normally due for selection and eschew players going high, but who experts consider to be unworthy. 

But is perception reality?

“Rookies and Cream,” a super smart numbers-guy, helped crunch some of the data and provided us with the graph below. 

The data was collected from Kelly at Fantasy Gameday, a very enjoyable site about fantasy baseball. For the past several months, Kelly has been collecting drafts conducted by “experts” and mock and real drafts done by those who care enough about fantasy baseball to weigh 14th round selections in the dead cold of winter. He has just released a free Average Draft Position & Scarcity Report resource and invites everyone to check it out. 

Rather extraordinary, when we looked at these expert drafts and compared them to Median Draft Position, we noted a very high correlation (.886) and naturally, a low standard deviation (.02). In other words, those participating in these drafts stuck very closely to the script, picking players in extreme proximity to draft averages. Very likely, they made picks by consulting the same kinds of ADP Reports offered by Kelly and others.

Let’s also visualize this phenomenon. On the left is a scatterplot of a Mock Draft Central “experts” draft conducted on February 12th. The points are player picks, corresponding on the Y-axis to where these players typically go in drafts, and corresponding on the X-axis to where these players went in that particular 2/12 draft. Through the first 120 picks, you’ll see an almost straight diagonal line, indicative of a draft that’s going according to the average.

It’s true there’s more deviation from the norm the deeper a draft goes. From rounds one through ten, the correlation is an astounding 0.93. From rounds 11 through 20, that correlation drops to .57. On the scatterplot, the line loses a bit of its focus as drafters seem more willing to deviate from the norms.

The general perception in fantasyland may be that individuals with high fantasy baseball IQs are risk-takers, but the evidence seems to indicate the opposite. From what we’ve seen of fantasy baseball drafts these winter months, conducted by those who would likely claim to be very knowledgeable about the sport, fantasy baseball experts tend to be quite conservative.

Are they more or less conservative than the majority of folks who play fantasy baseball in free leagues hosted by ESPN, Yahoo, Sportsline, and the rest? Well, we aren’t prepared to make any conclusions on that quite yet. In fact, we’d love to run the results of your draft and do a second look on this topic in March. You can help us out by sending the results of your drafts to editor@fantasyballjunkie.com.