A Quantitative Look at 2022 Risk

The new risk cost data allows to do a more robust analysis of the player pool and opens up opportunities to better manage liabilities. Some draft rounds are riskier than others and that will help us decide when to jump in, and when to play it safe. Here is a bunch of data to chew on, based on the ADP Top 345 (enough to fill a 15-team mixed league).

Injuries: 51% of the player pool has an injury liability. I was surprised to see that it’s nearly an even split between minor (23.8%) and major (27.5%) injury risk.  As I have gone through the process of assigning these codes, I thought for sure that there were nearly twice as many (INJ) tags as (inj-). Still, rostering healthy players is little more than a coin flip unless you are deliberately targeting them.

Current drafters are doing a decent job avoiding major health downside in the first round, with only Ronald Acuna and Mike Trout tagged with (INJ). It’s a different story in Round 2, with Jacob deGrom, Yordan Alvarez, Shane Bieber, Luis Robert and Ozzie Albies all harboring elevated health downside. So if you are going to take on risk at the top, know that there are more mine fields to navigate in Round 2.

There are rounds you can target with more safe harbors. These rounds have five or fewer players with any injury risk: Round 3 and Round 16.  That’s it. All the rest will require more careful navigation. The rounds with the most potholes — 10 of 15 players with injury risk — are 8, 15, 20 and 23.

Experience: 32% of the Top 345 have less than two full years of major league experience, which means that are not yet fully formed. 13.6% have one year but less than two years of experience. 18.3% have less than one full year of experience. Think about that — nearly one in five players we are rostering have less than a year of MLB experience. But it matters when we are drafting these players.

In the first four rounds, there is only one player with less than a year of experience — Wander Franco (pictured) — and another six with less than two years. I suppose that’s reasonable, though still risky if you want to play it conservative with your roster’s core.

Here is how we are taking on that risk. These are the percentage of players with some experience risk, by groups of four rounds:

1-4: 12%
5-8: 25%
9-12: 33%
13-16: 37%
17-20: 45%
21-23: 42%

It’s just another reminder that it will get tougher and tougher to stay within your risk budget the further you get into the draft.

As we get closer to Opening Day (whenever that will be), there will be some shifting, but it’s pretty much universal (and logical) that the deeper you get into the draft, the more overall risk you’ll encounter. That begs for more care in the earlygoing when it comes to building towards your risk budget.

Risk costs: While we advise you to set your own risk budget, the players in the Top 345 pool do have their own costs. In fact, there is more than $700 worth of risk across the pool, or about $2.07 per player. A team rostering average risk would accumulate $47.50 in these costs. That’s pretty high, but you can do better.

Part of the challenge – particularly in snake draft leagues – is to know which rounds have more risk. Here are the costs per player, for each round:

1 – 1.78
2 – 2.68
3 – 1.23
4 – 2.27
5 – 1.18
6 – 1.30
7 – 1.45
8 – 1.78
9 – 1.67
10 – 1.77
11 – 2.08
12 – 2.20
13 – 1.57
14 – 2.38
15 – 2.00
16 – 2.73
17 – 2.13
18 – 2.48
19 – 2.32
20 – 3.67
21 – 1.75
22 – 2.82
23 – 2.25

Even in auction leagues, you can see the pockets of risk.

Round 20 is a major mine field, though the pullback in Round 21 averages out to 2.71 across both. Still, Rd 20 includes a cornucopia of health and experience risk from players like Kyle Lewis, Nick Madrigal, Marco Gonzalez, Max Stassi, Jesus Luzardo and Eric Haase — and those are just the players with a risk cost of $5 or more.

Still, with all this risk, it is possible to assemble a roster that clocks in under $30. Even under $20. Stay tuned…