FISH List – Take 2

The response to the FISH List prototype has been outstanding, so let’s play with this a little more.

CURRENT FISH LIST: View | Excel
(See note below on using the EXCEL VERSION)

To review… Successful draft plans are built on the integration of projections and the marketplace (ADPs/AAVs). Most drafters consider these two lists separately and make judgment calls during the draft, but the FISH list combines the two into a single ranking.

(FISH is not an acronym, except if you’re okay with Fantasy Integrated Skills Hierarchy. It’s more about being handed a halibut instead of learning how to use a pole, line and bait.)

We should be ranking players based on the optimal spot in the draft when we are comfortable rostering them. If it’s the 6th round, we should have a list of players who are optimal 6th-round buys, regardless of what the marketplace says or how many players fit that round. So those “6th rounders” might include:

Players who we consider as having par value in the 6th round.
7th rounders who we project to have 5th round value and we would be happy to get in Round 6.
Players who we believe are overpriced in the 4th round but who we would consider drafting if they dropped to us in Round 6.

All of those players would be listed on our cheat sheet as 6th round targets. There might be 12 of them, or 20, or 5.

This concept works very well with traditional player values. You grab your ADPs, match them against those values and just slot each player into the appropriate round. It’s fuzzier with BABS because her list does not rank players; it ranks asset groups. In FISH List 1.0, we used those raw rankings anyway. I thought they would work well enough; after deeper consideration, they don’t. High-skilled players with lesser playing time bloat the earlier rounds, effectively pushing more deserving players too far down the list.

Originally, I slotted those deserving players one round before their BABS round, but those with wide variances were unfairly pushed back too far. For instance, Keston Hiura had a 5th round ADP and his BABS ranking had him way down at Round 14; FISH slotted him in Round 13. That’s not realistic. If the goal is to push players back just enough that the marketplace takes care of itself, we don’t need that big of a buffer. In FISH List 2.0, those whose BABS rankings are two or more rounds behind their ADPs will be slotted two rounds after that ADP. In this scenario, Hiura would be slotted in Round 7. I had considered using a 3-round gap, but opted for two rounds instead.

And so, this is very important: The BABS player ranking that the FISH List uses is intended only as an offset to a player’s ADP. In other words, if a player’s ADP is 3rd round and the FISH list identifies his BABS rank as a 11th rounder, he is not really an 11th rounder (again — BABS ranks asset groups, not players). That 11th round ranking is just used to push the player’s FISH rank later into the draft.

The Rules of FISH, again:

If a player’s BABS round and ADP are the same, slot him in that round.
If the BABS rating is one round earlier than the ADP, then slot him into the BABS round.
If the BABS rating is two or more rounds earlier than the ADP, then slot him in two rounds before his ADP.
If the BABS rating is one round later than the ADP round, then slot him into the ADP round.
If the BABS rating is two or more rounds later than the ADP, then slot him in two rounds after his ADP.

Here is a table that summarizes the Rules of FISH:

				SAMPLE ROUNDS
IF			SLOT IN	BABS	ADP	FISH
	2+ rounds better		2 rounds before ADP	8	13	11

	1 round better		BABS round	8	9	8
PROJECTION		MARKETPLACE
$$ VALUE	Same as	ADP ROUND	Same round	8	8	8
BABS RATING		AAV $$
	1 round worse		ADP round	8	7	7

	2+ rounds worse		2 rounds after ADP	8	3	5

The current FISH list is based on a 15-team league. The Excel version allows you to enter your own league size (in cell B1) and the results are recalculated. You’ll then just have to re-sort the list, first by ascending FISH ranking (column D) and then by ascending BABS ranking (column B).