2012 Printable Cheatsheet – ADP Positional Tiers

In your fantasy baseball drafts, not only is it good strategy to look at average draft position but it’s also smart to be aware of what the various tiers of players are at each position. The reason that this is helpful is because it lets you foresee upcoming drops in talent so you know when to target players from each position. For instance, you might need to target the last player from a group of 6 catchers if there are much worse groups below that tier. On the other hand, if you want to draft a closer but see that there are 10 available in a group of similarly valued closers then you know you can probably draft another position then come back to get one of those 10 closers in the next round.

One of the printable cheatsheets that I provide here is a chart that shows you the various tiers of players at each position broken up by their average draft round in a 12-team league. While ADP data itself has natural breaks over the course of a few rounds at each position, it doesn’t necessarily show us where there are projected drops in talent at any time.

In order to break each positional ADP down into visible tiers, I look at the average WERTH roto values at each position throughout the draft (the values are created using the projections which combine the Marcel, ZiPS, Steamer and Cairo systems). As you can see in this chart below which displays all of that draft trend data, there are noticeable drops in value at various points which I have sectioned off into tiers:

Those particular tiers of values may be very short and then shift into a lesser valued tier but other times the tiers go across many rounds. For example, the last tier at 3B lasts from Round 11 until Round 18 without much change in value. So, if you’re looking for a 3B in Round 11, it may be best to just to pass on it and return later since the value won’t experience a shift for a long time.

In this next chart, it shows the number of players that have been taken at various points in the draft. By the end of the 10th round, 33 outfielders should be drafted but only 8 shortstops.

Without further ado, you can download the 2012 version of this printable cheatsheet by clicking on the link below.

2012 ADP Positional Tiers

Each tier has the players sorted by their projected ADP so you know who to target first within each group. The cheatsheets do not specify any projected value for a player within a tier but the tiers are designed to give you a good indication of similarly valued player ranges. For instance, Asdrubal Cabrera may be projected to be much worse than Starlin Castro even though they are in the same tier. So, use the tiers as a guide for how to attack your draft but still do your research on who you would want to target within each of these tiers.

If anyone has questions or a need for a modified version of this (14-team league, site-specific ADP data, etc), let me know in the comments.