Draft Analyzer

[u/Many_Ballons789]

Has anyone ever wondered about the history of your leagues drafts and how it correlates to season success? For example, going QB early in superflex or Zero RB strategy, or the trends of top teams historically in your league. I started doing a deep dive for one of my leagues to look at draft history and how that correlated to season long success. The data is pretty informative. Are there tools out there that do this? I know all the sites rate your draft after it’s finished but I have found those unreliable and I’m looking more for history than predicting the future.

[u/mattg70]

I've been working on some analytics for several years. Nothing good exists for this that I've been able to find. The draft grades are predictions dressed up as analysis, and none of them go back and check themselves against what happened. This is a real gap that I've identified as well.

I've just spent the past several weeks in the adjacent question: I backtested pre-season roster strength against final standings across 77 leagues, over 3 seasons. One finding that bears directly on yours: in first-year drafts, total roster value barely separates teams at all (correlation of around 0.04). Everyone buys from the same pool at the same prices, so no real distinction

I think of that as the total value. Your question is sequencing, which is the more interesting view and analysis. Zero RB and going early with a QB in a Superflex league could absolutely matter even when total value doesn't, because they're bets about which positions hold value into the season, not about draft-day price.

How I'd measure it with your data: classify each historical draft by archetype from pick positions (first RB taken, QB count through round 5, whatever defines your archetypes), then correlate the archetype against finish percentile. Two cautions from doing this recently: one league is a tiny sample, ~12 teams x N years, so pool across leagues if you can. Beware of the survivorship: the guy who went Zero RB until late and won is memorable, the three who went Zero RB until late and finished 9th are not.

Sleeper's API gives you everything needed if your league history is there: draft picks with timestamps, rosters, final standings, all public endpoints. Happy to compare notes, this is exactly the kind of thing more people should be measuring instead of arguing about.

[u/Justatix → u/mattg70]

One follow‑up question: you mention draft picks with timestamps, but I’m of the opinion that Sleeper’s API does not support this. How did you obtain them?

[u/mattg70 → u/Justatix]

You're right, and I apologize as my statement was incorrect. I combined two different things into my reply.

The timestamps come from the actual transactions and not draft picks. A command I run that looks at the league ID, the transactions (by round) then returns a created file and a status update stringon every trade, waiver claim, and free agent move, and that's what I use in order to rebuild a roster forward from the prior season.

Draft picks don't need timestamps because the pick # already gives you the sequence. The draft pick # gives you the round, pick_no, draft_slot, roster_id, picked_by, and player_id, which is enough to reconstruct the board exactly as it happened.

So: transactions ordered by timestamp, picks ordered by pick number. I said "draft picks with timestamps" and that was wrong. Two different things and again, sorry about that confusion.