Draft position importance quantified

SnowblindNYR

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Nov 16, 2011
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So I analyzed the draft. Everyone always says that you can't get elite talent outside the top 5. So I tried to test that. I used the Chi-squared test. I looked at all drafts from 1990-2015 and players that were named to at least one "All-Star Team" and/or the HOF. That's a bit of a better measure than just being an all-star. In case someone else is as ignorant as I am, I didn't know what the difference was, but it appears being named to the All-Star Team is equivalent to an NFL All-Pro. Anyway, the chi-squared test looks at a crosstab and compares the actual to the expected if the crosstab were proportional. Then if the chi-squared provides a p-value of <0.05 then the actual is significantly different from the expected, meaning there's a less than 5% chance that the difference due to random variation.

AST/HOFNot AST/HOFTotalAST/HOFNot AST/HOFTotalAST/HOFNot AST/HOFTotal
Top 53298130Top 532981306-105125130
6-105125130Rd 1 NT52757560211+ Rd 117455472
Total37223260Total59673732Total22580602
AST/HOFNot AST/HOFTotalAST/HOFNot AST/HOFTotalAST/HOFNot AST/HOFTotal
Top 518.5111.5130Top 510.5119.51306-104.8125.2130
6-1018.5111.51306-1048.5553.560211+ Rd 117.2454.8472
Total37223260Total59673732Total22580602
P-value1.64399E-06P-value2.07083E-14P-value0.895356853
[TBODY] [/TBODY]
Expected is calculated as follows:

For example, in the first chart, for Top 5 players that have made an all-star team or HOF, you can either divide all top 5 picks (130) by all top 10 picks (260) and multiply it by all AST/HOF players selected in the top 10 (37) divided by all players selected in the top 10 (260) and multiply it by all players (260). (130/260)*(37/260)*260. Or more simply, (130*37)/260.

The first test is the top 5 compared to picks 6-10, the next test is top 5 compared to not top 5 picks in the first round, and the last one is 6-10 compared to not top 10 picks. The first two are highly significant, the top 5 is disproportionately strong in these types of players compared to the bottom half of the top 10 and compared to the entire first round that's not the top 5. However, the bottom half of the top 5 is not any better in producing these type of players than first round picks that are not in the top 10. In fact, even eye-balling it, you'll see an uncanny proportionality. Each expected value rounds to the actual. And the p-value is extremely high.
 

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