Vibe coding is a phrase going around software development right now. It's AI-assistant programming where you don't sweat the details, knowing that additional prompting can patch over any shortcomings in the codebase.
I think there's a fantasy analogy. Vibe drafting.
A vibe drafter doesn't pretend to draft with precisely calculated projections or valuations. They follow the vibes and draft what feels right.
That might sound pejorative at first, but I believe that some of the best drafters are vibe drafters: People who know the player pool so well that they have an incredible intuition for what categories they need. They've done enough drafts that they have an amazing sense for the true value of each player.
But there is a downside of following the vibes. In programming, as the codebase for a vibe-coded project grows, it becomes unwieldy. The layers upon layers of AI patches, for a system that you've never really tried to think deeply about...
In fantasy, the problem with vibe drafting is when you get outside of traditional 5x5 rotisserie. All of a sudden, your intuition built on deep drafting experience becomes much less valuable.
The Tout Wars drafts are great for showing who drafts from vibes, and who comes to the draft with a more rigorous system. Unlike other expert and high-stakes leagues that hew closely to tradition, Tout Wars tries lots of unconventional rules. Most prominently, most of their drafts use OBP instead of AVG.
A vibe drafter in an OBP-league is painfully obvious. At the expert level, a rare few of them don't care about the rules change at all and just keep following the vibes. But most of them try to mix their vibes with some sort of "OBP adjustment" that is not as nuanced as it could be.
Let's talk about the rarer type first, vibe drafters who don't attempt to adjust for format. To my eyes, one drafter in the Tout Wars mixed draft paid no extra attention to OBP, positive or negative.
This was exemplified in their 1st round selection of Jackson Merrill (picked 15th, ranked 64th in OBP). Merrill is young enough that my take could be proven wrong, but it's hard to make the case for him in the 1st round of an OBP league.
Pick 15 is on the turn, and Merrill isn't going to make it back around to pick 45, so you have to take him here if you want your guy. But...maybe you just accept that you can't have him?
That was the vibe drafter extreme, but most knew to make adjustment. They just weren't sure how to fit that adjustment with the vibes.
A vibe drafter can get a list of players with the biggest gap between AVG to OBP. But how much do you adjust your rankings for that list?
If a vibe drafter over-penalizes players with low OBP, it goes unnoticed. Those players will instead get snapped up by someone with custom valuations.
But it's often the case that vibe drafters under-penalize a low OBP. Those players would fall a round or two to then be swept up by a vibe drafter, when they probably should have fallen even further. Examples:
The same mistake would go in the opposite direction. What if a player is significantly more valuable in OBP than in standard roto? It's easy to see when vibe drafters reached for players—knowing they are OBP-valuable—when their value didn't warrant such a benefit.
This happened most with the guys with a reputation as "OBP guys," like Kyle Schwarber. Yes, Schwarber is much better in OBP than in AVG leagues. In traditional roto, his batting average is so low you really have to decide if the hit is worth it to your team. Because his value swing is so drastic in OBP, he's going to top any list of "players better in OBP than in AVG".
Even so, the swing in value is not so great that it is worth passing on Julio Rodriguez or Fernando Tatis Jr., who contribute enough speed and power that their mediocre OBPs are worth taking at this point.
And Schwarber definitely doesn't deserve to rise above Bryce Harper and Freddie Freeman, who also have much better OBPs than him. It's just that their rise in OBP leagues isn't as large, because they're not terrible in AVG.
Other "OBP famous" players who experienced a similar overvaluation by vibe drafters:
The Nimmo pick wasn't an egregious reach, but it was certainly made purely for "OBP" reasons. The real crime was passing on Riley Greene, Taylor Ward, and Steven Kwan—higher ranked players who also have great OBP—and maybe also for not considering Adolis Garcia or Lane Thomas for a team that at this point already had decent OBP.
There was also Alex Bregman, who went twenty-something picks above their OBP-ranking, but I think that one was different. Bregman definitely has a reputation as a guy to target in OBP, but he's also got some storylines this offseason about how Fenway was the ideal landing spot for his profile. Projections may call this pick a reach, but I'm guessing it's driven by a belief that projections are missing some of the picture.
A vibe drafter can get away with a couple of picks like this. And most of them probably compensate for these negative EV picks with some pretty wise insight that is missed by the projections.
The problem is that the players that I've named were mostly concentrated onto just a few teams. And if you're playing in an expert league, you can't make repeated blunders and hope to compete with those players who have mastered both vibes and valuation.
If you're still tracking your draft with a custom spreadsheet or even just pen and paper, you need to try DraftKick.
It is packed with features to help you succeed on draft day:
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Hi,
I'm Mays. I've been playing fantasy since I was in high school (over two decades ago).
My speciality has always been player valuation—converting player stats into rankings and salary values. VBD for fantasy football? Rotisserie z-scores? We go way back. In 2009, I started Last Player Picked, a site that generated fantasy values customized for your league.
You can find me on Twitter at @MaysCopeland or email me at mayscopeland@gmail.com.