2027 Div D

Six women's tennis slots — Gauff, Kostyuk, Paolini, Jovic, Bencic and Shnaider — is the largest single-sport stack in any division, and it is the right sport for it: the WTn top-8 cutoff has been 1–4 points, and players outside the top 8 seeds cannot go negative. It returns 4.6 EV and the simulation ranks them 35% for top four against a 9th-place EV. The Rams and Ohio State give them real anchors elsewhere. Only 2% of their EV is unverifiable, which is why they grade above teams with more raw points.

The Yankees, Mariners and Blue Jays give them a 5.2-EV baseball room, the largest single-sport holding in the division outside Not Just Marcus's F1, and Russell at 18 was the third-best F1 buy. Then the back end collapses: KD pick 16 and LLWS pick 15 are both worth exactly zero on the historical curves, so two mandatory slots were spent on nothing, and the Mavericks leave NBA dead as well. Good draft through round twelve, four wasted picks after.

The Thunder at 3 and Norris at 31 are two good early assets, and LLWS picks 6 and 10 add 2.7. Everything else leaks — eight roster spots return under 0.3 EV, the most in the division — with men's tennis (Bublik), KD (pick 14), MLB (Diamondbacks) and college hockey (Penn State) all conceded. Their −2.8 draft efficiency is third-worst. A good first two rounds followed by nineteen picks that mostly did not matter.

LLWS pick 1 at pick 6 is worth 4.0 and Djokovic plus Draper gives them 2.7 in men's tennis — two good decisions. The rest is careless: the Commanders alone leave NFL at 0.3, Clemson leaves CFB at 0.1, and KD pick 15 is worth nothing, so three mandatory slots are conceded in sports where real assets were still available. Six roster spots return under 0.3 EV. The talent identification is fine; the roster construction is not.

USA at 9 and PSG at 20 are fine, and Åberg, Hovland and Morikawa should have made golf a strength. Instead Åberg at 37 was the second-worst-value pick in the draft, and four mandatory slots return nothing: Sainz in F1, LLWS pick 12, the Panthers in NFL, and Mississippi in CFB. Six roster spots under 0.3 EV, −3.0 draft efficiency, and a 51% relegation probability. The assets are not bad; they were bought at the wrong prices.

The cleanest structure in the division: one conceded mandatory slot, against a division average of three. The Spurs at 10, McIlroy at 19, LLWS picks 4 and 8 and KD pick 3 give them five genuinely useful assets, and only 5% of their EV sits in the sports with no public market. Verstappen at 38 was the one real misjudgement, bought as an F1 anchor and worth 1.3. In a division where most teams threw away three or four roster spots, simply not wasting them is worth a grade.

The Dodgers at 2 are the best bracket asset in the division and LLWS pick 2 adds 3.6, with Leclerc, Manchester City and Fleetwood filling in behind. Draft efficiency of +1.4 is fourth-best. The cost is depth: six roster spots return under 0.3, and both college basketball (Gonzaga) and college baseball (Florida State) are conceded outright. A strong top five picks attached to a thin back half — good enough for third in this field, not good enough to chase Not Just Marcus.

The best-drafted team in the divisions, and it is not close: 31.2 EV, +10.3 against pick-slot baseline, and a 67% chance of finishing top four. Antonelli and Hamilton together are worth 10.8 points with a 94% floor of clearing 8 but this roster does not depend on it — strip F1 out and the remaining 20.4 is still above division average, carried by KD picks 4 and 7, LLWS pick 3, Fitzpatrick and Henley in golf, and Boston College and Western Michigan in college hockey. Three mandatory slots are conceded at the back end (Penn State, Alabama, West Virginia), which is the only thing standing between this and a flawless draft

Sabalenka at 7 anchors a genuinely balanced roster — fourteen sports above 0.6 EV, only two conceded, and the flattest distribution in the division. That flatness is the problem: nothing above 2.4, so they need five or six sports to land simultaneously, and the simulation gives them 21%. Jodar leaves men's tennis dead despite being a mandatory slot, and 14% of their EV rests on college hockey where there is no market to check the rating against.

The simulation likes this roster more than the raw EV does — 49% to finish top four, second-best in the division — because its value is lumpy in exactly the sports that reward lumps: Alcaraz at 5, KD pick 2, England, Texas, and only 1% of EV in the unpriced sports, the cleanest confidence profile anywhere in the division. The waste is concentrated and avoidable: Jackson Koivun leaves golf dead in the sport with the steepest cutoff, where a weak slot can score negative, and college basketball, college hockey and college baseball are all conceded. Fix the golf slot on waivers and this is the second-best team here.

KD pick 1 at pick 17 is valued at 4.2 points and the best non-F1 buy in the division, with Spain and Germany giving them 2.5 in the World Cup behind it. Only two mandatory slots are conceded, which is better than most here. But Cobolli at 129 was the single worst-value pick in the draft (−0.92 against baseline) and LLWS pick 13 is worth nothing, and outside the Derby there is no asset above 2.5. Solid floor, no ceiling.

Scheffler at 4 and North Carolina, Texas and Arkansas in college baseball give this roster a real shape, but 33% of its EV sits in college hockey and college baseball — by far the heaviest exposure in any division to the two sports with no public futures market. That is not a criticism of the picks so much as a warning that a third of this grade is guesswork. Add four conceded mandatory slots (Bearman, LLWS pick 16, the Padres, the Raptors) and reaches on Scheffler and the Panthers, and the floor is low.

Seven of sixteen mandatory sports are conceded — F1, KD, LLWS, MLB, NBA, CHK and CBS all return under 0.3 EV — which means nearly half the roster is structurally unable to score before the season begins. KD pick 17 is the last Derby pick on the board and worth exactly zero; the White Sox, Hawks, Norway, Dartmouth and UCLA are five more blanks. The early picks compound it: Oregon at 13, the Bills at 16 and Schauffele at 44 were all reaches, and Schauffele as a second golf slot behind Cameron Young in the steepest-cutoff sport is a strange allocation. At 13.8 EV and −6.9 against baseline this is the worst draft in any of the divisions by a wide margin, and 56% likely to be relegated out of the bottom league.

Sinner at 1.01 plus Swiatek and Rybakina is the best tennis foundation in the division — 6.6 EV across the two tennis sports, exploiting the lowest top-8 cutoffs in the game — and the Texas Rangers at 225 were the best late-round value of the draft. Three mandatory slots return nothing though: LLWS pick 14, Bortoleto in F1, and TCU in college baseball. Drafting first overall and finishing sixth on EV is a reminder that in the 338 the top pick is worth less than the twenty that follow it.