I've always wondered why 1st round picks in the MLB Draft get more and more baby-bonus money. It seems absurd for a first round pick to get $2MM signing bonus. Does anyone know of any analysis of what percentage of players picked in each round: (a) make the majors (b) become major league regulars (c) become all-stars I just wonder if a 1st rounder has a 5% chance of making it and a 4th rounder has a 3% chance, if it's really worth the kind of money the 1st rounders get. I also wonder if that $2MM could be better spent signing 20 Latin players at an early age for $100,000 each (pick the country of your choice) since they don't go through the draft. Would that be more likely, or less likely, to net you a quality major league player? Let's say the Astros were to trade Carlos Lee, and suddenly had an extra $17MM next year. Would it be worth taking that money for 1 year and signing 170 Dominican or Venezuelan or whatever 17 yr olds to $100,000 contracts? Would that be a better investment in the Astros future than 1 year of Carlos Lee? Obviously, the premise here is a bit crazy, but I'm curious if there are any stats on the success rate of minor leaguers to give us a sense of how effective dollars are that are spent on top picks vs lower picks and vs. non-drafted players.
can't really say. its not that the talent levels of 1st rounders and 4 rounders are different (they are for the most part), but some 4th rounders should have been 1st rounders but fall due to signability and such, and some 1st rounders should have been 2nd rounders but are taken earlier due to a multitude of reasons. i think a better approach would be looking at how much bonus money was paid instead of what round each player was taken. i think that is a better determinant of talent level. as far as signing 170 venezuelans or dominicans for $100,000 each, you should get a few good players just because its 170 players, and historically speaking, caribbean bonus babies dont really have a great track record. however, there are wayyyyy too many variables to determine if youre gonna get a good player or 170 busts. baseball is just one of those things where you can look at the statistics and analyze a bunch of stuff and still be wrong about a player. thats why theres 50 rounds in the draft.
There are sayings that the draft is a crapshoot, etc, etc. It's really overstating things. Yes, there is a lot of variance in mlb drafted compared to basketball for example. But, it is incredibly hard to find an all-star after the first round, and the chances of even finding a major leaguer drop precipitously round by round. according to this study by Jim Callis http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/draft/90-97draftbreakdown.html 65% of 1st round players from 1990-1997 made the majors, 14 % became "regulars", 8% became "good big league regulars" and 4.3% became "stars". 26.6% became regular or better players those numbers fall to 50, 6, 2.2, 0.9 in the 2nd round In the 4th round, those numbers are 30, 3, 0.5, 0 So you're twice as likely to get a big leaguer in the 1st than the 4th round. You're 8x more likely to get a mlb regular. There were no "stars" drafted in the 4th round from 90-97. In fact there were 3x as many stars drafted in the first round during that time peroid (13) as there were in the subsequent 9 round Callis examined (4). The article "Initial Public Offerings of Ballplayers," http://www.holycross.edu/departments/economics/RePEc/spe/BurgerWalters_IPO.pdf by John D. Burger, Richard D. Grayson, and Steven J. K. Walters argues that later round draft picks are overpaid relative to first rounders. They state that teams will often hold "irrational expectations about these lower-quality prospects' chances for future success, and/or that they fail to reduce the prices they are willing to pay for unknown reasons." They back this up by doing an analysis on the roi on these draft picks. Despite higher bonuses, high round draft picks also have a higher return rate. It's 33% for first round picks. 20% for 2nd round picks and 13% for 3rd round picks Further they look into the 96 loophoop. http://sabermetricresearch.blogspot.com/2007/11/value-of-mlb-draft-choice.html Draft bonuses are about 40% of what they they would receive on the open market. There also is another study out there somewhere that concludes that instances of "going above slot" to sign a draft pick has been worth it so far. But I couldn't find that article.
Using quick and dirty numbers taken from 'The Baseball Cube' Between 1990 and 1999 409 1st rounders drafted (including compensatory/sandwich picks) 259 Played at some point in the Majors 150 of them didn’t make it above AAA Included in that 259 is guys like Ryan Bradley, who pitched 12 innings for the Yankees that really skew the results, as well as more 'legitimate' but mundane major leaguers like Rocky Biddle, who actually pitched quite a few major league innings but was far from being anything special. My guess is that at least 1/2 of that 259 is guys who would not be considered anything special at MLB, but that it pretty much a guess. The numbers may be off a bit one way or another, but they are close enough to accurate to draw reasonable inferences from.
Wow, great stuff - this is exactly what I was looking for. So based on this, it almost seems like an organization's goal really should to collect as many 1st/2nd round picks as possible. That seems to suggest we should be offering arbitration to a lot of our free agents to get compensatory picks (is that how it works?). Seems like that would be a way to really accelerate rebuilding the farm system with high-level talent, no?
Yea. It depends on a number of factors. You'd have to weigh things like the player's trade value vs. the quality of the first round pick vs. the expense/risk of the player accepting the arbitration. So if you have a C.C. Sabathia you'd probably want to trade the player instead of getting a late or supplemental draft pick because the value of that pick is never going to be as high/low risk as a Matt LaPorta (+change). If you have a Type A middle reliever then perhaps the draft picks will be more valuable than his trade value. It really gets interesting when you have an old declining expensive Free Agent. (think Tejada in two years, or Greg Maddux w/ the Braves 5 years ago). Tejada would probably get more in arbitration than he would in the open market. In that case, if you can't get get trade value, you might just cut your losses and not offer arbitration rather than run the high risk of the player accepting. The problem with building through the draft is that there is a high risk of ruin with any draft pick and because of the CBA's rules on not trading picks, it's hard to accumulated them. As the Astros begin to get top 10 picks the next few years, another problem might be passing on players due to the Astros sticking to mlb slotting guidelines. That's not that big of a deal when drafting in the 20s because, imo, the gap between comparable talents isn't that great. In the top ten picks a large portion of the top of your draft board is going to have demands over slot. A top ten pick isn't great if you are getting only top 20 value. Putting more resources into international signings might help. One reason for the Astros' farm system's decline the last ten years has been due to them losing a foothold in Venezuela. The advantage to building through international players is they are not required to go through the draft. Teams aren't limited to X number of signings. It's interesting to see that the small-market A's recently signed a 16 latin american player to a record deal. According to the Callis study, even among 1st rounders only ~13 per year ever become mlb regulars. There is a high failure rate in even to best amateur prospects. The key to building a strong farm system, in addition to good scouting, probably is just accumulating as much high level talent as you can. Putting more resources into international scouting/signing may be the way to do this.
2008 MLB All Stars drafted in the top 5 rounds 1st round Joe Mauer (1st overall) Jason Varitek Derek Jeter Evan Longoria Alex Rodriguez (1st overall) Josh Hamilton (1st overall) JD Drew (drafted twice in 1st round after not signing with Philly) Carlos Quentin Roy Halladay Scott Kazmir Joe Saunders Lance Berkman Adrian Gonzalez (1st overall) Chipper Jones (1st overall) Chase Utley David Wright (supplemental) Ryan Braun Brad Lidge Tim Lincecum Ben Sheets Billy Wagner Kerry Wood 2nd Dustin Pedroia Milton Bradley Brian Mccann Aaron Cook 3rd Justin Morneau Grady Sizemore Ryan Dempster 4th Cliff Lee Jonathan Papelbon 5th
