Our second round pick (#60 overall) has taken on a bit more prominence given the perception among some that it is holding us back from signing Kimbrel. There has been some discussion about what it might be worth. The existing studies point to a value below $5M.
I decided to take a look at 10 years of data for second round picks (1996-2005) to see how the players selected in the second round those years have fared.
I looked at how many WAR they generated in their six pre-free agent years.
First totals by year for all second rounders:
1996 42.3
1997 38.9
1998 43.8
1999 82.2
2000 20.1
2001 51.9
2002 100.2
2003 59.0
2004 100.1
2005 73.4
The average over those ten years is 61.2 WAR. In the years I looked at there were 30-32 picks in the second round (some years had a small number of extra picks). So approximately 2 WAR per pick. Surplus value will be less (reflecting salaries and signing bonus). As a rough rule surplus value for these picks is three-quarters WAR. So surplus value per pick is 1.5.
For me the most interesting part of the data is the indication that the value of the second round picks has grown over time. Baseball has become more of a young man's game, which concentrates value early in a player's career (we can speculate why). For the first five years of my sample, average WAR generated per second round was 45.5. For the second five years, it was 76.9. Per pick that works out to 1.5 WAR in the first half of the sample and 2.5 in the second half. Surplus value is 1.1 in the first half and 1.9 in the second half.
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