Comparing Two Draft Era

[nsacpi]

I'm going to compare the yields from the 2000-2009 drafts (10 years) with those from the 2010-2012 drafts (3 years).

I will break the comparisons down into four groups: players taken very early (overall picks 1-20 in the draft), early (21-40), middle (41-100) and late (100 plus). This allows some control in case one of the eras had more very early or early picks per draft.

Let's start with the late group.

Of the players drafted after the first 100 picks had been taken, by my count 28 from the 2000-2009 drafts made the majors and 11 so far from the 2010-2012 drafts have made it.

Here is the list from the 2000-2009 drafts: Miner, Waters, Hodges, Thomas, LaRoche, Stern, Davies, Collazo, Lerew, Barry, Romak, White, Brandon Jones, Venters, Parr, Sammons, Schafer, Broadway, Chapman, Hanson, Flowers, Medlen, Heath, Hicks, Gearrin, Clemens, Oberholtzer and Hoover.

And the list from the 2010-2012 drafts: Gosselin, Terdoslavich, Shreve, Gattis, Kubitza, Graham, Martin, La Stella, Cornelly, Schlosser, Shae Simmons

Many of these guys didn't have significant careers, so let me narrow it down a bit and list the ones who had what can be considered significant careers or are likely to do so. I will define significant as generating 5 WAR or more in their pre-free agency period.

LaRoche, Medlen, Hanson from the first list and Gattis from the second group. Gattis hasn't played six years yet, so some projection is involved.

There are some younger players from the 2010-2012 draft such as Drury who could come into play, but I'm leaving them out because it is too early to have a good idea of what they might do in the majors. For the same reason I'm not looking at drafts after 2012. With time we can add them to the analysis to get a more complete picture.

 

[nsacpi]

Next let's look at the players taken with picks 41-100 in the overall draft.

From 2010-2012 we took four such players: Cunningham, Ahmed, Andrelton Simmons and Wood.

All four have made the majors. Wood has already generated over 5 WAR and Simmons over 10 WAR. Ahmed has a shot at breaking the 5 WAR threshold in his pre-free agency years.

Twenty players were taken with picks 41-100 in the 2000-2009 period. Nine of them have reached the majors: Boyer, Reyes, Harrison, Escobar, Locke, Freeman, Spruill, Kimbrel, Hale. Of those Freeman, Kimbrel, Harrison and Escobar generated over 5 WAR during the pre-agency years and Locke has a shot.

 

[nsacpi]

Next let's look at the players taken with picks 21-40.

By my count we took 18 such players in the 2000-2009 draft. 12 reached the majors. 6 generated at least 5 WAR in their pre-free agency years: Wainwright, Kelly Johnson, Francoeur, McCann, Saltalamacchi and Morton.

We took 3 players with picks 21-40 in 2010-2012: Lipka, Gilmartin and Sims.

This breakdown shows that we did much better in 2000-2009 in this part of the draft. But we did better in 2010-2012 with the picks in the 41-100 range. Let's now combine these two groups and look at the picks in the 21-100 range.

In 2000-2009 we had a total of 38 such picks and 21 made the majors with 11 being significant players. If you want to think in terms of slash lines it would look like this: 11/21/38.

For 2010-2012 the slash line was 2/5/7 or 3/5/7 if you think Ahmed will make the cut.

 

[nsacpi]

Here's another way of comparing things. There were ten drafts in 2000-2009 and three in 2010-2012. Lets look at the ten best players taken over the 2000-2009 period and compare them with the three best from 2010-2012.

The three best from 2010-2012 will probably turn out to be Simmons, Wood and Gattis. I project their pre-free agency WAR total at 20, 12 and 7. For an average of 13.

How did the ten best from 2000-2009 do? By my calculation those were Wainwright (34), McCann (24), Freeman (projected at 20), Escobar (19), Kimbrel (projected at 16), Kelly Johnson (16), Hanson (10), Medlen (9), Francoeur (9), LaRoche (7). For an average of 16 if I did my math correctly.

The top player per draft accounts for a very large share of the overall value of drafts. By this measure the drafts 2000-2009 period was more valuable by an average of about 3 WAR per year over the 2010-2012 drafts.

 

[nsacpi]

There is one final group we need to look at to finish up.

We had no selections in the top 20 in 2010-2012.

But we did have Heyward and Minor in the 2000-2009 period. Heyward turned out to be an extremely valuable pick, which I think tilts things a bit further in favor of the drafts from the 2000-2009 era.