September 13, 2005

Doctoring The Numbers

The Draft, Part Seven

by Rany Jazayerli

Welcome back to my periodic series of articles--“periodic” in the sense that Halley’s Comet is visible periodically--on the draft. This time around, I want to break the data down into tiny chunks to see whether certain positions make for better draft picks than others.

Using the technique described in the last part of this draft series, here’s a breakdown of draft pick value for college and high school players, separated into pitchers and regulars, from 1984 through 1999:

Class   1st Rd    2nd Rd    3rd Rd    Overall

COL H   + 31.2%   + 28.2%  +110.0%    + 37.6%
JUCO H  -100.0%*  - 22.0%  +162.8%*   +  4.6%
HS H    - 18.4%   - 33.6%  - 58.3%    - 27.0%

JUCO P  +104.8%*  - 18.6%  + 61.7%    + 53.9%
COL P   -  1.0%   + 34.3%  + 12.5%    +  7.4%
HS P    - 36.5%   -  2.4%  - 19.3%    - 24.6%

In this table, each value represents the degree to which that subset of draft picks exceeded or missed expectations. For instance, collegiate hitters selected in the first round produced 31.2% more value than draft picks taken in those same slots in the draft would be expected to provide.

Asterisks are listed where the sample size was extremely small, fewer than 10 players. As the data for junior-college hitters can show, you can get some wacky data in small sample sizes. The data set for first-round juco hitters is made up of exactly three players, none of whom reached the majors. From now on, we won’t even bother to list data for groups of five players or less.

As this data is for the entire period from 1984 to 1999, the conclusions--that college players are better than high school players across-the-board--is not surprising. Perhaps the most interesting new conclusion is that junior college pitchers are significantly more valuable than juco hitters, although both returned good value.

Here’s the same data, but stripped to its relevant core, from 1992 to 1999:

Class   1st Rd    2nd Rd    3rd Rd    Overall

COL H   + 21.3%   + 50.7%  + 30.4%    + 28.2%
HS H    - 22.3%   -  6.8%  - 49.7%    - 20.9%
JUCO H    SSS       SSS      SSS      - 34.9%

JUCO P    SSS       SSS      SSS      +  4.1%
COL P   - 19.6%   + 14.3%  - 36.9%    - 14.6%
HS P    - 15.4%   - 15.0%  - 13.1%    - 14.9%

(SSS = Small Sample Size, less than five players; from this point on, we won’t break down juco players by round--there aren't enough data points.)

The first thing that stands out is that almost every group of draft picks is underperforming expectations. There’s a simple reason for that--as pointed out in Part 6, draft picks as a whole from 1992 to 1999 were worth about 15% less than picks from 1984 to 1991. Over time, more and more major-league talent comes from outside the confines of the draft, and that in turn reduces the value of the draft as a method for talent procurement.

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