A Look at a Decade of the MLB First Year Draft

Reader Real Neal breaks down the first round of the draft in a variety of ways to see if there's an optimal strategy and how have the Cubs done relative to their drafting position.

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Two topics are always in hot debate this time of the year, when it comes to the MLB draft. How have the Cubs done, and who should they pick?

With that in mind, I am taking a look at 10 years worth of first round picks to try and help answer those questions. I am only looking at the top 30 picks each year (yeah I know the Cubs draft 31^st), just to simplify things. The 10 year range I used was ’96 to ’05. It’s just too early to tell what is going to happen with highschoolers only drafted three years ago. I used WARP3, even though Baseball Prospectus has got something a bit wonky going on with their WARP3 scores for 2009, which seem exaggerated. I figured since the majority of these players are still playing, though, that the slight wobble could sort of build in a little projection.

To start off with, here is some general charts, which should be self explanatory.

Draftees By Level
Level	Pos	Total
C	1B	9
	2B	2
	3B	7
	C	6
	IF	5
	OF	21
	P	94
	SS	13
C Total		157
H	1B	6
	3B	9
	C	7
	IF	7
	OF	35
	P	64
	SS	15
H Total		143
Grand Total		300

Nearly even on the HS vs. College players, but there’s a lot more college pitchers taken (60% of college players) than there are HS pitchers (45%). Maybe TINSTAAPP is starting to take hold around major league scouting departments.

ML Players by Draft Year			Total WARP3 by Year
Year	Total		Year	Total
1996	21		1996	172.3
1997	22		1997	263.1
1998	22		1998	246.8
1999	14		1999	152.4
2000	16		2000	82.1
2001	19		2001	151.3
2002	22		2002	213.7
2003	21		2003	127.3
2004	20		2004	42.4
2005	21		2005	99.2
Grand Total	198		Grand Total	1550.6
	66.0%

Two out of every 3 first round picks get to the majors. That doesn’t always mean they’re useful major leaguers, though.

MLB's by College vs HS			WARP3 Coll vs HS
Level	Total		Level	Total
C	120		C	911
H	78		H	639.6
Grand Total	198		Grand Total	1550.6

About what you may expect, if you’ve been following things over the last 13 years.

When these charts are combined, you can start to see some suggestions about where drafting has been successful over that decade:

Draftees By Level
Level	Pos	Total	Success %	Avg W3
C	1B	9	67%	11.1
	2B	2	100%	5.8
	3B	7	86%	17.9
	C	6	67%	0.0
	IF	5	60%	10.8
	OF	21	86%	8.8
	P	94	72%	3.8
	SS	13	100%	6.3
C Total		157	76%	5.8
H	1B	6	83%	8.8
	3B	9	67%	7.6
	C	7	43%	8.3
	IF	7	43%	1.1
	OF	35	60%	4.2
	P	64	50%	4.2
	SS	15	53%	2.3
H Total		143	55%	4.5
Grand Total		300	66%	5.2

College hitters, particularly infielders, but not catchers really stand out. HS corner men, and catchers have done well. Surprisingly HS pitchers have done better than college pitchers when it comes to WARP3, though only 50% of them make it to the bigs.

So, all other things equal, based on those 10 drafts, in the first round you should look for College infielders, College outfielders HS corner infielders and HS catchers in the first round. If you’re desperate for a pitcher, then the upside seems to be with the HS’s, but if you just want to get a guy to the majors, then go with a college arm (72% chance).

So, how have the Cubs, and other teams done?The first thing I did was looked at who should have been drafted where. These are the guys that should have been the #1’s by year. Determined solely by who has the most WARP3.

Year	Player	Position	Team	Level	WARP3
1996	Eric Chavez	3B	OAK	H	49.6
1997	Lance Berkman	1B	HOU	C	54.1
1998	C.C. Sabathia	P	CLE	H	46.7
1999	Barry Zito	P	OAK	C	39.8
2000	Chase Utley	IF	PHI	C	44.2
2001	Mark Teixeira	3B	TEX	C	39.9
2002	Matt Cain	P	SF	H	25.7
2003	Nick Markakis	OF	BAL	C	22.7
2004	Jered Weaver	P	ANA	C	18.9
2005	Ryan Zimmerman	3B	WAN	H	19.8

Two things that grabbed my attention here. There’s only one HS hitter, and one College Pitcher. There’s also no #1 overalls on the list, though Adrian Gonzales has a chance, I think to eventually rectify that.

I followed that up by asking, ‘Did a team make the optimum choice?”. Very simply if no one behind you did any better than you did, based on WARP3 of the player, then you made the correct decision. It doesn’t happen very often.

Team	Total
ANA	1
ARI	2
ATL	2
BAL	3
BOS	1
CHC
CHW
CIN
CLE	1
COL	1
DET
FLA
HOU	1
KC	1
LA	3
MIL	2
MIN	2
NYM
NYY
OAK	2
PHI	1
PIT	1
SD
SEA	2
SF	2
STL	3
TB
TEX	1
TOR	1
WAN	1
(blank)
Grand Total	34

Most teams did it (not the Cubs, of course), but no team was able to do it more than 3 times. That certainly lends evidence to the ‘draft is a crapshoot’ theory.

I went to take a little deeper look. How successful were teams at getting their first round picks to the Majors? How many wins did those players earn? And what’s the ‘value’ of those wins.

Picks Per Team				$ 2.63
Team	Total	MLB/Pick	WARP3/Pick	Value/Pick
ANA	8	88%	9.88	$ 26.02
ARI	9	78%	2.56	$ 6.73
ATL	8	75%	2.86	$ 7.54
BAL	14	50%	3.46	$ 9.13
BOS	8	63%	2.93	$ 7.71
CHC	9	44%	4.84	$ 12.76
CHW	11	82%	0.40	$ 1.05
CIN	10	60%	2.25	$ 5.93
CLE	11	55%	5.56	$ 14.66
COL	9	67%	5.70	$ 15.02
DET	10	70%	2.78	$ 7.33
FLA	11	64%	8.47	$ 22.32
HOU	7	57%	9.49	$ 24.99
KC	14	64%	2.01	$ 5.31
LA	8	88%	3.83	$ 10.08
MIL	10	60%	6.29	$ 16.57
MIN	12	58%	7.28	$ 19.17
NYM	9	78%	3.11	$ 8.20
NYY	9	44%	1.86	$ 4.89
OAK	16	63%	8.87	$ 23.37
PHI	8	100%	17.96	$ 47.33
PIT	10	60%	2.49	$ 6.56
SD	12	33%	1.38	$ 3.62
SEA	6	50%	4.70	$ 12.38
SF	11	91%	4.69	$ 12.36
STL	11	64%	8.54	$ 22.49
TB	8	75%	4.49	$ 11.82
TEX	10	80%	7.19	$ 18.95
TOR	11	91%	7.89	$ 20.79
WAN	10	50%	3.44	$ 9.06
Grand Total	300	66%	5.17	$ 13.62

This may need some explanation. The picks per team is the # of first round picks over the period, from 6 (Seattle) to 16 (Oakland). The MLB/Pick is the % of those picks who made the big leagues. The White Sox got a very good 82% of their picks to the Majors. The next is WARP3/Pick. Which is how many wins the average first round pick netted the team. The White Sox players were pretty crappy, you can see. It seems like if you’re a bad #1 pick but want a cup of coffee in the majors, the South Side of Chicago is where you want to go. Philly dominates this category by virtue of having drafted J.D. Drew, who they failed to sign, along with Utley, Burrell and Hamels. The final is just taking BP’s 2009 win value and multiplying it by the WARP3. This isn’t marginal value, for that you’d need to take out the player’s salaries, signing bonuses and other developmental costs.

The final thing I did was added in some weighting of the draft picks. If you’re always picking at the top, you should do better than perrenial playoff contenders. This to me is the best evaluation of how these first round picks have done over the time frame.

Weighted Warp3/Pick
Team	Draft Position	Wgt Pos	W3/P*Wgt
HOU	20	131%	12.4
PHI	10	67%	12.0
OAK	20	130%	11.5
STL	21	134%	11.4
ANA	14	90%	8.8
FLA	16	101%	8.5
TEX	16	103%	7.4
CLE	20	127%	7.1
SF	21	133%	6.2
TOR	12	79%	6.2
MIN	13	85%	6.2
LA	22	142%	5.4
SEA	18	113%	5.3
COL	14	90%	5.1
ATL	27	176%	5.0
BOS	20	129%	3.8
CHC	12	77%	3.8
BAL	16	102%	3.5
MIL	9	55%	3.5
ARI	20	127%	3.2
NYY	24	153%	2.8
NYM	13	81%	2.5
WAN	10	63%	2.2
CIN	14	90%	2.0
TB	7	44%	2.0
KC	13	86%	1.7
PIT	9	58%	1.4
SD	16	101%	1.4
DET	7	43%	1.2
CHW	16	102%	0.4
		Average	5.1

Here we can see that Houston, who was in the playoff hunt for most of these years and Philly, who wasn’t did the best. The Cubs are pratically in a deadlock with the Red Sox, and are just about middle of the pack, though more than a win less than the average.