Recent A's Draft History By WAR
by danmerqury on Jan 4, 2011 7:01 AM PST
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Another week, another chart. This time, it's the A's drafts of the last twenty years, as measured by major league WAR. Batters are in dark green, while pitchers are in the lighter shade. Any player who, as of 2010, accumulated at least 10 career WAR was highlighted and labeled in yellow.
Some notes on methodology and other thoughts:
- This graph counts total career WAR, not just production in Oakland.
- I didn't count any player who made it to the majors but had a negative career WAR. It wouldn't have made sense to dock a draft that produced a bunch of bad major leaguers, compared to a draft that produced no major leaguers at all.
- Players who didn't sign after being drafted were not counted. This left out guys like Jonathan Papelbon, who was drafted by the A's in the 40th round in 2002. He was drafted the next year by Boston in the 4th round.
- Similarly, Tim Hudson was only counted once, even though the A's drafted him twice (a failed attempt in the 35th round in 1994 from a community college in Alabama, then again in 1997 in the 6th round out of Auburn University).
- All WAR figures are Rally's WAR from Baseball-Reference.
- The graph ends in 2006, because no Oakland draftee since then has produced a positive WAR. Sorry, Tyson Ross (-0.3 rWAR).
- Some notable A's draftees who never wore an A's uniform: Gerald Laird, Mark Teahen, Ryan Ludwick, Jeremy Bonderman, and Andre Ethier.
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those late 90's drafts were great and the moneyball draft was pretty good too.
any idea what level would suggest a good draft vs a bad draft? where’s the dividing line?
great as always dan.
the artist formerly known as inbillywetrust
In my opinion, any draft with a highlighted name is a good draft.
Once the bar gets up to about 25 WAR, it really starts to look great overall.
That sounds right to me
Also, the 2004 draft is looking good. 25ish WAR out of what I’m assuming is about an average of 3 years of production from those draftees is fairly impressive.
Players of note from the A's 2004 draft class (i.e. anyone with ML time):
Huston Street RHP 9.7 Kurt Suzuki C 8.6 Dallas Braden LHP 5.1 Landon Powell C 0.8 Ryan Webb RHP 0.4 Kevin Melillo 2B 0.0 Jeff Gray RHP -0.2 Jason Windsor RHP -0.3 Connor Robertson RHP -0.3 Danny Putnam OF -0.5 Tommy Everidge 1B -0.7
Street just missed being highlighted by danmerqury’s criteria (at least 10 WAR) and probably will be highlighted by next year. Suzuki also should be at the highlight level next year. Dallas Braden, baring injury could be a highlight candidate in two more years. The rest of them either don’t play anymore or don’t play well enough to be starters. We’ll be seeing this draft value go up before all is said and done, and possibly to 1996-1999 levels by the time these three guys retire (15ish more war).
note, the baseball-reference.com Draft Pick Search doesn’t include 2010 WAR just yet.
by LoneStranger on Jan 4, 2011 10:01 AM PST up reply actions
Originally, I was going to make the cutoff 5 WAR,
but basically every year was fully highlighted, and it was hard to read. So…“gems” like Ben Grieve and Jeff DaVanon got cut.
Heh. "Baring injury".
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
Van Poppel, for one.
Most of the other ones were crappy relievers who threw three innings in the majors or something.
my friends and I used to call him "Van Pimple" back in the day
!#%&$#@&%&% antioxidants! - pam
needs moar bacon
by cuppingmaster on Jan 4, 2011 12:53 PM PST up reply actions
This post is really good!
I always thought a way to judge a prospect was with total WAR. I think a lot of people think that a utility player in AAA (sogard) is better than say an A prospect with high WAR potential because they are more likely to make the majors. Which I think this research shows one very high level ceiling prospect is more valuable than many low level prospect.
Contrary to that point I just made and contrary to your information, would it be better to do WAR production under years of control? Because once the player is past the Arbitration eligible years, they really are anyone’s player. This is a great post, I just wanted to throw that idea out.
by OnlybuyBeaneJerseys on Jan 4, 2011 7:58 AM PST reply actions
That would be another good graph idea.
This particular graph, I think, is just to see how well the team picked players without knowing exactly how they’d do in the majors. Results of a prediction, in a way.
Well, the difference is that a guy like Eric Sogard is pretty much 90% guaranteed
to be worth a couple of WAR at least. But a high ceiling pick like Stassi has maybe a 10% chance of hitting that high ceiling. So while a high ceiling guy who panned out looks great on a graph like this, he may not be worth as much as the surefire utility guy as a prospect.
But at the same time...
In my finance classes we constantly do probabilities times expected future value. I think we can apply this to future production.
Everything is a function of probability multiplied by price or in this case WAR. We can use Stassi and Sogard as an example. Lets even weight the probabilities in Sogard’s favor (at least in my opinion weighted in his favor)
I know I’m going to get a lot of disagreements over my probabilities because they are given by a non expert A’s fan.
SOGARD
Let’s predicted: only 10 percent he never makes a single WAR. and 90 percent he has a decent major league career.
Here’s the probabilites: 10 percent he lives up to his ceiling of a 15 WAR career (Scutaro super sub.) 40 percent he lives up to his high expectation of 10 WAR career. 20 percent says he’s a 5 career WAR utility infielder. 20 percent he’s sprinkled into a few games a year for a few years and he’s a career 2 WAR infielder. 10 Percent he’s negative or get’s hurt.
Total: 6.9 WAR adjusted for probable production.
STASSI:
Let’s say 20 percent he’s above average. 30 percent he’s average/below average. 50 percent negative.
5 percent chance he’s the Next Eric Chavez. 40 career WAR. 5 percent he’s way above average 30 career WAR. 10 percent he’s Ramon Hernandez 20 Career WAR. 30 percent he’s just a brent gates: couple years of production for a 5 WAR career. 50 percent he gets hurt or doesn’t even play a major league game.
Total 7 WAR adjusted for probable production.
After seeing your work, I’m convinced that outlier production drives value of prospects.
by OnlybuyBeaneJerseys on Jan 4, 2011 10:34 AM PST up reply actions
This is exactly the process I use when trying to rank prospects.
Except I’d say that your Sogard numbers are a little bit high, and your Stassi numbers are way too high. You have him at 20% of a 20+ WAR career. I’d give those odds to somebody like Carter, not an 18-year-old in low-A.
I'd say the otherway around
I bet only 2 percent of minor leaguers that are projected to be Marco Scuturo super utilities. I’d also say that when a player is a first round caliber pick (Like stassi who could have been if there wasn’t sign-ability issues.) you are placing a bet that they are at least 10 percent chance of being a superstar. Which were reflected in the numbers.
Looking at the results of drafts over the last 10 years, I’d be willing to bet 5-10 percent have been superstars. 10 percent have been above average in the first 5 rounds. I have looked, I just hadn’t but number on it.
Disclaimer: I’m aware that Sogard too was drafted in the 2nd round, but after the last 3 years I believe his ceiling was went down sufficiently. Maybe Stussi’s has too but I believe much less.
by OnlybuyBeaneJerseys on Jan 4, 2011 11:14 AM PST up reply actions
Grammer correction
hadn’t but number=haven’t put a number
by OnlybuyBeaneJerseys on Jan 4, 2011 11:37 AM PST up reply actions
another correction of grammer
His ceiling has went down…I need to proofread if I want any credibility!
by OnlybuyBeaneJerseys on Jan 4, 2011 11:39 AM PST up reply actions
me too, with the caveat
that, for any pair of prospects with equivalent expected WAR (however incorrectly calclulated it may be in this case), the higher volatility prospect is inherently more valuable, because of the effect of consolidating WAR at a single position and the scarcity of star talent.
an extreme example:
player A – 100% chance of producing 1 WAR per year.
player B – 20% chance of producing 5 WAR per year, 80% chance of busting.
both have an expected value of 1 WAR per year. but you always take player B because a 1 WAR player can be had through FA/trade/waiver claim for little to nothing.
as always, nice work on the piece.
by NRC on Jan 4, 2011 8:02 PM PST up reply actions
An even better way to do it would be to count only WAR in the first three seasons and discount the WAR from the next three
relative to the amounts players are getting as arbitration awards. In other words, how much actual surplus value is the team getting?
Obviously, this answers a different question than Dan set out to answer in the OP, perhaps one of more interest to the armchair GMs rather than to the historians.
"We don't want our people to be preoccupied with seminude, crazy men jumping up and down who are chasing an inflated object," said Sheik Mohamed Osman Arus, head of operations for the Hizbul Islam insurgent group.
You're right in both cases.
I was getting off topic by looking at the value to GM’s. And the discount is another things I would add for sure.
I’d also MAYBE add something you use in venture capital finance, which is failure rate. Basically use a career ending injury as part of the discount rate. Though it might be repetitive when also using injury to add scenarios to future WAR projections.
by OnlybuyBeaneJerseys on Jan 4, 2011 1:45 PM PST up reply actions
Good work, danbot!
"Ain't no man can avoid being born average, but there ain't no man got to be common." - Satchel Paige
So, over 20 years, the A's drafts have produce 10 players with a 10+ WAR
I wonder if that is good, bad, or average? With absolutely no basis for saying this, it feels light.
.
.
PxP: Self-promotion - How it works, Bunting, Pitch Counts, Managing, Run Expectancy, Streaks, Coors Effect, Cust vs. Matsui
Teahen?
"You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody's crazy."
-Charles Manson
Yup
.
PxP: Self-promotion - How it works, Bunting, Pitch Counts, Managing, Run Expectancy, Streaks, Coors Effect, Cust vs. Matsui
You mean that befuddled look in his face?
The “I’m ready to swing at the pinata, Mr. Johnson” stance?
by LoneStranger on Jan 4, 2011 10:04 AM PST up reply actions
heh
.
PxP: Self-promotion - How it works, Bunting, Pitch Counts, Managing, Run Expectancy, Streaks, Coors Effect, Cust vs. Matsui
He's blindfolded.
He doesn’t know where it is. And, they let him go first. It’s assured he won’t hit it and the kids will get a chance.
by LoneStranger on Jan 5, 2011 11:38 AM PST up reply actions
Never wore an A's uniform?
He’s wearing one right there!
""Expelliarmus!" said Eckstein, attempting to knock the bat out of Matt Kemp's hands, just before Kemp laced a single to center." -Ken Tremendous
Very good stuff, yet again
.
PxP: Self-promotion - How it works, Bunting, Pitch Counts, Managing, Run Expectancy, Streaks, Coors Effect, Cust vs. Matsui
Amazing.
I read this site daily, but rarely take the time to post. I just enjoy seeing where other passionate A’s fans stand on the issues revolving around the team nearest and dearest to my heart. However, after yet another fabulous post, I just had to respond and say thank you, danmerqury. Your posts clearly take time and almost always enlighten me on a player or players that I never fully appreciated. Keep up the good work!
In comparison
I would be interested to see how this would look with a line for each year, showing the league’s average WAR. That way we would be able to tell if drafting is a strength or not. Also we would see how the talent level of the draft class changes from year to year.
Great job.
by chrisatsac on Jan 4, 2011 8:48 AM PST reply actions 1 recs
Well, it'd have to be the average for the whole draft of that year per team.
That’d take a huge amount of time to compile, unfortunately, because B-Ref’s databases only go up to 2009 WAR, and they include players that didn’t sign for some reason.
One thing I find interesting...
Since 1997 the positive WAR is approximately 60-40 attributed to pitching. But before 1997 the WAR is predominantly hitting.
Pitching sure seems to have been drafted better since then.
I know Beane started avoiding high school pitchers and went with college pitchers more often; perhaps that has something to do with it. He didn’t become GM until late 1997, but he was Assistant GM in 1993.
please always make these forever
i didn’t realize i was such a graphics whore, but i love this series so much.
by mk on Jan 4, 2011 9:45 AM PST up reply actions
I agree. I would love to see the graph next year to compare.
And also, it would be great to see a graph that was split by year, i.e. instead of the pitcher/batter color change, do different colors for each year so we can see when each class really made an impact and when they start to drop off.
by LoneStranger on Jan 4, 2011 10:07 AM PST up reply actions
Great work dan but I notice a mistake
Swisher WAR is at 17.8. By this graphic it looks like he’s at something closer to 10.
Unless I’m reading this wrong, of course…
Also, I had no idea Byrnes career WAR is that low. Makes that extension look even worse in hindsight…
All I can say about stats is…
SCOTT BROSIUS!!
Ah, crap.
That 17.8 figure is Fangraphs WAR. I used B-Ref. Unfortunately, B-Ref has 15.9, and the graph has 11.9.
What I had to do was use this B-Ref database, which counts all of the A’s draftees by year. It didn’t include 2010 WAR, so I had to add that manually for each person. Guess Nick slipped through the cracks.
Ah, I see
Still, fantastic job.
All I can say about stats is…
SCOTT BROSIUS!!
by stranahanahan on Jan 4, 2011 10:05 AM PST up reply actions
ooooooo.....pretty!
Waffle House is good for two things: 1 – coffee; 2 – finding cheap whores -- Jennifer
Yuhuu, go Dan!
.
PxP: Self-promotion - How it works, Bunting, Pitch Counts, Managing, Run Expectancy, Streaks, Coors Effect, Cust vs. Matsui
I have abandonment issues. Thanks Lew.
by OptimistPrime on Jan 4, 2011 11:50 AM PST up reply actions
Totally deserving.
If you are constantly dwelling on something that happened in the past or feeling anxious about the future, you are missing out on YOUR LIFE.~Jill Costello
Hey Dan, for shits and giggles, can you post the bottom 10 by MLB WAR (with say, 300 PA or 150 IP)?
If it’s not too much work. I’m curious to see the names on there.
!#%&$#@&%&% antioxidants! - pam
needs moar bacon
Sure.
But before I go off into spreadsheetland, what do you mean by bottom 10? Most negative WAR in the majors by an A’s draftee?
Well, I looked for anyone with a career WAR below -1.0, but I only got 7 people.
7. C Izzy Molina, 1990 rd. 22, -1.0 WAR
6. RHP Kirk Dressendorfer, 1990 rd. 1S, -1.0 WAR
5. LF Brian Lesher, 1992 rd. 25, -1.2 WAR
4. RHP Chad Harville, 1997 rd. 2, -1.2 WAR
3. SS Freddie Bynum, 2000 rd. 2, -1.2 WAR
2. RHP Todd Van Poppel, 1990 rd. 1, -2.2 WAR
1. RHP Tyler Yates, 1998 rd. 23, -2.3 WAR
I should have been clearer
something like: the least-valuable players who actually had more than a cup of coffee in MLB. I’ll let you define what more than “cup of coffee” actually is; I was thinking like 300 PA/100 IP or so.
!#%&$#@&%&% antioxidants! - pam
needs moar bacon
by cuppingmaster on Jan 4, 2011 2:32 PM PST up reply actions
nevertheless, that's quite the unimpressive list
Dressendorfer was a big deal back in the day.
!#%&$#@&%&% antioxidants! - pam
needs moar bacon
by cuppingmaster on Jan 4, 2011 2:33 PM PST up reply actions
Wasn't he another one of the Four Aces along with Van Poppel?
Man, that was an embarrassing failure. Holy crap.
"We don't want our people to be preoccupied with seminude, crazy men jumping up and down who are chasing an inflated object," said Sheik Mohamed Osman Arus, head of operations for the Hizbul Islam insurgent group.
He and Dressendorfer were "the future"
I don’t remember the other two of the aces-in-waiting.
!#%&$#@&%&% antioxidants! - pam
needs moar bacon
by cuppingmaster on Jan 4, 2011 9:18 PM PST up reply actions
I'm not sure about the spelling
but wasn’t there a Zanacaro amongst them? And maybe a Peters.
"It boils down to this. You guys aren’t fans of our management and look through that prism." ~ DrDoom
by LowcountryJoe on Jan 6, 2011 4:02 AM PST up reply actions
By the way, I'm trying to develop my own style of charts that are easy to read, aesthetically nice, and most of all, clear.
So with each chart, I’ve been trying little experiments here and there to improve one of those three. This time around, I tried those invisible gridlines, where the gridlines are essentially erasers that run across the bars. Is that better than if I actually drew in real gridlines?
Nice work as usual Dan
I would prefer the visible gridlines, since at the far end you have to count gridlines to see where it ends. Say for 2004 I have to really look hard to figure it out or have to count the lines and guess how much above the 20 line it is.
by Rio on Jan 4, 2011 3:04 PM PST up reply actions
Journal style
Visible lines are good
!#%&$#@&%&% antioxidants! - pam
needs moar bacon
by cuppingmaster on Jan 4, 2011 3:47 PM PST via mobile up reply actions
Yeah I like this better.
""Expelliarmus!" said Eckstein, attempting to knock the bat out of Matt Kemp's hands, just before Kemp laced a single to center." -Ken Tremendous
Huh.
I could have sworn Ethier got a cup ‘o coffee with the A’s. Maybe it was just some spring training games. Fickle memory!
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
He barely got a cup of coffee in Sacramento
""Expelliarmus!" said Eckstein, attempting to knock the bat out of Matt Kemp's hands, just before Kemp laced a single to center." -Ken Tremendous
A worthwhile twist...
in determining the overall productivity of a particular draft would be to also consider the value that came and went via trades involving players drafted by the A’s. Of course the variables multiply quickly in this thought experiment, but the value of Mulder to our system takes a huge bump when considering the ripple effect of Barton and especially Haren. Ethier/Bradley is another obvious example.
I realize that the goal of this well-put-together graph was to analyze the value of specific players who the A’s drafted (and signed - which is really what counts). That being said, there are other ways that a draft pick can add value to a system. For example, whether Justin Marks plays a day in the big leagues or not, he had/has value and added some portion of the value that DDJ will bring (hopefully in the form of a positive WAR!!!).
Here are a few theoretic drafts to consider just for the sake of argument:
Draft 1: Zero Major League players… BUT, three of the prospects who were drafted were packaged a year after they were drafted for a Star ML player who produced 20 WAR over the remainder of his A’s career. The three prospects were valuable commodities at the time, but they washed out in AA/AAA and never got to the big leagues.
Draft 2: Two quality/impact Major League players who produced 20 WAR between them and played out their careers with the A’s.
Draft 3: Six marginal Major League players who accumulated and average of 5 service years each but accounted for only 10 WAR as a group.
Which draft would be best? Which draft would be perceived as the best?
Quick methodology thought/question
Why use total career WAR instead of average WAR per year?
Using career WAR biases the metric in favor of older drafts. For example, the 1992 draft has had 10 extra years compared to the 2002 draft. I believe the 2002 draft is probably better (30 WAR in 8 years is better than 50+ in 18 years, especially since years 1-3 are typically in the minors). To avoid punishing retirement and post-prime production, I think this would be best if it measured only “Average WAR per Year in Years 3-8 after the draft”.
I took your numbers, and put it into “Career WAR/(Years_since_draft-3)”. For example, this makes 2006=12/1, 2005 = 6/2, 1999 = 40/8, and so on. To control for retirement/post prime production, I only looked at post-1997 drafts. This is crude, i know, but using only DM’s data, and not redoing the whole study myself, this is the best I can do. The 2006 data point is probably not valid, since it’s just 12/1, and I’d want more time.
The results:
2006 12
2004 8.333333333
2002 5.8
1999 5
1998 4.333333333
1997 4.2
2005 3
2003 2.625
2001 2.5
2000 2.071428571
This highlights my thought on the Original method…I believe it makes the 2002, 2004, and 2006 drafts look worse than the pre-1999 drafts, even though there’s a good argument they were better.
This is really interesting.
Thanks for putting this together, Dan. On the face of it, it seems the A’s have gotten worse at drafting since 1999, though surely this is partly because the players in those drafts still have WAR to add in the future. Would it give us a better picture if the graph was by average player WAR per season?
"PECOTA can pretty much kiss my ass."-Nico
Another observation
It seems this illustrates how critical getting a f&*&ing A player out of a draft becomes. ‘92 would have been an utter disaster, but because it netted Jason Giambi, it was the most productive draft they had (ignoring the fact that we couldn’t keep him, of course).
"PECOTA can pretty much kiss my ass."-Nico
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