A's draft strategy may need a serious overhaul

by Degolas on Oct 17, 2011 1:39 PM PDT

I don't know if anyone else saw this article regarding drafting young high school hitters. Let me start you out by linking you to the article in Baseball Prospectus (linked from Minor League Ball).

http://www.minorleagueball.com/2011/10/14/2490086/we-were-prospects-once-and-young#storyjump

The basic gist, for those of you with no time to read it all, is that the highest rates of return for hitters in the amateur draft come from the youngest draft picks. This, obviously, means the youngest high school players. Well I wanted to see how Oakland has drafted hitters over the past 10 years, and how our draft strategy aligns with this newly discovered "undervalued commodity". In short, how many high school hitters have we drafted and which, if any, of our high school draftees was one of the top 5 youngest players drafted.

First off: I only looked at the first 4 rounds for each of the last ten years, which is roughly the first 130 picks.

Second off: I couldn't find the ages of the players drafted on any of the sites I checked (Baseball Reference, Baseball Cube, and mlb.com), which was kind of the whole point! Unfortunately, my search switched to simply "How many high school hitters have we drafted in the last 10 years with our first 4 rounds worth of picks". Without each players age, though, it's not terribly helpful (anyone know where one could find these guys DOB?)

Yordy Cabrera 2010 Pick #60

Aaron Shipman 2010 Pick #92

Matt Sulentic 2006 Pick #96

Chad Lewis 2010 Pick #125

Max Stassi 2009 Pick #123

That's it! 5 hitters drafted from High School in the first 4 rounds in the last 10 years. Unfortunately, I have no idea how young they were compared to the rest of the high schoolers in the same rounds.

I'm not suggesting we should goes balls out and just draft a truckload of high school guys, but somebody in the A's brass has got to have seen this article, right? Don't the A's employ statisticians who are researching better ways to see returns for their investments? Because as I see it now, we're not seeing a whole lot of success in drafting a developing hitters.

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Comments

The DOBs are really easy to find

Anyway, I’ve been really disappointed with the A’s drafting over the last 10 years myself. Even with pitching (Keep in mind Anderson and Gio came from trades)

No idea why Beane’s drafted mostly college picks. My guess is two reasons: He guessed wrong about the under value commodities in the draft. Or he was concerned about the time from pick to pro ball.

Anyway, I agree they need to overhaul their draft strategy because we haven’t drafted any stud hitters. (Maybe Green and Choice will work out though)

by Beane's Brain on Oct 17, 2011 2:43 PM PDT reply actions

DOB's

I could fine DOB’s here and there by clicking on each individual player, but for 130 some odd players over 10 years (1300 players) I didn’t have the time to click on each individual. I was hoping for age to be listed alongside each player.

I have just a general feeling of despair surrounding this organization. It just feel like they’re not really sure what they’re doing. I don’t know. Obviously, I have to no insider knowledge, but that’s the vibe I get from various interviews and what-have-you

Did you ever hear of the the Seattle Seven? ... that was me. And six other guys

by Degolas on Oct 17, 2011 2:51 PM PDT up reply actions

Cost

I would guess that a big reason for drafting mostly college players is that with top-rated High School players you often have to pay them well over slot to get them to sign and not go to college. And the A’s don’t have as much money for that, and because they often need to build through the draft they can’t really afford to draft someone who doesn’t sign and essentially waste a high pick. I’m sure there is other reasoning behind it – but I would think that this is part of it.

by longtimeasfan on Oct 17, 2011 2:57 PM PDT up reply actions

Agreed, that cost is probably the main factor

But the article is pointing out that teams actually reap greater returns on their investment with younger hitters than they do with older hitters. So even though they’d be paying more up front, in the long run, they’d be saving by going with this strategy. That’s the way I read it at least.

And in the A’s case, obviously, that’s precisely what this organization is always after, reaping the most from each dollar spent.

Did you ever hear of the the Seattle Seven? ... that was me. And six other guys

by Degolas on Oct 17, 2011 3:10 PM PDT up reply actions

I think you're reading it wrong.

Where Jayazerli refers to “return on investment”, he is defining it as actual return compared to “expected return”, and expected return is defined by a formula tied to the draft slot. It has nothing to do with actual salary or bonus paid to the player.

Longtimeasfan’s point (also made by d_c_guy on the minorleagueball post) is legitimate. Jayazerli’s study finds that young high schoolers perform better relative to their draft slot, but if expected bonus expectations and/or difficulty of signing pushes such players to lower slots then that could explain the effect.

Being wrong about something you’ve worked on is a blessing, not a curse, and people are so invested in being right that that gets lost. —Graham MacAree

by iglew on Oct 17, 2011 4:01 PM PDT up reply actions

I think risk is probably first, then cost

College players are more of a known quantity.

by DDroney on Oct 18, 2011 4:29 AM PDT up reply actions

I'd argue that competition is the real thing to keep in mind

Choice was a college player, but in some ways, is analogous to a high school player since he didn’t play in a big-time league. You could say he was "undervalued " for that reason

"I'll guarantee this: The A's will have a better season in 2012." - George Zimmer

by cuppingmaster on Oct 19, 2011 8:46 AM PDT up reply actions

My first thought

on skimming these articles is that there is no effort to control for birth date.

Jayazerli states the purpose of his study:

What I wanted to find out is whether players who were younger than average on draft day tended to return more value than expected.

He’s looking exclusively at players drafted out of high school, which means nearly all of his sample is going to be within a year of the same age. That means he’s measuring age differences in months, and since draft day comes at the same time of year every year, when he’s measuring age he’s not just classing players by age, he’s classing them by birthday.

Correlation of birth date during the year with success in various life endeavors is well known. Malcolm Gladwell starts out his Outliers book with a look at the stunningly strong correlation of birth month with success in Canadian hockey, which he attributes to age cutoffs during youth programs. Similar patterns have been investigated in other fields in and out of sports.

Could it be that what’s really going on here is that in baseball it’s better to be born in August than born in May, and what Jayazerli is measuring is partly or entirely an artifact of that? As far as I can tell, that possibility hasn’t been explored at all.

(My second thought was the issue with expectations of bonus requirements and/or signability pushing the better high school players down to lower slots than their talent justifies, as discussed just above.)

Being wrong about something you’ve worked on is a blessing, not a curse, and people are so invested in being right that that gets lost. —Graham MacAree

by iglew on Oct 17, 2011 4:11 PM PDT reply actions

Very Interesting

And I’ll admit to never having read Outliers. It seems logical that this phenomenon that holds true in Canadian hockey and various other non-sport endeavors, might just hold some nugget of truth for baseball as well.

I guess my point in bringing this article to AN was not to say “look, this is how we should be doing it” but rather, “look, this seems to be a wholly different approach than what we normally take”, although as Rio stated below, maybe it’s not as wholly different as I thought.

It’s probably silly of me to think this way, but as I stated above I feel an overwhelming despair about this organization, like the A’s have become stagnant and can’t even afford to employ “statheads” to try and be innovative, a la Paul DePodesta in the early 2000’s . Part of me thinks that Beane and Co. must be reading AN and various other online sources daily and that maybe by making a fanpost of the subject, someone will see it and run with it, or get inspired to investigate something else. I’m sure this is probably not news to them, but I did my duty anyhow. :)

Did you ever hear of the the Seattle Seven? ... that was me. And six other guys

by Degolas on Oct 18, 2011 7:48 AM PDT up reply actions

I haven't read Outliers either, but

I’m familiar with its material. Gladwell certainly wasn’t the first to discuss birth season correlations, but he’s the one who has done most to popularize it recently.

I find the sabermetric community surprisingly disconnected from the mainstream statistics and social sciences community. I think both would benefit from knowing each other better.

Being wrong about something you’ve worked on is a blessing, not a curse, and people are so invested in being right that that gets lost. —Graham MacAree

by iglew on Oct 18, 2011 9:10 AM PDT up reply actions

The problem with that

is that the mainstream statistics community will periodically write dismally false articles about baseball, which sabermetricians then have to fight back against.

It makes it difficult to trust what those same people are saying about anything else. If I know a subject really well, and someone writes something totally wrong about it, then even if there are other subjects I don’t know well enough to really dispute them on, I’m not likely to credit what they say.

"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.

by PaulThomas on Oct 21, 2011 3:19 PM PDT up reply actions

hey, Paul's back!

Official Athletics Nation Rotating Tagline Editor - Pam liked my old sig better.
My thoughtful watermelon is easily mistook for an early American catapult.
DURRRR THEY’RE TOO OLD, BABIP IS TOO HIGH, TOO MANY Ks, DURRRRRR

by mikev on Oct 22, 2011 9:44 AM PDT up reply actions

No, I'm pretty sure that's his front.

by LoneStranger on Oct 24, 2011 10:23 AM PDT up reply actions

Never left

Just haven’t had much to say lately.

Team sucks, no real hope of progress stadium/payroll-wise, farm system is terrible, GM is over the hill, players are somewhere along the line from “fairly good but not great” to “crap,” and the one guy who’s somewhat exciting talent-wise is out for a year and a half. All adds up to me being pretty bored with the A’s as they stand.

While I applaud those, such as Jeff Sullivan, who can write eloquently about horrible teams, I am distinctly lacking in that particular skillset.

by PaulThomas on Oct 27, 2011 4:39 PM PDT up reply actions

Wait, what?

Am I having a brain lapse here? Who is our somewhat exciting talent-wise prospect who is out for a year and a half? Ynoa??

Being wrong about something you’ve worked on is a blessing, not a curse, and people are so invested in being right that that gets lost. —Graham MacAree

by iglew on Oct 27, 2011 8:16 PM PDT up reply actions

Brett Anderson, I assume

by Glorious Mundy on Oct 28, 2011 11:50 AM PDT up reply actions

Ah, OK.

For some reason I thought he was talking about the farm system.

Being wrong about something you’ve worked on is a blessing, not a curse, and people are so invested in being right that that gets lost. —Graham MacAree

by iglew on Oct 28, 2011 12:52 PM PDT up reply actions

Yep

Ynoa is, at this point, more a Doonesbury-esque summer fantasy than an actual prospect.

by PaulThomas on Oct 28, 2011 10:30 PM PDT up reply actions

Crap

I was hoping you weren’t commenting because things were going so well and you didn’t want to jinx it. Here’s hoping things start to turn around a little bit so that we can more posts from you. The site needs it.

by Glorious Mundy on Oct 28, 2011 11:50 AM PDT up reply actions

I agree.

I wish there were a way to bring them together.

I have statistician friends whom I occasionally try to interest on a baseball topic, since I can see how useful their expertise would be, but whenever I see them actually attempt to write about baseball, they are embarrassingly far behind the curve.

There are exceptions, of course, such as Nate Silver. But the communities on the whole are sadly unaware of each other. I suppose it’s not much different from other academic fields where specialist subgroups are out of touch with the main field, and the generalists are clueless about the specialty.

Being wrong about something you’ve worked on is a blessing, not a curse, and people are so invested in being right that that gets lost. —Graham MacAree

by iglew on Oct 22, 2011 2:45 PM PDT up reply actions

DOB

you can find the dob’s here, by each yr of draft

http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/team/draft.jsp?c_id=oak

My 2 cents (not entirely original) is the A’s do not want to offend MLB by going over slot for top HS players. They also do not want to offend MLB (and union) by going too cheap on MLB player salaries (Sheets, Fuentes, etc).

Thus, the A’s have to spend some money but not too much money to curry favors which hopefully will become a new ball park.

by kimo from kauai on Oct 17, 2011 7:57 PM PDT reply actions 1 recs

I just find that so crazy/depressing

That the A’s would be operating from a stance of “Let’s not offend MLB”. I’m reading Moneyball again, after many years, and Beane’s depiction in the book does not strike me as the kind of guy who would take well to being a “yes man” to MLB.

Maybe it’s just me projecting my own shit onto the A’s/Beane, but every interview I read of Beane seems like Beane is admitting to being totally helpless to change the team’s current state. Maybe that helpless vibe I get is because he’s sacrificing a huge part of who he is to kow tow to MLB at the behest of Lew Wolff.

Thank you, btw, for the draft pick list with the DOB’s

Did you ever hear of the the Seattle Seven? ... that was me. And six other guys

by Degolas on Oct 18, 2011 7:54 AM PDT up reply actions

For the last top 4 rounds HS picks I compared their DOB to the HS players picked until the A's pick again.

2010 2nd round pick Yordy Cabrera was the oldest of 13 players picked until the A’s 3rd round choice. This was a special case where the age mostly wasn’t even close, everyone was aware on draft day that Cabrera was a lot older than his competition.

2010 3rd round pick Aaron Shipman was 4th youngest of 11 players picked.

2010 4th round pick Chad Lewis was 3rd youngest of 10 players picked.

2009 4th round pick Max Stassi was youngest of 8 players picked within 30 picks.

Besides Cabrera those picks were on the young side. So ignoring all other factors, the A’s seem to have done a good job.
I don’t know if we can really judge the picks on these numbers. I wanted to just throw the numbers out.

by Rio on Oct 18, 2011 4:37 AM PDT reply actions

Trevor Cahill wonders why you hate him so

2nd round pick in 2006.

Ryan Webb (4th/04)
Craig Italiano (2nd/05)
Jared Lansford (2nd/05)
Vincent Mazzaro (3rd/05)

Plus there is a group of players the A’s drafted out of HS after the 4th round and signed to over-slot bonuses in-line with players drafted in the first four rounds. Your search parameters ignore these players.

Simply put your methodology is flawed and your research weak.

The monster at the end of this blog.

by grover on Oct 18, 2011 11:47 AM PDT reply actions

because it was talking about hitters?

by mikev on Oct 18, 2011 11:52 AM PDT up reply actions

I was too brief

A hazard of juggling too many things.

Arguing that the A’s need to re-vamp their scouting/drafting philosophy based on that article blatantly ignores the A’s drafting pattern since the famed Moneyball draft in 2002. You have to look at the team’s draft record in it’s entirety and not base it on one sub-set of potential draftees.

The real question is why have the A’s struggled to develop quality young bats for the past few seasons. Is it poor drafting or poor development?

What’s wrong with drafting college hitters?

The article’s point attempts to show the relative merits of drafting younger, 1st round pedigree HS bats vs. slightly older 1st round pedigree HS bats. The OP is trying to expand on that theme but is making too far a leap in suggesting that the A’s aren’t doing their due diligence.

The monster at the end of this blog.

by grover on Oct 18, 2011 12:18 PM PDT up reply actions

makes sense

by mikev on Oct 18, 2011 12:57 PM PDT up reply actions

Hi everyone

I saw this article was linked on Sickels’ site, too. It’s a pretty important research piece.

However, it’s equally important not to attribute to it things it doesn’t talk about (like the value of high school players versus college players, or the value of pitchers versus hitters, or the value of young pitchers versus old pitchers).

Rio’s numbers seem to bear out that the A’s are generally aware of this issue (apart from Cabrera, but as noted, everyone knew that he was essentially a junior college player, not a typical high schooler, hence the aggressive posting). Whatever the problem with their drafting of hitters is— and at this point, given the performance of the guys they’ve recently drafted and traded for, it’s pretty clear that there’s a problem— it’s not that they’re drafting players who are too old.

by PaulThomas on Oct 21, 2011 3:15 PM PDT reply actions