Examining Baseball Draft Value

[ad_1]

Every June, Major League Baseball holds its First Year Player Draft. And every year, after the final pick has been made, pundits rant over whether their favorite team got the best value, and which stars will develop into franchise players. For this article, I surprised those statistics amassed before a player plays a single professional game can be used to predict value. Thanks to the breadth of statistics available at Baseball Reference, this is not only possible, it is reasonably painless to find these statistics. I decided to test three different variables:

School (High School; Junior College; 4 Year College)
Position (Catcher, Third Base, etc.)
Draft Pick (First, Seventeenth, etc.)

Here are the average WAR variables from players drawn between 1996-2000, by category:

Drafted Out Of …

High School: 2.15 WAR
Junior College: 1.06
4 Year College: 3.68

Registered Position Is …

Catcher: 1.21
First Base: 4.72
Second Base *: 4.41
Third Base: 6.67
Shortstop: 3.39
Outfield: 4.11
Left Handed Pitcher: 2.4
Right Handed Pitcher: 1.53

* Too little info to average 2Bs accurately, rating based on

Drafted With Pick …

1-10: 8.56
11-20: 4.12
21-30: 1.2
31-40: 1.4
41-50: 1.82
51-60: 1.41
61-70: 1.16
71+: 1.23

Regressing this info with WAR data, we find that, in fact, the type of school that a player comes from has little effect on his future WAR. Removing this info, we find this equation to predict a player's WAR:

Future WAR = -2.17 + 0.88 * Position + 0.95 * Pick

Unfortunately, though this equation is simple, it only describes 13% of the variation in future performance. This is not good. However, I am doubtful that an equation will surface that explains more than 30% of future performance, because of all of the unknowns before a player plays a single game (see Gooden, Dwight). So I will leave this equation be, and move on to the second half of this article.

If we can not predict future performance, can we at least use draft data to look backwards? In the words of our loquacious president, Yes We Can. In the process of creating the future WAR equation, I created a simple yet equivalent equation to find draft value. It is vaguely based on Baseball Reference's Power-Speed ​​#, using different variables. Here is the equation:

DraftVal = SQRT (Overall Pick * WAR)

Here is a list of the all-time great draft picks, by position:

C – Eddie Murray (Drafter by the Orioles in 1973; 63rd overall; 66.7 WAR; 64.82 DraftVal)
1B – Will Clark (Royals 1982; 90th; 57.6 WAR; 72 DraftVal)
2B – Ray Durham (White Sox 1990; 132nd; 32.7 WAR; 65.7 DraftVal)
3B – Jeff Bagwell * (Red Sox 1989; 110th; 79.9 WAR; 93.75 DraftVal)
SS – Tim Raines * (Expos 1977; 106th; 64.6 WAR; 82.75 DraftVal)
OF – Rickey Henderson (A's 1976; 96th; 113.1 WAR; 104.2 DraftVal)
OF – Barry Bonds (Giants 1982; 39th; 171.8 WAR; 81.85 DraftVal)
OF – Dave Steib (Blue Jays 1978; 106th; 53.0 WAR; 74.95 DraftVal)
LHP – Randy Johnson (Braves 1982; 89th; 89.6 WAR; 89.3 DraftVal)
RHP – Javier Vasquez (Expos 1994; 140th; 38.3 WAR; 73.23 DraftVal)

Keep in mind that finding a DraftVal above 50 is like winning the lottery; one over 75, like finding the Holy Grail.

[ad_2]