Issue 6: Some Thoughts On Draft Strategy
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This week I read an interesting blog post by Tom Tango where he looked into player WAR from different rounds of the draft.
He pulled data from a 2022 study in the Journal of Sports Analytics1 that studied drafts from 2005-2015 and attempted to look into results based on WAR for various rounds, school sources and team selections.
The results of both Tango’s blog and the JSA study were reasonably intuitive to me but it did make me think about one of the most popular approaches to navigating draft bonuses by teams and whether or not that strategy was the most optimal.
There’s a significant drop off in both average WAR and big league success rate after you get beyond the first round but you might be surprised by the extent to which that drop off occurs.
Here are the percentage of players drafted and signed who made the majors by round for rounds 1-20 in the period examined:
71.5%
52.2%
43.4%
34.6%
37.3%
31.8%
22.5%
20.1%
20.4%
18.7%
16.8%
15.2%
17.9%
14.1%
11.3%
12.6%
10.7%
10.9%
10.3%
9.7%
The steepness of the hit rate drop off is even more prominent if you look at the total WAR numbers Tango provides in his blog post—which I would encourage you to read in full.
All of this make sense but it did make me think about how it doesn’t seem to fully line up with one of the most popular approaches scouting departments have when it comes to navigating draft bonuses: the portfolio approach.
After the 2023 draft ended and the signing deadline passed, I took a look at how each team spent their bonus pool money. I wanted to see which teams actually used the full 5% bonus pool overage and also see the strategies teams used when deciding whether to sign players under slot, over slot or go straight up.
The most common and popular strategy in the league seemed to be what I call the portfolio approach: saving money with under slot deals on your first pick(s) and using the bonus pool “savings”2 to spread the money around to subsequent picks.
Teams like the D-backs, Reds, White Sox, Dodgers, Angels, A’s, Pirates, Padres and Rays fell into that bucket, while the Mariners, Giants, Rangers and Nationals each employed overslot strategies up top and money-saving picks later to pay for those bonuses.
Given the hit rates I think I would expect more teams to try and do this latter strategy. Invest as much capital as you can at the top of the draft to try and maximize your talent in that range of the draft where the needle-moving players are typically found.
This is probably an oversimplification of what happens on draft day. Teams have to react to what’s happening around them and a plan going into the draft can quickly change. For instance there are definitely examples of a team getting its pocket picked and having to scramble to a backup option (where an underslot deal might make plenty of sense) before moving on to the next pick.
I think it’s also easier to talk about forcing a player down the board for an over-slot deal than doing that in practice—nothing is stopping a team picking in front of you from saying, “Oh well, we’re still taking you. We’ll take the chance of you not signing.”
Perhaps it’s also the case that the underslot strategy up top simply makes your three-day draft easier to manage and react to what’s happening as the draft goes on. It builds in contingency plans if one of your key players doesn’t sign for whatever reason.
The Nationals signed three players to over-slot deals (Dylan Crews, Yohandy Morales and Travis Sykora) in the first three rounds, which basically meant the second half of their day two was dedicated to drafting college seniors who would agree to $20,000 deals to pay for those first three players. There’s much less room there to wiggle around if things go sideways or take advantage if there’s a player available in round nine who Washington scouts evaluated multiple rounds higher.
I’m probably rambling a bit here at this point, but this sort of draft strategy will endlessly be interesting to me. I’m fascinated to see which teams do what in 2024.
Here’s everything I produced for Baseball America last week:
Writing
2024 Top 200 Draft Rankings — This was the biggest project of January for me. We updated and expanded our draft list from the top 100 players in the class to the top 200 players in the class, with updated and refreshed scouting reports for all the players on the board. While there’s going to be plenty of movement on our board throughout the spring, it seems like the top players generally ID themselves fairly early on in the process at this stage so this should be a decent preview of the 2024 draft class. If you’re a diehard draftnik, there are more than 30,000 words of scouting reports for you here.
The Case For 1-1: Which 2024 MLB Draft Prospect Has The Best Argument To Be Selected First Overall? — This was a supplemental piece that came out with the top 200 draft board, where I took a look at six players who have real cases to be the 1-1 this year. There’s not an obvious top player on the board now, so it’s going to come down to Cleveland’s specific preferences or the performances players themselves have this spring. While this makes it tougher to line up a draft board, I think it might be more fun to cover since it’s a wide open race.
Corbin Burnes Trade: Breaking Down Every Orioles, Brewers Player Involved — The Orioles finally made a move for an impact starter and it doesn’t even feel like that lost much considering the strength of their farm system. I still like this deal for the Brewers more than a lot of people seem to. It’s one year of Corbin Burnes and now they got back some serious arm talent—which the Brewers have a proven track record of developing—in DL Hall and a potential long-term solution at shortstop. Plusmore draft capital in ‘24. People are sleeping on that supplemental first round pick.
Podcasting
Future Projection Episode 77: Breaking Down The New MLB Draft Rankings — Ben and I talk about the new draft rankings, we talk about the Tigers extending Colt Keith, we talk about the Twins-Mariners trade and we take a listener question about how the 20-round draft and contracted minor league setup impacts prospects.
A Top 200 Draft Update And Sleepers Who Just Missed — More draft board talk on this one. I ask Peter who he would draft up top, and we talk through a few pitching tiers of the class and get deep on some college names he likes, plus talk through a few deeper names to know.
Here are a few other stories you might find interesting:
2024 Farm System Rankings — All the farm systems in baseball ranked from 1-30. This year that wasn’t much of a challenge in figuring out who the No. 1 team was. The Orioles had a significant gap on No. 2 before the Corbin Burnes trade and I think there’s still a decent gap after that trade simply because of the quality and quantity of their hitting prospects—most of whom also have big league proximity on their sides.
Mike Martin, Legendary Florida State Coach, Dies At 79 — This is a phenomenal piece from Teddy on some disappointing news about Mike Martin dying. I didn’t know Mike Martin like Teddy did, but it was hard to hear anything but great things about 11. His legacy at Florida State is unbelievable and I thought Teddy did a great job with this tribute.
The first reference for this study is actually Baseball America’s very own draft database, which is just cool to see in general and a reminder of how useful the tool can be if you’re interested in this sort of stuff.
A common misunderstanding each year is that teams are actually being cheap when they decide to use their bonus pool money in this way when that’s almost never the case. It’s simply a strategic choice that is made available because MLB does not use a hard-slotting system like the NFL or NBA drafts. The fact that we have to explain how the bonus pools and slotting system works each year is just another example of how MLB’s draft isn’t casual-fan friendly.