Just how important is the draft?

So with all the discussion about the draft this year, I wanted to do some research as to just how important the draft was. Now, I do not have an agenda here. No searching to see which GM (Shapiro, et al) has done poorly or great, although I will provide team by team numbers for comparison’s sake. This was more of a numbers crunch than anything else.

In order to get some decent sample sizes, I reviewed all of the drafts from 1988 to 1997 for every team. This is a full 10 year window. I also went back that far to allow for all the players drafted to have had a chance at making the majors. There are always late bloomers, etc. This allowed all the players from 1997 a full 10 years to reach the majors. I also did not use any data from 2008 at all. So a few players’ career numbers will change since 2008 is complete (but I am not going to revise at this late date), but it shouldn’t change much of the overall data tabulated here.

First, a couple of disclaimers. I pulled all of the draft data from the Baseball Cube. I used Baseball Cube because it actually has the highest level each player achieved: Majors, AAA, AA, A+, A, A-, and Rookie. Now I know all of the data on that site is not 100% accurate. Some players that were incorrectly identified as making the majors, and those have been corrected using Baseball Reference data. But over a 10 year span, a few incorrect numbers here and there on the minor league levels should not really affect the overall results.

Also, the draft is slightly done differently now. The draft is now capped at 50 rounds. The span I reviewed did have some teams "draft" 100 players in one year. But the majority of the teams did only draft until around 50 during those years.

Years 1988-1991 there were 26 drafting teams. Years 1992-1995 there were 28 teams (Colorado and Florida joined in). And in Years 1996-1997 there were 30 teams (Tampa Bay and Arizona joined to make the current configuration).

Now off we go.

First we will cover the total number of picks and how many actually signed.

Draft 1 file 1 (via kardiakkidz)

Note: 1992 was the only year that had 50 rounds. I suspect this was to "test" for the future.

Since we really don’t care about the total draft picks (we will look into this on a team by team basis though), only who signed, we will proceed with the signed number for the following numbers.

Draft 1 file 2 (via kardiakkidz)

And by percentages:

Draft 1 file 3 (via kardiakkidz)

So over a 10 year period, under today’s drafting rules, every team will have 500 picks. Let’s assume that they us all of the draft picks for this scenario. Based on the average percentages, a team will sign approximately 294 of those 500 players. Of those 294 players, 46 will make the show, 38 will reach AAA, 38 will reach AA, 57 will reach A+, 40 will reach A, 31 will reach A-, and 43 will not even get out of rookie league. Dividing each of those by 10, and the "expected" major leaguers per draft per team is 5.

Of course, making the majors is a big deal, but it does not tell the whole story. But we will get into that a little later in the dissertation.

I could bore you with round by round data, but I think it would be better to summarize based on where the player was drafted. I separated as follows: Round 1, Rounds 2-5, Rounds 6-15, Rounds 16-25, Rounds 26-50, Rounds 51-75, and Rounds 76+:

Draft 1 file 4 (via kardiakkidz)

Percentage of signed players:

Draft 1 file 5 (via kardiakkidz)

A few notes about this set of data. Supplemental rounds were included in that round (i.e. Supplemental between 1st and 2nd count as 1st round picks, and etc.). Also, a few of these drafts had supplemental picks all the way into the fifth round.

As for the data itself, nothing really too shocking, the higher one is drafted, the more likely they are to sign. Also, the higher one was drafted, the more likely they are to make the majors. But look at how steep the fall is from Round 1 to Rounds 2-5, 68% to 37%. In fact, going down each band, the likelihood of making the majors drops by about 50%. If anyone is interested, I do have each round’s data, just let me know.

So now, for the data most have waited patiently for. The team by team data (just how did the Tribe do?):

Draft 1 file 6 (via kardiakkidz)

Nothing too exciting here, but a few interesting notes: Houston, Dodgers and Yankees all drafted over 700 (lots of 50+ draftees), but they also were towards the bottom on percentages signed (which is to be expected). St. Louis had the highest conversion rate by almost 4%. Mean tends to hold around at 60%.

Draft 1 file 7 (via kardiakkidz)

Top five to get to the show: Boston, Montreal, Oakland, Baltimore, and Minnesota. As for the lower levels, those numbers could be interpreted in many, many ways. But I am certain each organization has certain trends they want to follow which would explain some of the wild fluctuations between Rookie leagues and some of the A ball levels.

Also, for Arizona and Tampa Bay, there seemed to be a shared roster between them and no distinction was made as if that was an A or A+ squad. More than likely, that number should be split in half.

To be continued ….