Indians lousy in the draft

Scroll down towards the bottom for the chart of picks to make the majors for each team. It's not clear to me, but I think this chart only includes players drafted and developed by each team, meaning the ABs and innings counted are those for their original team.

From a number of players perspective, the Tribe is second last in batters and tied for last in pitchers. In ABs and innings, we're not quite as woeful.

about 1 year ago LeCavs Matt 14 comments 0 recs |

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It’s not clear to me, but I think this chart only includes players drafted and developed by each team, meaning the ABs and innings counted are those for their original team.

If true, that makes this chart meaningless. If the goal of the scouting and player-development departments are to turn out major-league players, then the evaluation should be:

-How many players drafted or signed are/were major-league players?
-How much value have these players provided their teams?

And I would say that the second question is much more meaningful. I’d take quality over quantity.

Why shouldn’t the Indians scouting/P-D departments get credit for Ryan Church, Jeremy Guthrie, or Luke Scott, even though they were traded away before they got a chance to play in Cleveland? And of course the International signings matter almost as much as the draft.

by Ryan on Sep 24, 2008 1:16 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

It looks like it includes all players drafted and signed, whether or not their major league appearances came for the originally drafting club, so it means something. Mostly what it means though is that the 97-01 drafts were lousy (other than getting Sabathia). Drafts since then have been better, but don’t have much impact on the scale they’re using since those guys won’t have had much chance to accumulate ML appearances yet.

And the exclusion of non-drafted signings means that they get no credit for Peralta (99), Carmona (00), Perez (02), and so on.

by InfiniteMonkeyTypists on Sep 24, 2008 8:59 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

YEP — RIGHT ANSWER

1. This study almost entirely is looking at the effects of the 97-01 drafts.

We’ve known those drafts were terrible for many years, since before LGT existed in fact. The quality of the 04-08 drafts is not represented here in any significant way — even clubs that have scored some “quick hits” from those drafts may not look like the best drafting clubs five years from now, once we know how guys like Nick Weglarz have developed.

2. Any study that looks at the draft while ignoring international signings is silly.

Browse through the compensation picks at the end of Olney’s article, and take note of two things. First, he lists all the supplemental round picks, even though the Yankees did not lose those picks — had they not signed those players, they would have kept only their original first- or second-round pick. And second, once you ignore the supplemental guys, how many major leaguers have been produced out of those picks in the past 12 years? Darnell McDonald, Mike Fontenot, Joe Blanton and Blake Dewitt. It’s a nice list of talent to add to your organization, but it’s hardly comparable to the list of talent they were signing.

Way too much is made of this — three big tables to demonstrate this “point” about the draft, and nothing about international signings. What Olney has done, essentially, is to state that the Yankees problems are only about signing enough elite American and Canadian players.

A final point is that he makes it sound like the Yankees have failed significantly because of losing all those first- and second-round picks. Yes, that is significant, but you have to have been wasting your entire draft for ten years not to get any good position players. The field is much weaker down there, but it’s also much broader, and other teams get some useful players out of the lower rounds.

It is, all in all, a very shallow analysis.

by Jay on Sep 24, 2008 11:15 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I don’t really have a problem with the list not including international signings. Why should the list analyze something that it isn’t meant to?

As for only counting draft picks as successful if they stay on the team, I can’t understand how that makes sense. That’s what really invalidates this thing for me

by Joe. on Sep 24, 2008 1:22 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The fundamental question that should drive this analysis deals with team building—who is talented and where are they playing—and the draft is just one part of that. The attentions of would-be analysts are disproportionately fixed on the draft. Studying the draft by itself is less interesting an analysis than it could be, and it invites conclusions about a team’s ability to evaluate talent that are misleading.

by jhon on Sep 24, 2008 2:07 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

But the article is specifically about the draft…. I mean if it was about farm systems, then you guys would have a point. Plus, if it was about farm systems, trades would deserve its own spot as well. Shapiro is probably the most efficient trader in baseball (only Beane comes close).

by Joe. on Sep 24, 2008 2:17 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

i think it’s more of how many articles like this do that. espn and the gang treat the mlb draft like the nfl draft and it’s just not the same thing. it’d be like if you looked only at teams’ success in drafting seniors from BCS schools. it’s true an article could look at just that, but what the hell is the point?

by Brick. on Sep 24, 2008 2:32 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It’s worse than that. It’s like the NFL said the draft only included players from BCS schools, and then you wrote an article assessing a team’s performance in that draft. There is no draft for international players, and therefore a significant portion of any team’s roster will be made up of non-drafted FAs. Any team’s roster is going to be made up of guys drafted and developed in the minors, signees developed in the minors, trades, minor league FAs, major league FAs. It’s fair to criticize the Yankees for failing to develop talent in lieu of aging free agents, but looking only at the draft this way is not it.

by FredOx on Sep 24, 2008 4:12 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I don’t see the article as being about the draft, I see it as being about the Yankees’ failure to develop their own players over the last 12 years.

The only part of it that is draft-specific is the connection between free agent signings and losing high draft picks, and — as I have already explained — the connection drawn by the article turns out to be pretty tenuous. The Yankees have missed out on only a handful of quality players by signing a whole roster full of free agents over the years, so this obviously is only a small component of their overall failure.

And that is what makes it a crappy article.

by Jay on Sep 24, 2008 3:49 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The pitchers included, through yesterday or the day before, from baseball-reference.com
CC Sabathia 1643.3
Ryan Drese 565.7
Jason Davis 461.0
Jeremy Guthrie 399.0
Jeremy Sowers 270.7
Brian Tallet 207.7
Fernando Cabrera 168.7
Aaron Laffey 143.0
Jensen Lewis 92.7
Tim Drew 84.7
Brian Slocum 19.7
Scott Lewis 19.0
Derek Thompson 18.0
Kyle Denney 16.0
Matt White 9.7

by InfiniteMonkeyTypists on Sep 24, 2008 9:04 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

The position players (ABs), not an inspiring bunch.
Dustan Mohr 1367
Ryan Church 1299
Ryan Garko 1145
Kevin Kouzmanoff 1144
Luke Scott 1128
Joe Inglett 536
Ben Francisco 490
Zach Sorensen 49
Michael Aubrey 45
Eric Crozier 33
Jon Van Every 8

by InfiniteMonkeyTypists on Sep 24, 2008 9:06 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs