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The "blow up the draft cap" theory
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Post by jmei on Jun 15, 2017 16:24:42 GMT -5
At the time, Moncada and Castillo were thought of as talented enough to be number one overall picks in the draft, and Moncada in particular was thought to be one of the more talented amateur players in recent history. Here, you're talking about, what, maybe two or three top 50 guys, two or three more 50-100 guys, and some others further down? The value proposition, purely for return on the dollar and without taking into account the lost draft picks, is not there. Look at any analysis of what draft picks are worth. Once you get beyond the top handful of guys, amateur players just aren't worth $5M+ apiece. You are looking at this all wrong. You can't just look at the normal return of a pick that has slot money attacked to it. That's like saying Betts was just like every other 5th round pick. Which just isn't true. The higher bonus money allowed you to get a better player. Just like our 5th rounder this year. So you think 4-6 more top 100 guys, a bunch more top 200 guys is what nothing? Then a bunch more top 500 guys. Where do you think the majority of the top College players come from? Those exact players. Some players come out of no where, but not a ton of them. You really don't even have to hit on that many of them for this to workout. You would be spreading the risk out over a ton of very good players, rather than just two first round picks. Your risk/reward factor would be threw the roof. 15 top 500 players is better than one top 25 player. This is baseball, not basketball. You are vastly overestimating the average production you get from middle/back-end top-500 amateur talent. Once you get past the first handful of picks in any given draft, the likelihood that you get significant MLB production from a draft pick drops precipitously. For instance, here's a chart of average career WAR by draft pick from a 2009 article by Sky Andrecheck at Baseball Analysts, as well as an excerpt from the article: There's no way you could convince any ownership to spend $100M+ more than they otherwise would for a bunch of guys who average between 1.0 and 3.0 career WAR, even if you get 15 of those guys. Once you apply a discount rate to account for the time value of money and net out their expected MLB salaries, those guys just aren't worth $5M a pop.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jun 16, 2017 11:02:22 GMT -5
Really interesting discussion that doesn't have anything to do with Draft Day 1 anymore, so I moved this to its own thread.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Jun 16, 2017 12:00:02 GMT -5
You are looking at this all wrong. You can't just look at the normal return of a pick that has slot money attacked to it. That's like saying Betts was just like every other 5th round pick. Which just isn't true. The higher bonus money allowed you to get a better player. Just like our 5th rounder this year. So you think 4-6 more top 100 guys, a bunch more top 200 guys is what nothing? Then a bunch more top 500 guys. Where do you think the majority of the top College players come from? Those exact players. Some players come out of no where, but not a ton of them. You really don't even have to hit on that many of them for this to workout. You would be spreading the risk out over a ton of very good players, rather than just two first round picks. Your risk/reward factor would be threw the roof. 15 top 500 players is better than one top 25 player. This is baseball, not basketball. I think you are putting way, way too much stock into the publications' top 500 lists. I think what you're doing, now that I see you explain what you think would happen a bit more, is asking the club to put more stock into the scouting consensus rather than what their own scouts are telling them, and to spend a ton more money doing it. Yes, they definitely would structure the board a bit differently if signability weren't a thing. But I think you're overestimating how universal the BA or PG rankings are. Heck, look at the Red Sox draft this year - they drafted two guys who PG had in their top 300 that BA didn't even have in their top 500. And these are the aggregations! It's a very interesting theory, which is why I keep asking you (or someone with more time than I have) to go back for a past draft and do this to see how it comes out. It's intriguing. I just think it's a strategy that's going to work once every 20 years or something at best, which makes it not worth trying. I just want the Red Sox to take best player available on there board for every pick. I agree 100% there board will look a lot different than other people's boards. It's going to be impossible to prove this one way or another without knowing the Red Sox top 500. If I had that information I would go back through and figure it out. You can't just look at there picks because we know they don't just take best player available for every pick. They seemed to change strategy this year also. Last year they took a crap load of top picks in later rounds and didn't sign a single one of them. This year they seem to have drafted guys they have a chance at signing after round #10. You really need 3-4 years to be able to look at the players you could have got that went to college. Then you can see where they get drafted again. Now I'm not saying we should have done this in 2014, but it's shows you college juniors. www.baseballamerica.com/draft/ba-500-draftees-sign/#2RH8sf6BqZ98hQwfThere are a bunch of 1st round picks that year, some very high picks also. We drafted two of them. I think it shows you can easily add two players worth a late first round pick. The question is who else could they haved added if they just went best player available for 40 picks. The talent was there you could have picked 4-5 first round picks. Guys that went top 10. Nevermind the guys that went in 2nd round and later.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Jun 16, 2017 12:41:37 GMT -5
You are looking at this all wrong. You can't just look at the normal return of a pick that has slot money attacked to it. That's like saying Betts was just like every other 5th round pick. Which just isn't true. The higher bonus money allowed you to get a better player. Just like our 5th rounder this year. So you think 4-6 more top 100 guys, a bunch more top 200 guys is what nothing? Then a bunch more top 500 guys. Where do you think the majority of the top College players come from? Those exact players. Some players come out of no where, but not a ton of them. You really don't even have to hit on that many of them for this to workout. You would be spreading the risk out over a ton of very good players, rather than just two first round picks. Your risk/reward factor would be threw the roof. 15 top 500 players is better than one top 25 player. This is baseball, not basketball. You are vastly overestimating the average production you get from middle/back-end top-500 amateur talent. Once you get past the first handful of picks in any given draft, the likelihood that you get significant MLB production from a draft pick drops precipitously. For instance, here's a chart of average career WAR by draft pick from a 2009 article by Sky Andrecheck at Baseball Analysts, as well as an excerpt from the article: There's no way you could convince any ownership to spend $100M+ more than they otherwise would for a bunch of guys who average between 1.0 and 3.0 career WAR, even if you get 15 of those guys. Once you apply a discount rate to account for the time value of money and net out their expected MLB salaries, those guys just aren't worth $5M a pop. Your chart only looks at draft position, not a players ranking. It's litterally worthless to the conversation we are having. You are looking at averages only. You only need a few of those players to become top prospects and it's well worth the money. Litterally one player like Betts and that 100 plus million looks like the deal of the century. High school players are the ultimate boom or bust guys. By getting a crap load of them your litterally guaranteed to hit big on a few of them. Well if your scouting is good and the Red Sox are very good at that. When you look at Houck do you go we just got 3.5 war? We drafted him for his upside and according to the team they felt other teams were under valuing him. A team that's better at scouting and developing young player's will always out perform the norm or averages. Over the last 5 plus years we are one of the top teams in league at doing just that. Look at our 5th round pick this year. He's a top 50 player, taken in 5th round because he wants a bunch of money. His talent level is higher than players signing in 5th round for slot money. I've seen a report saying he has the highest ceiling of all our picks. That's what going overslot gets you, guys that have high ceilings. Nevermind you get to spread out the risk. The draft is crapshoot, so one late first rounder with a higher floor versus like 15 high school players with the same ceiling, but a much lower floor. You only need to hit on 20% of them for you to get 3 times the talent. Nevermind taking a chance on college guys like Beck who could easily be a first round pick next year. It just makes sense. The Patriots do it all the time. I know it's a different sport, but it applies more to baseball, as the draft is even more of a crapshoot.
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Post by ramireja on Jun 16, 2017 13:50:22 GMT -5
Okay, I'm taking the bait.
This is an example of how we could have drafted if our draft board aligned closely with MLB.com. I've put their MLB rankings in parantheses:
1. Tanner Houck (20) 2. Blayne Enlow (29) 3. Tanner Burns (39) 4. Evan Skoug (48) 5. Alex Scherff (52) 6. Tristan Beck (53) 7. Garrett Mitchell (54) 8. Daniel Cabrera (55) 9. Blaine Knight (58) 10. Jake Eder (66) 11. Bryce Bonnin (74) 12. Brady McConnell (75) 13. Kyle Hurt (78) 14. Shane Drohan (80) 15. Greg Jones (84) 16. Chris McMahon (100) 17. Jake Mangum (102) 18. Jackson Rutledge (111) 19. Kyle Jacobsen (117) 20. Jordan Anderson (118)
So each of these guys was available for drafting at our pick in these rounds. It looks like if you adopted this strategy through 20 rounds you would actually draft 16 guys in the MLB Top 100, and all 20 in the top 118. Obviously, you could keep going and fill out all 40 rounds with presumably talent in the Top 250 or better.
I want to go on record saying that I'm not advocating this approach, I'm simply trying to objectively see who we could have drafted. I think there are valid reasons why this strategy would not work. For starters, where are you going to put all of these guys? I guess you could technically spread them across Lowell, the GCL, and maybe the DSL or Greenville? That said, from a talent perspective, I absolutely think that this Top 20 is worth considerably more than two 1st round picks especially if those picks are backend first rounders. We may not be super familiar with these names now but you have to think that maybe 4-6 of these guys become future first round picks, and if 2 is the break even point, I think you have to feel pretty good about your chances. Thats not even mentioning the value you get out of guys that would theoretically turn into 2nd, 3rd, or 4th round prospects which are still solid.
Financially, I don't know what it would cost to sign each player. 4-5 mill per pick seems like a stupid amount to pay for a draft. What if you set the bar at 2 mill per pick though? Could you expect 15 of these guys to sign? If so, you're looking at 30mill in bonuses (if you go minimum for the rest of the draft), and 60mill overall once you take into account the tax. That would be record-breaking, but would be less than we spent on International spending in our record-breaking 2014-2015 signing period.
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Post by johnsilver52 on Jun 16, 2017 14:17:02 GMT -5
What everyone is taking for granted is the commissioner has to give the ok and sign off on these deals. What if he just all of a sudden decided to let any team attempting to pull this stunt go the normal 5% and then NOT go any further, or go just enough to lose a couple of 1st round picks and then stop signing off? Remember those Venezuelan deals Manfred undid a few months back that were mere formalities before? Well..
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jun 16, 2017 14:30:50 GMT -5
What everyone is taking for granted is the commissioner has to give the ok and sign off on these deals. What if he just all of a sudden decided to let any team attempting to pull this stunt go the normal 5% and then NOT go any further, or go just enough to lose a couple of 1st round picks and then stop signing off? Remember those Venezuelan deals Manfred undid a few months back that were mere formalities before? Well.. MLB voided the five contracts because they found that the Red Sox had actually tried to circumvent the rules. They found that the Red Sox had paid money to other players with the understanding it would be funneled back to the five players who were made free agents. This is different - they would not be circumventing any rules. They'd be subject to penalties collectively bargained for by the owners and players. I sincerely doubt the commissioner's office would just selectively step in and start voiding contracts if a team did this.
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Post by jmei on Jun 16, 2017 14:32:47 GMT -5
Your chart only looks at draft position, not a players ranking. It's litterally worthless to the conversation we are having. You are looking at averages only. You only need a few of those players to become top prospects and it's well worth the money. Litterally one player like Betts and that 100 plus million looks like the deal of the century. High school players are the ultimate boom or bust guys. By getting a crap load of them your litterally guaranteed to hit big on a few of them. Well if your scouting is good and the Red Sox are very good at that. When you look at Houck do you go we just got 3.5 war? We drafted him for his upside and according to the team they felt other teams were under valuing him. A team that's better at scouting and developing young player's will always out perform the norm or averages. Over the last 5 plus years we are one of the top teams in league at doing just that. Look at our 5th round pick this year. He's a top 50 player, taken in 5th round because he wants a bunch of money. His talent level is higher than players signing in 5th round for slot money. I've seen a report saying he has the highest ceiling of all our picks. That's what going overslot gets you, guys that have high ceilings. Nevermind you get to spread out the risk. The draft is crapshoot, so one late first rounder with a higher floor versus like 15 high school players with the same ceiling, but a much lower floor. You only need to hit on 20% of them for you to get 3 times the talent. Nevermind taking a chance on college guys like Beck who could easily be a first round pick next year. It just makes sense. The Patriots do it all the time. I know it's a different sport, but it applies more to baseball, as the draft is even more of a crapshoot. The analysis was based on the pre-cap era, and in that era, draft position and player ranking were essentially the same for a significant majority of cases, especially in the early rounds. I'm fairly confident that if you replicated the analysis with BA ranking as opposed to draft slot, the numbers don't really change. Yes, you get a lot of surplus if you draft a Betts, but Betts might literally be the best fifth-round pick ever, and for every Betts, there are hundreds of guys who never make the majors. The hit rate on MLB draftees in this talent range is much lower than you think it is. Per this 2014 Hardball Time article, the odds, for any given draft slot, of drafting a player who accrues 3+ WAR and 10+ WAR during the six years of team control, are as follows (click to view larger): If you draft a bunch of those guys, you're increasing your odds of hitting on a star, but at no point is it "guaranteed" that you hit on one. There's a marginal cost to each guy you're drafting (the bonus + tax), so you really only need to consider marginal cost versus marginal benefit. Once you account for the time value of money, those guys just aren't worth the bonuses plus tax that you'd have to pay for them.
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Post by manfred on Jun 16, 2017 14:47:50 GMT -5
Can you imagine the waste, even under pretty good circumstances? Look at recent history: how many picks in the first 5 rounds have flamed out. Now we can talk about throwing money at harder to sign high school commits, but they are even higher risk. Could end up with $75 million of Trey Ball (no offense to Trey, whom I still root for).
I have fingers crossed for Jay Groome, but I'd be nervous blowing things up for a bunch of hard throwing high schoolers. Spread the risk.
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Post by jmei on Jun 16, 2017 14:51:31 GMT -5
Okay, I'm taking the bait. This is an example of how we could have drafted if our draft board aligned closely with MLB.com. I've put their MLB rankings in parantheses: 1. Tanner Houck (20) 2. Blayne Enlow (29) 3. Tanner Burns (39) 4. Evan Skoug (48) 5. Alex Scherff (52) 6. Tristan Beck (53) 7. Garrett Mitchell (54) 8. Daniel Cabrera (55) 9. Blaine Knight (58) 10. Jake Eder (66) 11. Bryce Bonnin (74) 12. Brady McConnell (75) 13. Kyle Hurt (78) 14. Shane Drohan (80) 15. Greg Jones (84) 16. Chris McMahon (100) 17. Jake Mangum (102) 18. Jackson Rutledge (111) 19. Kyle Jacobsen (117) 20. Jordan Anderson (118) So each of these guys was available for drafting at our pick in these rounds. It looks like if you adopted this strategy through 20 rounds you would actually draft 16 guys in the MLB Top 100, and all 20 in the top 118. Obviously, you could keep going and fill out all 40 rounds with presumably talent in the Top 250 or better. I want to go on record saying that I'm not advocating this approach, I'm simply trying to objectively see who we could have drafted. I think there are valid reasons why this strategy would not work. For starters, where are you going to put all of these guys? I guess you could technically spread them across Lowell, the GCL, and maybe the DSL or Greenville? That said, from a talent perspective, I absolutely think that this Top 20 is worth considerably more than two 1st round picks especially if those picks are backend first rounders. We may not be super familiar with these names now but you have to think that maybe 4-6 of these guys become future first round picks, and if 2 is the break even point, I think you have to feel pretty good about your chances. Thats not even mentioning the value you get out of guys that would theoretically turn into 2nd, 3rd, or 4th round prospects which are still solid. Financially, I don't know what it would cost to sign each player. 4-5 mill per pick seems like a stupid amount to pay for a draft. What if you set the bar at 2 mill per pick though? Could you expect 15 of these guys to sign? If so, you're looking at 30mill in bonuses (if you go minimum for the rest of the draft), and 60mill overall once you take into account the tax. That would be record-breaking, but would be less than we spent on International spending in our record-breaking 2014-2015 signing period. Really appreciate the hard work in compiling this. I do increasingly agree that, in terms of the talent you'd lose from the two first rounders as opposed to the talent you'd pick up, it does seem to make sense. But I think the financial burden really does matter. The value of draft picks is in that they artificially deflate costs of adding amateur talent. If you're spending $4M apiece (between bonus and tax) on what is effectively second/third-round talent, not sure that's still a value proposition anymore.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jun 16, 2017 15:01:22 GMT -5
I'm going to ask Callis about this on Monday for the podcast. I'm finding this fascinating.
Jason, I'm going to send your list to him, if you don't mind? Does anyone have time to add position and school to that list?
For what it's worth, the club would, at some point, need to stop with this and pick guys to fill out the Lowell and GCL rosters (there's a saturation point you'd eventually reach when you don't have enough at-bats to go around, which is another reason why it'd be tough to do this), so it's fair to leave it at round 20.
By the way, it's funny they still wind up with Scherff at the pick they did anyway, no?
EDIT: A thought I just had - while umass is saying to throw $3-5M at every player, in actuality, you wouldn't need to do that. I bet $1M would be sufficient for some of these guys, and maybe even less for others. Second-round talent picked in the second round signs for second-round slots, right? Guys in the 100s would sign for less than a mil - Logan Allen got $725k, Dalbec got $650k, Cosart got $450k, Travis got $850k, Beeks was 125 in BA and got $150k, Stankiewicz was going to get $1.1M before we learned he was missing a pec, etc.
It's also funny to me to see those rankings in ramreja's list. If you look at what Bregman and Fulmer were ranked by BA and PG, at least, you wouldn't have even gotten to them.
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Post by ramireja on Jun 16, 2017 15:29:42 GMT -5
I'm going to ask Callis about this on Monday for the podcast. I'm finding this fascinating. Jason, I'm going to send your list to him, if you don't mind? Does anyone have time to add position and school to that list? For what it's worth, the club would, at some point, need to stop with this and pick guys to fill out the Lowell and GCL rosters (there's a saturation point you'd eventually reach when you don't have enough at-bats to go around, which is another reason why it'd be tough to do this), so it's fair to leave it at round 20. By the way, it's funny they still wind up with Scherff at the pick they did anyway, no? EDIT: A thought I just had - while umass is saying to throw $3-5M at every player, in actuality, you wouldn't need to do that. I bet $1M would be sufficient for some of these guys, and maybe even less for others. Second-round talent picked in the second round signs for second-round slots, right? Guys in the 100s would sign for less than a mil - Logan Allen got $725k, Dalbec got $650k, Cosart got $450k, Travis got $850k, Beeks was 125 in BA and got $150k, Stankiewicz was going to get $1.1M before we learned he was missing a pec, etc. It's also funny to me to see those rankings in ramreja's list. If you look at what Bregman and Fulmer were ranked by BA and PG, at least, you wouldn't have even gotten to them. Hey if theres a chance we can get Callis to weigh in, I'm happy to add position and school to the list. When you say school, do you want the HS, college commitment, or both? If we're going strictly off MLB rankings by the way, Sam Carlson (#15) and Griffin Canning (#17) were the two top options available for our pick, and Houck was third (#20). I preferred Houck to those picks (Canning's ranking especially wouldn't have reflected his medicals in time), so I went with that in the list, but Carlson would have been the pick according to an MLB list.
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Post by jmei on Jun 16, 2017 15:40:16 GMT -5
EDIT: A thought I just had - while umass is saying to throw $3-5M at every player, in actuality, you wouldn't need to do that. I bet $1M would be sufficient for some of these guys, and maybe even less for others. Second-round talent picked in the second round signs for second-round slots, right? Guys in the 100s would sign for less than a mil - Logan Allen got $725k, Dalbec got $650k, Cosart got $450k, Travis got $850k, Beeks was 125 in BA and got $150k, Stankiewicz was going to get $1.1M before we learned he was missing a pec, etc. That's the thing, though-- we are, almost by definition, talking about over-slot guys who want more money than where they're projected to be picked. Fair point that it won't be $3-5M per guy, though, especially as you go down the list past the 100s.
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Post by johnsilver52 on Jun 16, 2017 15:46:43 GMT -5
I understand what you are saying Chris, yet say another 2011 crop comes along that is really loaded and a big money team decides to give this theory a try. Manfred might get some Bowie Kuhn in him. That job has absolute power, no congress, no Senate to restrain it. He's got absolute authority, all the owners can do is fire him later if he decided to not go along with some owner that decided to try and buy off several great kids and look at what many here knew several kids in that 2011 draft would become.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jun 16, 2017 15:54:25 GMT -5
EDIT: A thought I just had - while umass is saying to throw $3-5M at every player, in actuality, you wouldn't need to do that. I bet $1M would be sufficient for some of these guys, and maybe even less for others. Second-round talent picked in the second round signs for second-round slots, right? Guys in the 100s would sign for less than a mil - Logan Allen got $725k, Dalbec got $650k, Cosart got $450k, Travis got $850k, Beeks was 125 in BA and got $150k, Stankiewicz was going to get $1.1M before we learned he was missing a pec, etc. That's the thing, though-- we are, almost by definition, talking about over-slot guys who want more money than where they're projected to be picked. Fair point that it won't be $3-5M per guy, though, especially as you go down the list past the 100s. Good point though that by definition these guys would want over-slot. Let's throw some really rough numbers on this using the slot values for their ranks. 1. Tanner Houck (20) - $2,994,500 2. Blayne Enlow (29) - $2,238,900 3. Tanner Burns (39) - $1,760,700 4. Evan Skoug (48) - $1,425,400 5. Alex Scherff (52) - $1,295,700 6. Tristan Beck (53) - $1,265,500 7. Garrett Mitchell (54) - $1,236,000 8. Daniel Cabrera (55) - $1,206,900 9. Blaine Knight (58) - $1,121,300 10. Jake Eder (66) - $926,500 11. Bryce Bonnin (74) - $779,500 12. Brady McConnell (75)- $767,400 13. Kyle Hurt (78) - $732,200 14. Shane Drohan (80) - $709,000 15. Greg Jones (84) - $666,600 16. Chris McMahon (100) - $537,100 17. Jake Mangum (102) - $527,600 18. Jackson Rutledge (111) - $482,600 19. Kyle Jacobsen (117) - $454,900 20. Jordan Anderson (118) - $450,500 Certainly there'd be some inflation here, but starting from those numbers, you're at $21,578,800. I think it's reasonable to say that you're staying under $40M here, even if you carried this out further.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jun 16, 2017 15:55:59 GMT -5
I understand what you are saying Chris, yet say another 2011 crop comes along that is really loaded and a big money team decides to give this theory a try. Manfred might get some Bowie Kuhn in him. That job has absolute power, no congress, no Senate to restrain it. He's got absolute authority, all the owners can do is fire him later if he decided to not go along with some owner that decided to try and buy off several great kids and look at what many here knew several kids in that 2011 draft would become. I'm fairly confident this would not happen. He does not have "absolute power."
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Jun 16, 2017 16:01:00 GMT -5
Your chart only looks at draft position, not a players ranking. It's litterally worthless to the conversation we are having. You are looking at averages only. You only need a few of those players to become top prospects and it's well worth the money. Litterally one player like Betts and that 100 plus million looks like the deal of the century. High school players are the ultimate boom or bust guys. By getting a crap load of them your litterally guaranteed to hit big on a few of them. Well if your scouting is good and the Red Sox are very good at that. When you look at Houck do you go we just got 3.5 war? We drafted him for his upside and according to the team they felt other teams were under valuing him. A team that's better at scouting and developing young player's will always out perform the norm or averages. Over the last 5 plus years we are one of the top teams in league at doing just that. Look at our 5th round pick this year. He's a top 50 player, taken in 5th round because he wants a bunch of money. His talent level is higher than players signing in 5th round for slot money. I've seen a report saying he has the highest ceiling of all our picks. That's what going overslot gets you, guys that have high ceilings. Nevermind you get to spread out the risk. The draft is crapshoot, so one late first rounder with a higher floor versus like 15 high school players with the same ceiling, but a much lower floor. You only need to hit on 20% of them for you to get 3 times the talent. Nevermind taking a chance on college guys like Beck who could easily be a first round pick next year. It just makes sense. The Patriots do it all the time. I know it's a different sport, but it applies more to baseball, as the draft is even more of a crapshoot. The analysis was based on the pre-cap era, and in that era, draft position and player ranking were essentially the same for a significant majority of cases, especially in the early rounds. I'm fairly confident that if you replicated the analysis with BA ranking as opposed to draft slot, the numbers don't really change. Yes, you get a lot of surplus if you draft a Betts, but Betts might literally be the best fifth-round pick ever, and for every Betts, there are hundreds of guys who never make the majors. The hit rate on MLB draftees in this talent range is much lower than you think it is. Per this 2014 Hardball Time article, the odds, for any given draft slot, of drafting a player who accrues 3+ WAR and 10+ WAR during the six years of team control, are as follows (click to view larger): If you draft a bunch of those guys, you're increasing your odds of hitting on a star, but at no point is it "guaranteed" that you hit on one. There's a marginal cost to each guy you're drafting (the bonus + tax), so you really only need to consider marginal cost versus marginal benefit. Once you account for the time value of money, those guys just aren't worth the bonuses plus tax that you'd have to pay for them. Your chart litterally proves my point. You are greatly increasing your chances. Nothing is a given, your two first round picks could give you 0 war. It's all about greatly increasing your chances.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Jun 16, 2017 16:03:28 GMT -5
I understand what you are saying Chris, yet say another 2011 crop comes along that is really loaded and a big money team decides to give this theory a try. Manfred might get some Bowie Kuhn in him. That job has absolute power, no congress, no Senate to restrain it. He's got absolute authority, all the owners can do is fire him later if he decided to not go along with some owner that decided to try and buy off several great kids and look at what many here knew several kids in that 2011 draft would become. I'm fairly confident this would not happen. He does not have "absolute power." 100% agree, they gave teams this option to get them to except a cap for the draft.
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Post by jmei on Jun 16, 2017 16:07:22 GMT -5
That's the thing, though-- we are, almost by definition, talking about over-slot guys who want more money than where they're projected to be picked. Fair point that it won't be $3-5M per guy, though, especially as you go down the list past the 100s. Good point though that by definition these guys would want over-slot. Let's throw some really rough numbers on this using the slot values for their ranks. 1. Tanner Houck (20) - $2,994,500 2. Blayne Enlow (29) - $2,238,900 3. Tanner Burns (39) - $1,760,700 4. Evan Skoug (48) - $1,425,400 5. Alex Scherff (52) - $1,295,700 6. Tristan Beck (53) - $1,265,500 7. Garrett Mitchell (54) - $1,236,000 8. Daniel Cabrera (55) - $1,206,900 9. Blaine Knight (58) - $1,121,300 10. Jake Eder (66) - $926,500 11. Bryce Bonnin (74) - $779,500 12. Brady McConnell (75)- $767,400 13. Kyle Hurt (78) - $732,200 14. Shane Drohan (80) - $709,000 15. Greg Jones (84) - $666,600 16. Chris McMahon (100) - $537,100 17. Jake Mangum (102) - $527,600 18. Jackson Rutledge (111) - $482,600 19. Kyle Jacobsen (117) - $454,900 20. Jordan Anderson (118) - $450,500 Certainly there'd be some inflation here, but starting from those numbers, you're at $21,578,800. I think it's reasonable to say that you're staying under $40M here, even if you carried this out further. Thanks for doing the legwork to pull the draft slots. If you assume 25% extra above slot to get them to sign, then double it to account for the tax, you get roughly $54M. That's still a lot, but much less than the numbers being thrown around earlier. It really comes down to whether you're OK paying essentially 250% of slot apiece to sign ten to fifteen extra players ranked in the 25 to 150 range, plus a bunch more in the next tier or two, and in return, you lose your next two first-rounders. Maybe if you fiddle with the assumptions, you can convince yourself that it's slightly worth it, but it still doesn't seem like a slam dunk. If that's the case, I don't know that teams are willing to take the risk (including the reputational hit) to try it. The real advantage of exceeding the IFA cap was that you really got the cream of the crop, and those top-end guys are the ones who have high enough odds of hitting to be worth it. That's not really the case with this strategy.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jun 16, 2017 16:11:32 GMT -5
The analysis was based on the pre-cap era, and in that era, draft position and player ranking were essentially the same for a significant majority of cases, especially in the early rounds. I'm fairly confident that if you replicated the analysis with BA ranking as opposed to draft slot, the numbers don't really change. Yes, you get a lot of surplus if you draft a Betts, but Betts might literally be the best fifth-round pick ever, and for every Betts, there are hundreds of guys who never make the majors. The hit rate on MLB draftees in this talent range is much lower than you think it is. Per this 2014 Hardball Time article, the odds, for any given draft slot, of drafting a player who accrues 3+ WAR and 10+ WAR during the six years of team control, are as follows (click to view larger): If you draft a bunch of those guys, you're increasing your odds of hitting on a star, but at no point is it "guaranteed" that you hit on one. There's a marginal cost to each guy you're drafting (the bonus + tax), so you really only need to consider marginal cost versus marginal benefit. Once you account for the time value of money, those guys just aren't worth the bonuses plus tax that you'd have to pay for them. Your chart litterally proves my point. You are greatly increasing your chances. Nothing is a given, your two first round picks could give you 0 war. It's all about greatly increasing your chances. And what we're trying to tell you is that you're overestimating how much you're increasing your chances of getting better players. And as I said, I think this is in part because you're underestimating how much the teams are already taking guys based on talent. For example, take Jon Denney. He was rated a first-round talent by the outlets. I can confidently tell you that for various reasons, no team had him that high on their board. He fell to the third round and got a second-round bonus, which further indicates that. When the Red Sox popped Ockimey and Betts and the 4th and 5th rounds of their respective drafts, they weren't thinking "let's get a guy who's not one of the top 500 players in this draft because we'll be able to sign him." The calculus involved many things like talent, signability vs. budget, and other concerns, but I think the calculus involves a LOT more of the former than you're giving teams credit for.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Jun 16, 2017 16:12:00 GMT -5
I'm going to ask Callis about this on Monday for the podcast. I'm finding this fascinating. Jason, I'm going to send your list to him, if you don't mind? Does anyone have time to add position and school to that list? For what it's worth, the club would, at some point, need to stop with this and pick guys to fill out the Lowell and GCL rosters (there's a saturation point you'd eventually reach when you don't have enough at-bats to go around, which is another reason why it'd be tough to do this), so it's fair to leave it at round 20. By the way, it's funny they still wind up with Scherff at the pick they did anyway, no? EDIT: A thought I just had - while umass is saying to throw $3-5M at every player, in actuality, you wouldn't need to do that. I bet $1M would be sufficient for some of these guys, and maybe even less for others. Second-round talent picked in the second round signs for second-round slots, right? Guys in the 100s would sign for less than a mil - Logan Allen got $725k, Dalbec got $650k, Cosart got $450k, Travis got $850k, Beeks was 125 in BA and got $150k, Stankiewicz was going to get $1.1M before we learned he was missing a pec, etc. It's also funny to me to see those rankings in ramreja's list. If you look at what Bregman and Fulmer were ranked by BA and PG, at least, you wouldn't have even gotten to them. Not 3-5 million on every player, just the really hard to sign ones. Beck for example would take like 3 million or more in my opinion. Was seen as a possible first round pick before injury. Wants to play with brother next year in College. You are also going to end up paying other guys more when you start signing guys like Beck for 3 million. I would expect our 1st and 5th round pick would cost more if we start paying a bunch of guys overslot, then the Red Sox will need to sign them in real life. There will be a trickle down effect.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jun 16, 2017 16:18:19 GMT -5
Good point though that by definition these guys would want over-slot. Let's throw some really rough numbers on this using the slot values for their ranks. 1. Tanner Houck (20) - $2,994,500 2. Blayne Enlow (29) - $2,238,900 3. Tanner Burns (39) - $1,760,700 4. Evan Skoug (48) - $1,425,400 5. Alex Scherff (52) - $1,295,700 6. Tristan Beck (53) - $1,265,500 7. Garrett Mitchell (54) - $1,236,000 8. Daniel Cabrera (55) - $1,206,900 9. Blaine Knight (58) - $1,121,300 10. Jake Eder (66) - $926,500 11. Bryce Bonnin (74) - $779,500 12. Brady McConnell (75)- $767,400 13. Kyle Hurt (78) - $732,200 14. Shane Drohan (80) - $709,000 15. Greg Jones (84) - $666,600 16. Chris McMahon (100) - $537,100 17. Jake Mangum (102) - $527,600 18. Jackson Rutledge (111) - $482,600 19. Kyle Jacobsen (117) - $454,900 20. Jordan Anderson (118) - $450,500 Certainly there'd be some inflation here, but starting from those numbers, you're at $21,578,800. I think it's reasonable to say that you're staying under $40M here, even if you carried this out further. Thanks for doing the legwork to pull the draft slots. If you assume 25% extra above slot to get them to sign, then double it to account for the tax, you get roughly $54M. That's still a lot, but much less than the numbers being thrown around earlier. It really comes down to whether you're OK paying essentially 250% of slot apiece to sign ten to fifteen extra players ranked in the 25 to 150 range, plus a bunch more in the next tier or two, and in return, you lose your next two first-rounders. Maybe if you fiddle with the assumptions, you can convince yourself that it's slightly worth it, but it still doesn't seem like a slam dunk. If that's the case, I don't know that teams are willing to take the risk (including the reputational hit) to try it. The real advantage of exceeding the IFA cap was that you really got the cream of the crop, and those top-end guys are the ones who have high enough odds of hitting to be worth it. That's not really the case with this strategy. So the comparison, using MLB's ranks because that's what's on the list: Actual Sox draft: 20, 52, 68, 71 Fake Draft: 20, 29, 39, 48, 52, 53, 54, 55, 58, 66, 74... I think if you factor in the variance in the team's rankings versus a given publication's (yes, Netzer was picked where he was in part because of signability, but I think the club likely had him rated more highly than MLB, BA, or certainly PG did if they popped him there ahead of, say, Thompson), you're maybe picking up one more cusp 1st/2nd talent, three to four more 2nd-round talents, and a bunch of thirds. I would argue that most of the time - but definitely not all of the time!! - this will not be worth the exponentially higher outlay in money, especially when you add the value of the two first-round picks you're losing in the future, the value of which is affected by the fact you may have an awful season and wind up with a great pick (getting back to my point that in 2014 at draft time, the Red Sox couldn't have guessed they'd wind up with the number 7 pick the following year, never mind the 2013 team re: that pick).
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Jun 16, 2017 16:21:12 GMT -5
Your chart litterally proves my point. You are greatly increasing your chances. Nothing is a given, your two first round picks could give you 0 war. It's all about greatly increasing your chances. And what we're trying to tell you is that you're overestimating how much you're increasing your chances of getting better players. And as I said, I think this is in part because you're underestimating how much the teams are already taking guys based on talent. For example, take Jon Denney. He was rated a first-round talent by the outlets. I can confidently tell you that for various reasons, no team had him that high on their board. He fell to the third round and got a second-round bonus, which further indicates that. When the Red Sox popped Ockimey and Betts and the 4th and 5th rounds of their respective drafts, they weren't thinking "let's get a guy who's not one of the top 500 players in this draft because we'll be able to sign him." The calculus involved many things like talent, signability vs. budget, and other concerns, but I think the calculus involves a LOT more of the former than you're giving teams credit for. How? That chart made it very clear. One guy at 15% vs. 15 guys at 5 to 7%. I think you look at Ockimey and Betts the wrong way. I think the Red Sox just had them rated a lot higher than other people did. Your theory would make sense if they were cheap, but they weren't. They could have bought a ton of high school players for that much money.
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Post by jchang on Jun 16, 2017 16:22:14 GMT -5
In general, I think the current slot system with penalties has curbed excessive bonuses for rated prospects who felt they should have been drafted earlier. That said, the current system does not adequately promote drafting in order of talent, the example in drafting a few seniors in rounds 6-10 to free up money for other draftees that require an over-slot bonus. I think this could be addressed. If a round 1 draftee is offered slot and does not accept with a reasonable time, the team has option of getting a pick next year, or applying the money to round 11+ draftees. For round 2-10 draftees that reject slot, there is no option of a pick next year, but the money could applied to a lower pick. This is instead of the sign'em or lose the slot value currently in place. Something could be implemented for prospect who feel they warrant an bonus far over their slot value. In return the team gets an extra year of control (arbitration) should that player make it. For the prospects who sign for well under slot, let them be eligible for arbitration one year early (but change in years of control). This is just an idea to get better alignment of rank to draft position.
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Post by jmei on Jun 16, 2017 16:29:57 GMT -5
And what we're trying to tell you is that you're overestimating how much you're increasing your chances of getting better players. And as I said, I think this is in part because you're underestimating how much the teams are already taking guys based on talent. For example, take Jon Denney. He was rated a first-round talent by the outlets. I can confidently tell you that for various reasons, no team had him that high on their board. He fell to the third round and got a second-round bonus, which further indicates that. When the Red Sox popped Ockimey and Betts and the 4th and 5th rounds of their respective drafts, they weren't thinking "let's get a guy who's not one of the top 500 players in this draft because we'll be able to sign him." The calculus involved many things like talent, signability vs. budget, and other concerns, but I think the calculus involves a LOT more of the former than you're giving teams credit for. How? That chart made it very clear. One guy at 15% vs. 15 guys at 5 to 7%. I think you look at Ockimey and Betts the wrong way. I think the Red Sox just had them rated a lot higher than other people did. Your theory would make sense if they were cheap, but they weren't. They could have bought a ton of high school players for that much money. It's not just about whether it's worth giving up the two first-rounders. It's also about whether it's worth paying the extra signing bonuses and 100% tax. You're continuing to not take into account the latter.
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