Draft Day Extravaganza - Round 1

About five years ago the ATB front office decided to start maintaining historical records. What a shame this decision didn’t happen 13 seasons ago, but it is what it is. Since then, fairly meticulous records have been kept on all aspects of the game. Today, specifically, we can analyze the draft tendencies of our ownership over the past five seasons.

In this study, we’ll examine the first three rounds of each draft to better understand how, as a whole, we collective operate. How many pitchers do we draft? When does the first closer come off the board? Who are the recurring value picks every draft? How about the recurring busts?

Before starting, a few of the ground rules and assumptions:

• We have averaged between 16-20 teams over the past 5 years. This means between 48 and 60 players are drafted in Rounds 1-3 every year.
• A total of 107 players were drafted during this timeframe, approximately two times the amount of players strictly required. This lends credence to the understood generalization that no two ATB drafts are alike.
• For this study, I excluded any player drafted just one time (in the first 3 rounds) during the past 5 years. This is a large pool of 41 players. As a note of mild interest, several were drafted in Round 1 – 1884 Roger Conner, 1930 Chuck Klein, 1915 Eddie Plank, and 1884 Tommy Bond – but were never drafted ‘early’ in another ATB season again.
  

ATB owners clearly believe offense is the key to winning. Period. Overall, 68% of all players drafted in rounds 1-3 are, unsurprisingly batters. Anecdotally, this is due to the belief that good pitchers can be found late in the draft, which is true, but I also wonder if there is a market correction due. Good and even great pitchers have cropped up late each year – Bobby Shantz, Lady Baldwin, Pete Conway, Ben Sanders, Cannonball Titcomb, and Scott Stratton come to mind, but there are more – but one day, perhaps this season, we are going to find that all these hidden gems are no longer hidden. One smart owner will buck the trend and draft all of these previous gems early and run away with a division.

In round 1, 75% of the picks were batters, 85% in Round 2, dropping to 48% in Round 3. This is very telling and any owner wanting to make a pitching first move should do so in the second round – it might be too late by Round 3.

The Top 4
The Top 4 picks, in order, for virtually every draft are Babe Ruth (1920 or 1921), Barry Bonds (2001 or 2002), Mickey Mantle (1956 or 1957), and Pedro Martinez (2000 and purposely forgetting my personal disaster of a 1999 selection several years ago). Only once did one of these players fall out of the Top 4, and that was Mantle going as the 5th pick in ATB VIII. He was left on the table for 2004 Randy Johnson who ended up fairing well (3.53 ERA in a ptichers park) but not ultimately worth the value

Picks 5-8
The next four selections a bunched together and, on average, are virtually interchangeable from one season to the next. 1941 Ted Williams, 1995 Greg Maddux, 1927 Lou Gehrig, followed by Randy Johnson (1999 or 2004). This year due to the unveiling of 100 sim results along with a stellar ATB XII campaign, I am sure Lady Baldwin circa 1885 will bump Johnson from this list.. Baldwin has been in the league two years, first drafted in ATB XI in round 21 by Brian B. Last year he jumped to the 40th pick of the draft, at the end of Round 2. This year, look for a 4th to 8th pick overall selection for the dead ball era phenom.

Looking at rounds 1-8, for the most part owners are doing a great job in getting the order correct. The charts below separate batters from hitters and compare the 100 sim results for each of them.
The only possible issue is that Ted Williams is a bit underrated. He out hits Mantle, but Mantle gets the edge every year in draft slot because of his defense.

Closing Out Round 1 – Pitchers

With just two other pitchers taken in Round 1, let’s close them out. 1912 or 1913 Walter Johnson has been the consensus 12th pick while Christy Mathewson 1905, 1908, or 1909, comes in at #15. Johnson is a legit first rounder but either I picked a bum year for the 100 resims or Mathewson isn’t as good as we all thought.

The Big Train might even be better than the aforementioned Randy Johnson – his ERA is similar but his WHIP is a full .13 lower. Look for Johnson to be Top 10 this year.

Batters through the 20th Pick


Here is where things get a little interesting for the batters. It seems natural to compare the infielders and outfielders amongst themselves so that’s what we’ll do.

Once again, owners are getting the order of players correct if not necessarily the drat slot. 1924 Rogers Hornsby, 1908 Honus Wagner, followed by 1935 Arky Vaughan and 1901 Nap Lajoie is the perfect order. Hornsby hits a ton with Av defense while Wagner (Ex) and his weaker counterparts (Vg) have above average defense. This further supports the order of the draft being correct, but does Wagner’s defense really make up for 36 points in OBP and 26 points in slugging? I can’t imagine it does, yet Wagner is routinely drafted around the same time as Hornsby.

Jimmie Foxx (1932) is a pure power hitter belting 39 home runs a season and maxing out at 53 in the 100 resims. He’s a fine choice at 11 for owners basing their offense on a middle of the order elite power hitter. Mark McGwire (1998) is also a power hitting first rounder, although a cheaper alternative down at pick 20.

The last four batters to speak about are all star outfielders. 1887 Tip O’Neil (.856 OPS) and 1948 Stan Musial (.839 OPS) are the best of the hitters in the bottom half of the first round, but are also just adequate with the glove. Ty Cobb (1909, 1915, 1917) offers Vg defense with well above average hitting and Tris Speaker 1916 offers Ex defense with slightly above averaging offense.

In all, one can’t argue with the average drafting choices of ATB owners. Aside from nitpicking with the tail end of the first round and a little extra love for Randy Johnson, Round 1 has been surprisingly spot on with the 100 resim results.

I am over 1000 words; lets split the study into multiple posts.

One more item to note though. For comparison purposes, here are the average OPS results by position during the 100 re-sims.
.800 – Right Field
.785 – First Base
.781 – Third Base
.771 – Center Field
.770 – Left Field
.707 – Second Base
.701 – Catcher
.679 – Shortstop