Question for Draftniks/Prospects gurus

[Sandisfan]

I have a Question for Draftniks/Prospect gurus... It is my impression that unless the Giants pick near the top of the first round that they generally pick players that are well below average in the last 30 years or so.

If someone who knows could please give a rundown of the 1st rounders that have been above average players in the last 30 or so years. If you could expand on that and show how well they have done in the second and third rounds and if able to list above average players drafted in any round in the last 30 or so years.

The reason I bring this up is, it is my impression that if you take out the high first rounders, the Giants ability to pick even later 1st or other late round gems, compared to the rest of the league is pretty pathetic.....I could be wrong but I don't think I am.

Thanks you in advance for any input. I take corrections pretty well and it would add to my knowledge base.

 

[calsnowskier]

The baseball draft, even top 10 picks, is a complete crapshoot. Attempting to compare it to the NBA or NFL drafts is a fools errand.

I am not going to do the breakdown you have requested, because what you ave asked for is either a book or a doctoral thesis, not a message board post.

However, quickly off he top of my head...

Posey
Timmeh
Bum
Wheeler.

All very successful top 10 picks that the team did not "miss" on. If you have top 10 picks for years in a row, if you get 2 MLB starters out of it, you are OK with tat outcome (even if not ecstatic). Getting 3 franchise level payers and one who appears to be coming into that level is EPIC good. Many Giants fans don't realize how well the org did there.

Other firsts...

Alderson
Brown
Panik
Cain
Stratton
Arroyo

Too early to rate Stratton and Arroyo, however, Arroyo looks very promising. Alderson, in a vacuum, is a bust, but the equity the team had in him was turned into a near-all-star level 2B. Brown and Panik are still writing their stories, but I figure we will get at least one mid-level starter out of the two (probably Panik). If I have to to tell you about Cain, well...

Other big hits...

Wilson (24th)
Romo (17)
Belt (5)
Crawford (4)

These are all in the last 10 years or so. The org had a rather pronounced change in philosophy after Bonds, so the look at the Bonds era really isn't fair.

 

[Sandisfan]

I don't disagree that the Giants philosophy has changed.... but I can't understand how drafting bad players in the draft is going to help make the team better... not questioning you but whatever their philosophy was, it was stupid, maybe they thought saving money on signings was going to save them money, in reality it cost them money in the long run... especially when you have the chance to make stupid signings like Aaron Rowand and Dave Roberts.

 

[Sandisfan]

It would have to be a qualitative assessment because of Alderson, Brown(I think will be a below average player over all), Panik, Cain, Stratton, Arroyo only Cain is sure to be above average for his career.

On the other hits... Wilson (24th) Romo (17) Belt (5) Crawford (4) every team hits on lower picks but it is about the quality of the hits and the number of quality hits compared to the competition for instance if followers of other teams were to list their hits in the last 10 to 15 years our list may not look that good.

 

[Mays-Fan]

It would have to be a qualitative assessment because of Alderson, Brown(I think will be a below average player over all), Panik, Cain, Stratton, Arroyo only Cain is sure to be above average for his career.

On the other hits... Wilson (24th) Romo (17) Belt (5) Crawford (4) every team hits on lower picks but it is about the quality of the hits and the number of quality hits compared to the competition for instance if followers of other teams were to list their hits in the last 10 to 15 years our list may not look that good.

Not trying to be snooty here, but we did win the WS in 2010 and 2012, in large part due to drafted players brought up through the ranks - Cain, Timmy, Bum, Posey. We couldn't have done too badly.

 

[calsnowskier]

I am not going to argue this point. Your stance is that the Giants do not know how to draft. I get it. I have heard it over and over again.

My stance is that 2 championships in 3 years says otherwise. They have done this with 4 out of 5 infield positions home produced and 4 of 5 starting pitchers home produced and both closers home produced.

You are right, though.

The giants continue to blow it in the draft.

 

[SF11704]

Success Rate of MLB Draft Picks by Slot | VFTB

This gives you a pretty good view into MLB as a whole. I also think it confirms what Cal has stated ... at least twice in this thread. It is a crap shoot and if you look at some of the charts ... it gets pretty bad across all of MLB as you get out of the top 10 picks. Even within the top 10 picks it still isn't a 'lock'. To say we did horrible without any metrics is somewhat of a stretch. According to some of these charts I'm guessing we are somewhere in the middle .... I didn't see us listed as the best 5 teams or the worst 5 team. But .... 2010 and 2012 makes this a rather strange question .... and if Posey wasn't taken out in 2011 I'm not so sure it couldn't have been 2010-2011-2012 .... just saying!

 

[calsnowskier]

Success Rate of MLB Draft Picks by Slot*|*VFTB

This gives you a pretty good view into MLB as a whole. I also think it confirms what Cal has stated ... at least twice in this thread. It is a crap shoot and if you look at some of the charts ... it gets pretty bad across all of MLB as you get out of the top 10 picks. Even within the top 10 picks it still isn't a 'lock'. To say we did horrible without any metrics is somewhat of a stretch. According to some of these charts I'm guessing we are somewhere in the middle .... I didn't see us listed as the best 5 teams or the worst 5 team. But .... 2010 and 2012 makes this a rather strange question .... and if Posey wasn't taken out in 2011 I'm not so sure it couldn't have been 2010-2011-2012 .... just saying!

GREAT find!!

I will have to read it again when I get home tonight, but my first pass-through was very enlightening.

Dr B's site continually has this discussion as well. OGC, specifically, has done numerous studies over the last few years breaking down the success rates of picks and rounds, and he has basically come to the conclusion that the team drafting is more important than the draft position itself.

Certain teams have made a point of drafting well over the last 30 - 40 years. The Cards, Spanks and Doggies are traditionally very good on draft day and the Pads, Pirates and Mutts are traditionally not very good. The Giants, over the last 10 years or so, have certainly made a serious attempt to enter the upper tier, although I agree that they still have work to do to be an elite draft-day team (primarily, getting position players, and specifically OFers).

 

[SFGRTB]

Success Rate of MLB Draft Picks by Slot*|*VFTB

This gives you a pretty good view into MLB as a whole. I also think it confirms what Cal has stated ... at least twice in this thread. It is a crap shoot and if you look at some of the charts ... it gets pretty bad across all of MLB as you get out of the top 10 picks. Even within the top 10 picks it still isn't a 'lock'. To say we did horrible without any metrics is somewhat of a stretch. According to some of these charts I'm guessing we are somewhere in the middle .... I didn't see us listed as the best 5 teams or the worst 5 team. But .... 2010 and 2012 makes this a rather strange question .... and if Posey wasn't taken out in 2011 I'm not so sure it couldn't have been 2010-2011-2012 .... just saying!

This is awesome, thanks for the find!

 

[MarcoPolo]

It really doesn't matter how well they did in a draft 20 or 30 years ago.

1) Any of those guys aren't on the team anymore

2) As already mentioned, post-Bonds the team changed their draft strategy. I can't remember if it was Bonds' last year or just after, but the team completely revamped their scouting and drafting personnel. And Bow-tie was big about making sure the scouting and drafting guys got what they needed. And that change in strategy brought us Posey and Crawford, Belt, and a pile of pretty good prospects.

3) the draft rules changed in 2012 (well, to be pedantic, they changed in '11, but 2012 was the first draft affected) : money (bonuses) are a much smaller issue now. The penalties for going over slot on a bonus are so draconian that the draft bonuses now are very close to what the league posts. No more Boras clients getting $4M over slot and guaranteed major league contracts on signing. "Overdrafting" (drafting a kid a round or 3 before he normally would have been drafted in order to get him to sign without too much argument about bonus) was a common practice used by the Pirates often (and the Giants too, some years). That, added to the "you don't lose your early draft pick if you can't sign the guy" rule change from the previous CBA makes the 2012 and after draft strategies a whole new ball game.

 

[calsnowskier]

It really doesn't matter how well they did in a draft 20 or 30 years ago.

1) Any of those guys aren't on the team anymore

2) As already mentioned, post-Bonds the team changed their draft strategy. I can't remember if it was Bonds' last year or just after, but the team completely revamped their scouting and drafting personnel. And Bow-tie was big about making sure the scouting and drafting guys got what they needed. And that change in strategy brought us Posey and Crawford, Belt, and a pile of pretty good prospects.

3) the draft rules changed in 2012 (well, to be pedantic, they changed in '11, but 2012 was the first draft affected) : money (bonuses) are a much smaller issue now. The penalties for going over slot on a bonus are so draconian that the draft bonuses now are very close to what the league posts. No more Boras clients getting $4M over slot and guaranteed major league contracts on signing. "Overdrafting" (drafting a kid a round or 3 before he normally would have been drafted in order to get him to sign without too much argument about bonus) was a common practice used by the Pirates often (and the Giants too, some years). That, added to the "you don't lose your early draft pick if you can't sign the guy" rule change from the previous CBA makes the 2012 and after draft strategies a whole new ball game.

What position did Bow Tie have with the org during the MadCowan era? MadCowan was fired in about '06/'07, IIRC, which was after the team got Cain, but about the time they picked up Timmeh...

 

[MarcoPolo]

What position did Bow Tie have with the org during the MadCowan era? MadCowan was fired in about '06/'07, IIRC, which was after the team got Cain, but about the time they picked up Timmeh...

He replaced Magowan (i.e., took his job as uber-mench who rules all). IIRC, the job title is "managing partner".

And Neukom took over between the '08 and '09 seasons.

At the time, I speculated that "the Giants" were letting the team go to crap so they could blame Sabes et. al. and replace them with no fuss. It turns out only PM got tossed.

 

[calsnowskier]

He replaced Magowan (i.e., took his job as uber-mench who rules all). IIRC, the job title is "managing partner".

And Neukom took over between the '08 and '09 seasons.

At the time, I speculated that "the Giants" were letting the team go to crap so they could blame Sabes et. al. and replace them with no fuss. It turns out only PM got tossed.

I remember at about that time there being a LOT of discussion about Sabes and his job security. I remember getting ingot a pretty heated argument with GP at about that time about how bad he was (IIRC, this was about the time that Beane was saying how he stopped calling Sabes at all because he could never get him on the line at all anyway). There was even some national writer who did a story about the GMs at the time, and he rated Sabes as one of the worst.

I suspect that whole episode was probably closer to '06/'07, because the farm was still relatively bare. There was quite a bit of talk amongst the Lunatic Fringe that the team would start to seriously compete beginning in about '10 or '11 with the "Big 4" coming up (Posey, Bum, Alderson, Villalona).

Seeing as the "Big 4" was after the '08 draft, your timeline sounds more feasible.

 

[Sandisfan]

As the thread starter I want to Thank you for the

information and opinions about the question I posed.I agree that the Drafting has improved although as those have noted some of that comes from when the team wasn't very good and the Giants were drafting high.They seem to have done a better job lately in the later rounds but only time will tell.
It wasn't my intention to rile anybody up but just to provoke an informed assessment of the job the Giants have been doing because my reference goes all the way back to when Horace Stoneham (sp) owned the team before Lurie bought the team from him.
My reference is a flawed one because although I did try to follow the prospects the Giants had it wasn't with deep detailed information. My reference came from results and between Matt Williams and Cain which is around 25 years of drafting There were not very many hits on the positive side that is Above average players which is how you build a strong core of players.
All this said If you include Bonds original free agent signing and trading a close to the end of his career Matt Williams for a possible hall of Famer Jeff Kemp, drafting can't be the only way to build a team but drafting well will fill holes and can keep the team from making dumb moves like signing Aaron at the term and money he got as well as Dave Roberts and others.

 

[msgkings322]

information and opinions about the question I posed.I agree that the Drafting has improved although as those have noted some of that comes from when the team wasn't very good and the Giants were drafting high.They seem to have done a better job lately in the later rounds but only time will tell.
It wasn't my intention to rile anybody up but just to provoke an informed assessment of the job the Giants have been doing because my reference goes all the way back to when Horace Stoneham (sp) owned the team before Lurie bought the team from him.
My reference is a flawed one because although I did try to follow the prospects the Giants had it wasn't with deep detailed information. My reference came from results and between Matt Williams and Cain which is around 25 years of drafting There were not very many hits on the positive side that is Above average players which is how you build a strong core of players.
All this said If you include Bonds original free agent signing and trading a close to the end of his career Matt Williams for a possible hall of Famer Jeff Kemp, drafting can't be the only way to build a team but drafting well will fill holes and can keep the team from making dumb moves like signing Aaron at the term and money he got as well as Dave Roberts and others.

Jeff's little brother Matt is a pretty good player too

 

[calsnowskier]

If you are comparing different eras, than OK. But trying to make a connection to how the team drafts now vs how they drafted in, for example, 1998, is flawed. Between about 1993 and about 2004, the team practically punted the entire drafting side of the game. The had GOAT, and they had a crap ball park. They wanted to field a competitor every year, and did not care about building for the future. Every penny went into NOW. In fact, they actually fired a large portion of their scouting department to save the money.

After GOAT retired, and AT&T was up and running, they changed their focus to building the farm. Yes, they had a lot of success with this thanks in large part to four straight years of HR first rounders, but that should not be Poo-Poo'd. SD consistently has top 10 picks, and they consistently strikeout with them (Bush and Donovan, just to name 2 high-profile flops).

Again, look at St Louis, LA and the Spanks to see consistently well drafted teams. After that, most teams are a crapshoot. The Giants used to be near the bottom. Now they are near the top.

 

[Sandisfan]

Obviously JEFF KENT NOT KEMP BRAINLOCK HA HA HA

DUH!!!!!