Friday, July 24, 2015

2015 MLB Draft: Final Scores

by: Ben Embry

Well...better late than never. I've been sitting on this since the weekend and am finally ready to just push it out on the street.  Following the draft, I scored each team's haul using my top 200 prospect list. Each player was assigned a separate score based on their rank and the team's total was the accumulation of all the players they drafted. But we all know not all players sign, so a more relevant score would be is the one after adjusting for those unsigned.  Below you'll see four columns for each team: pool, drafted, signed, and efficiency. The pool column represents the value of all of the picks had going into the draft; the draft column is the accumulated value of all of the players drafted; and the signed column is for all of the players they eventually signed.  Finally the efficiency % is based on their eventual haul compared to the pool they had to work with.  As you'll see, there were interesting variations between the three score columns.

Team Pool Draft Signed Eff. %
HOU 1 1 1 7
COL 2 3 2 8
TEX 5 4 3 4
ARI 3 5 4 10
MIL 7 2 5 3
TB 21 7 6 2
CIN 9 12 7 14
SF 8 11 8 16
CLE 14 10 9 11
CHW 23 14 10 5
LAD 15 6 11 12
CHC 10 9 12 17
NYY 6 15 13 21
MIN 12 13 14 18
ATL 4 16 15 23
STL 19 8 16 15
BOS 20 17 17 13
PIT 11 18 18 20
PHI 13 19 19 19
OAK 24 21 20 6
KC 16 20 21 22
TOR 25 22 22 9
SD 29 24 23 1
BAL 22 25 24 25
DET 17 23 25 26
LAA 26 27 26 28
MIA 18 28 27 30
SEA 27 26 28 24
WAS 28 29 29 29
NYM 30 30 30 27

The efficiency ratings were better than I anticipated.  There were 6 players from the top 200 that went undrafted and 40 of the ones that were declined to sign.  Yet 8 teams, which is roughly 1/4 of the league, scored more points than the value of their slotted picks.

Know this: this scoring system is strictly about accumulating the most talent.  The Yankees, finishing 13th in the league, accumulated a roughly median amount of talent.  Because they started with the 6th best pool, they fell in the bottom 1/3 in efficiency.  Of the 6 players the Yankees drafted from the Top 200, (Kaprielian, Holder, Finley, Degano, Gilliam, and Hendrix), only Finley and Gilliam were came at a premium, which is to say they were drafted lower than their rank.  Hendrix was the biggest "reach", being drafted at 123 despite being ranked 193.  Getting Gilliam with the 603 pick, who was ranked 186, was the best value. 


Looking at the rest of the league, Houston clearly had the best draft.  In fact, the Astros accumulated 32% more points than Colorado, who had the second best draft.  Having the 2nd and 5th picks helped obviously, but the move to give 37th overall pick Daz Cameron some of the savings from those picks was the checkmate.  Colorado, Texas, and Arizona were also able to convert top 5 pools into top 5 classes.  Arizona should have done even better, but for some reason they left $1.7 million in pool money on the table.

Tip of the hat to San Diego, who used their pool most efficiently.  The ended up with the 23rd best class, which doesn't sound like much until you realize they had the second smallest pool to work with.  Getting 38th ranked Jacob Nix at pick number 86 was a tremendous value pick.  Tampa Bay also did tremendously well, converting the 21st best pool in the draft into the 6th best class.  They got 22nd ranked Chris Betts at pick 52 and 45th ranked Joe McCarthy at 148.

Atlanta had the most disappointing draft, in my opinion.  The finished in the middle of the pack despite having the 4th largest pool.  Ironically they signed all of their draft picks, they just whiffed severely on two of their picks; they took 65th ranked Mike Soroka with the 28th pick and 136th ranked Austin Riley with the 41st pick.

I'll be back with my mid-season top 30 Yankees prospects after the signing deadline passes.  I'm ready now, but have a feeling a couple of these kids may be gone so I'll hold off.

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