How Valuable Is a First-Round Draft Pick?

How valuable is a first-round draft pick?

The draft is one of the most important resources for teams to add players that allow their organization to move in the right direction. But how quickly do these top-rated amateur players make a splash, and is it with the team who selected them?

Objective

My goal with this project was to analyze the type of overall impact first-round draft picks have on the organization that drafted them and observe how quickly an impact was made. Many first-round prospects are expected to move successfully through the ranks of the minor-league system, with the idea that they will impact their big-league affiliate in the near future. This of course isn’t always the case even for can’t-miss amateur prospects, as it is well known that only 10% of players in the minor leagues will make it to “The Show.” All players have different ways of developing and adapting based on the level of baseball they are drafted out of (High School/College), as well as what type of minor-league development systems they become part of moving forward.

In this analysis, I looked at the first-round draft classes from 2006-2010, which gave me a sample size of five different draft classes. The value of a prospect, especially in the first round, is in his potential to produce at the Major League level during his first six seasons of service time. This of course is based on Major League Baseball’s salary system that pays players very poorly, most of the time (relative to their market value), for their first six years of service time before becoming eligible for free agency. This is the reason why I chose five draft classes, with the last class just finishing up their sixth possible year of service time and becoming eligible for free agency following the 2017 season.

Method

The sabermetric stat that I used to analyze these five first round draft classes was WAR (Wins Above Replacement). I chose WAR because it is an analytical way to look at a player’s overall value to their team, while also being able to compare players from different timeframes in baseball, such as the first-round draft class from 2006 to the first-round class in 2010. The values are expressed in a format of wins so I can look see pick A is worth 5.2 wins to his team, while pick B is worth 7.8 wins to his team in that given season.  As a measure of their success, I looked at the full first-round draft classes from 2006-2010 and calculated the WAR of each class through the first six years of possible service time. For the 2010 class I calculated their WAR heading into the 2017 season. Calculating the WAR ranking for each class gave me a better understanding of just how impactful certain first-round picks have been for their team within their first six years of club control. My analysis also revealed the large number of highly-touted prospects drafted in the first round (outside of the Top 10) who failed to make substantial contributions to their team on the field. When calculating the WAR through the first six seasons of possible ML service time, I was also interested in looking at whether these picks were selected out of High School or College and the total amount of service time they had within through the 2016 season.

By The Numbers

2006: HS – 13, College – 17

Avg. ML Service Time – 3.66

Avg. WAR – 4.05

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2007: HS – 17, College – 13

Avg. ML Service Time – 2.60

Avg. WAR – 3.00

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2008: HS – 9, College – 21

Avg. ML Service Time – 3.35

Avg. WAR – 2.83

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2009: HS – 17, College – 15

Avg. ML Service Time – 2.06

Avg. WAR – 3.68

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2010: HS – 17, College – 15

Avg. ML Service Time – 1.04

Avg. WAR – 3.65

 

Conclusions

• First and foremost, there is no exact science as to whether a first-round draft class will be comprised of more high-school players or more college players. It depends on the stock each year. In 2006-2010 the most skewed first-round draft class between the two levels of play was in 2008 when there were 21 players drafted out of college and just 9 out of high school. This class also owns the lowest average WAR at 2.83 through their sixth season of service. The class is carried, far and away, by Buster Posey (#4 out of FSU) who owned a combined 22.8 WAR rating through his sixth season with 6.161 seasons of service time through 2016 (1^st in class). The remaining 29 picks in the 2008 draft combined for just a 2.14 WAR through their six team controlled seasons, led by Brett Lawrie (12.2 WAR), who is currently out of Major League Baseball.

 

• The class with the highest average WAR through their first six seasons is the class who has been around the longest; the 2006 1^st round draft class with a 4.05 WAR. The class production within their first six seasons also went more with the stereotypical draft script as four players within the top 12 picks exceeded a 10.0 combined WAR through their first six seasons (College #3 Longoria 29.8,  HS #7 Kershaw 24.3, College #10 Lincecum 23.9, College #11 Scherzer 11.4). Picks 12-30 combined for a minuscule 0.97 WAR.

 

• Although it seems that all we hear about when it comes to top 10 picks in drafts are those who failed to perform up to the expectations, there is something to be said for the production a top-5 pick can bring to an organization. In my WAR calculations, the #1 and #4 picks from the 2006-2010 draft classes owned the top two average WAR rankings, with the top pick averaging out to 10.98, and the fourth pick averaging out to a 11.68 WAR ranking. Picks 1-5 from 2006-2010 combined for an average WAR of 7.51 through six seasons.

 

• The numbers show that teams who are in rebuilding modes have a distinct advantage at developing their farm system, and in turn their big-league clubs, with a top-10 pick. The 50 players selected in the top 10 picks from 2006-2010 combined for an average WAR of 6.236. While picks 11-32 (104 total players) combined for just a 1.84 average WAR across their first six seasons of service time.

 

• There’s an argument to be made for the average player drafted out of High School taking a bit longer to develop into a big-league player than that of a player who has been drafted out of college. The WAR numbers of the first-round draft picks from 2006-2010 speaks to this theory as well. First-round college draft picks produced a higher WAR than those drafted out of high school in four out of the five draft classes I analyzed. First-round selections out of college produced an average WAR of 4.21, while players drafted out of high school produced an average WAR of 2.59.

 

Wins above replacement isn’t a tell-all story, and neither are the first six years of a professional baseball player’s career. It is, however, a nice way to analyze the overall contribution and impact a player can have for his team, and the first six years gives us a glimpse at just how quickly a team’s investment might pay off.