Sunday, June 10, 2012

Scouting the Draft: Wrapping Up

Much has been written about the Giants 2012 draft already, so a lot of this may be redundant.  We have broken down each day of the draft separately so I thought it might be a good idea to summarize it from an overall standpoint.  Much has been made of Day 3 and a perception on the part of some analysts that the Giants were too conservative taking almost exclusively college players in general and a large number of college seniors in particular.  In all the hubbub that ensued, I think we might have lost track of the relative importance of the top of the draft and what the Giants accomplished there.

If you look at the historical success rate of draft picks relative to their draft position, at least 80% of the value of any team's draft is in the first round pick.  Probably 90% of any team's draft value is in the top 2 rounds and then asymptotically approaching 100% by the final pick.  By the time you get past single digits, any argument about draft strategy is arguing over no more than about 2% of the territory.  Expectations should be tempered even for late first round picks as historically at least 50% of any draft's overall value lies in the top 10 picks and drops off exponentially through the remainder of the first round and the rest of the draft.

The Giants entered this draft with several factors working against them:

1.  It was a weak draft class to begin with.
2.  The Giants had a paucity of picks in the first 2 rounds as they had to wait through 64 picks after #20 to make their second pick
3.  The new CBA bonus rules gave them a very small pool of money for signing their top 10 picks.  While a team like the Astros could sign their #1 pick to a $4 M bonus and still have $3 M left over to spend on later picks, the Giants total spending allowance for the first 10 picks was $4 M only $1 M more than what Houston had left over from their first pick.  The Giants simply had no room to move money around and try to go over-slot in subsequent round or conversely to take money from later rounds and go substantially over-slot in round 1.  The Giants were pretty much stuck with the slot bonuses they were assigned.

The Giants did have some easily identifiable organizational needs going into the draft:

1.  Organizational pitching depth has thinned considerably in the last 2-3 years as recent drafts have emphasized hitting more.  Their top pitching prospect from last year was traded in the Beltran deal which we won't re-debate here.
2.  The Giants have openly said that they believe power hitters won't come to SF as free agents because AT&T Park suppresses HR's.  Thus, the Giants have to draft and develop their own power hitters.

Although weak overall, the draft did have some areas of talent:

1.  5 tool HS position players- again, no outstanding single talent but quite a few interesting names extending into the supplemental rounds talent-wise.
2.  HS pitchers- the top talent, Lucas Giolito, had and arm injury and Scott Boras weighing him down, but there was a large pool of second tier talent both left and right handed.
3.  College pitchers- Not a great class, as the top guy, Mark Appel had his warts, but there was a scattering of hard throwing talent available.

This draft was notably weak for college hitters.

You could make an argument that the Giants took the best player available at each point in the first 3 rounds.  You can also make an argument that they focused on their organizational need for pitching depth.

As we have pointed out earlier, the first round pick is the key to drafting success. It is essential to get value with the first round pick or the entire draft is doomed.  The Giants have had better success in the first round than most teams without any set formula.  They have taken pitchers and hitters. They have taken highly ranked players who "fell" to them and they have taken "reaches" who other evaluators have ranked lower.  Going by pre-draft rankings, the Giants got excellent value with their first round pick.

Chris Stratton was ranked #18 overall by Baseball America ahead of several HS arms the Giants were thought to be interested in.  Matt Grabusky of MLB Draft Guide had him at #22.  Matt Garrioch of Minor League Ball also had him at #22.  Jonathan Mayo at MLB.com had him right at #20.  As for higher ranked players who "fell", there were really only two, Marcus Stroman and Lance McCullers Jr.  Stroman has size and delivery issues and McCullers is a controversial talent with widely divergent opinions plus possible signability issues.  Summary:  The Giants probably took the best player availalble in the first round in Chris Stratton.

The Giants second round pick was local favorite Martin Agosta from St Mary's.  Agosta is another hard thrower with good command and a fairly advanced repertoire of pitches.  BA had him ranked at #106 overall, but Matt Grabusky had him all the way up at #37! Garrioch had him at #116 and Mayo had him at #92.  While there is more variation in the rankings for Agosta, it appears the Giants got solid value with a strong argument that he was the best player available.  Looking over the last 15 picks of round 2, I don't see any names that jump out as being obvious choices ahead of Agosta.

In round 3, pick #115, the Giants may have reached for a college power hitter in Mac Williamson from Wake Forest.  BA had  him ranked at #236, but Grabusky had him ranked much higher at #144 and had him as the 50'th ranked player left on his board for Day 2, so he must have been moving up Grabusky's rankings as draft day approached.  Personally, I am very suspicious of any college hitter who doesn't crack a .300 BA, but Williamson had better secondary stats than Richie Shaffer, a hitter I think most Giants fans would have been happy with at #20.  Given the variance in rankings, possible late rise up draft boards and the Giants stated desire to draft power, Williamson may well have been the best player available on the Giants draft board at the time of the pick.

From rounds 4-9, the Giants did exactly what they did last year, load up on college power arms.  In the process, they got several players ranked as high or higher by pre-draft rankings:

Round 4, #148  Steven Okert ranked #152 by BA

Round 5, #178  Ty Blach ranked # 194 by BA

Round 6, #208  Stephen Johnson # 63 by BA!

Round 7, #238  EJ Encinosa #322 by BA.

Round 11  #358 Ryan Tella, OF #201 by BA.

I initially was not impressed by the Giants lone signficant HS pick, Shilo McCall in round 9, but after reading a bit  more about him, I've concluded that his scouting video does not do him justice and he deserves to be at least in the same discussion as Alex Bregman who a lot of people would have been happy with in round 2.

Matt Grabusky did an exercise looking at draft value in the first 6 rounds measured by his pre-draft rankings and the Giants came out #2 overall.  That does not mean the Giants got the second most talent in the first 6 rounds of the draft, but it does suggest that they did very well relative to their position in the draft which is really all anyone can ask of them.

In addition to the Day 1 and 2 picks where I think the Giants did very well, there were a scattering of other players who I find particularly interesting due to some outstanding statistic, physical characteristic or underdeveloped tool:

#14  Tyler Hollick- Video game numbers in JC ball.
#16  Ian Gardeck- 98 MPH fastball with command issues.  Was the White Sox 8'th round pick last year.
#24  Andrew Cain- unusual mix of tremendous size and athleticism for an OF with pretty good statistical numbers to back it up.  College senior but fits the profile of a late bloomer.
#26.  Mason McVay- Another big LHP with velocity up to 94 MPH.
#30   Michael Blanchard- "top shelf" speed.  Bat is raw, but he draws walks with a low K rate.

Much has been made of the Giants failure to draft HS talent in this draft, again, particularly in Day 3.  I am not aware of one shred of evidence to support the notion that HS talent has a higher success rate than college, particularly when drafted after round 15.  The overall success rate after round 15 is so low it is almost laughable to think this would be any kind of issue at all.

Given where they were drafting and the constraints of the CBA bonus rules, I don't think there was ever any possibility of the Giants having the type of draft you would give an A grade to.  I do think they did very well with the resources they had to work with even on Day 3!

Drafts take a minimum of 3-5 years to play out in terms of success or failure so all grades are preliminary.  My preliminary grade for the Giants draft is a solid B.

Next up:  Signings, which should be wrapped up expeditiously, which means we should get to see how most of these kids perform in short season ball this summer.

15 comments:

  1. The other problem with drafting high school players in the later rounds is that many of them end up going to college instead of signing. What is the point of drafting someone if they end up going to college right?

    The Zack Wheeler deal for Beltran was a good move at the time even though the outcome was no playoff and no resigning of Beltran. The last I heard, Wheeler still had control issues and wasn't very effective but maybe he figures things out eventually.

    More importantly, that trade for Beltran showed me that the organization is willing to deal it's pitching for bats which we will need to do since they don't know how to draft them or sign them in free agency. That is the single biggest reason why I have no problem at all with this years draft and the focus on getting pitchers over position players.

    It just makes more sense to stock up on pitching which the Giants are really good at evaluating and then flip it for a bat that some other organization drafted and developed. That is the strategy I would like to see again this year when the deadline comes, find a 1B who can hit above .230 and knows how to put the ball over the fence! I'm not a huge fan of Youkilis but he would be an upgrade. What would it take to get him and what would the Giants be willing to give up? If they could center a deal around Gary Brown I wouldn't mind letting him go as long as we resign the entire outfield at the end of the year.

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    1. We have, what, 6-7 weeks to the trade deadline? I'm still holding out hope Belt will start hitting better and render the need for a hitter at 1B moot. Looks like Riot has taken care of the 2B problem.

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    2. This is a general question. It's not related to the Beltran trade specifically.

      What could we have gotten in terms of a major-league ready hitting prospect or a first or second year hitter with Wheeler, say, during the offseaon 15 months of so ago?

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    3. Trades of young talent for young talent are very rare as every team thinks its own young talent is better than the other team's. I don't think Wheeler would have fetched much in the way of young hitting talent. The best you could hope for would be a 1 for 1 deal with a team that had a reciprocal need. Closest comp would be Montero for Pineda which at the time was noted by many observers to be an unusual trade.

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  2. Doc, you mention that it takes 3-5 years to grade a draft. So why not do that? It has been 5 years since the big one. I have my opinions on it, but I would like to see a nice study of it by you t.o get your feel for it.

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    1. If you are referring to 2007, they get a solid A for Bumgarner alone. Everything else is gravy.

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    2. I agree that at this stage, with all the uncertainties involved in player development, to trifle with later rounds is like calcuating scientifically with 10 or 12 significant figures when the measurement precision does not warrant that.

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  3. I think you can grade a draft several times:

    1. immediately after its conclusion...like a few minutes

    2. after the signing dust settles (what good is it to draft players you have no chance of signing?)

    3. after a few years.

    Even for impatient modern people, #2 sounds reasonable.

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    1. Agree that a draft recap after the signing deadline would be a good thing to do. Drafting is one thing, getting everybody signed is quite another. I think pretty much everybody is assuming that the last 4 picks, all HS players are not going to sign at this point.

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  4. I like the Stratton and Agosta picks, and that is the most important part of the draft. The subsequent picks and strategy got a little muddled, but the Giants got some interesting OF prospects and a lot of bullpen arms. They didn't address much in the way of offense, and they ignored the HS class with one notable exception. In addition to the budget imposed by the CBA, the extremely high concentration of college seniors drafted will keep costs down. Of note there were 9 left handed pitchers picked. On the scrapper front, both Duffy and Ryan Jones had caught my attention early, those guys will be interesting to watch. I'm sticking with the C grade, leaning up towards a B due to the 11, 14 and 27th round picks. I would have liked more creativity and a little mix in of some HS, JC or PR academy spice. We'll see what's what with the shakeout on the signing front, specifically looking at the OFs in the teens, who might be hard signs.

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    1. What's your scouting report of Fern? I really like his size and stat line, but you have to wonder about his competition. I know you've said you really like him several times. What's the skinny on him?

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    2. I'm not sure why you say the picks and strategy got muddled after Stratton and Agosta. They went for IsoP in round 3 which they have been doing a lot of under Barr's direction. After that, they made a run on college power arms, which is a rewrite of their script from last year. After that, they took a lot of players who have low floors, but also have something that makes you think they might have a chance to surprise and be special. Seems like pretty clear strategy to me.

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    3. I'm working on a review of the draft. It'll be weighed for emphasis on the start of the draft. Some sort of blind grading system to try and eliminate as much bias as possible. Maybe it'll be a surprise good grade for Los Gigantes.

      I like Williamson - I was the first one to compare his stats with Shaffer remember - and who can argue with a polished lefty reliever at 4, I might actually get to see him play tonight in the USC game. The Shilo story is still getting sorted, and then what the Giants did versus the rest of MLB. I'll try and compare the picks in the review a bit, its not necessarily bad that the Giants went against the grain. Being contrarian and sticking to your guns can be a great thing. I can't shake the feeling they were against a budget beyond the CBA though, I'll try and address that as fairly as I can in the review as well.

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    4. Well, we might have some idea of that when we see the final spending total. I can see an argument for not necessarily spending $100 K on every late round pick just because you can. That all would add up to a total of $2.5 M for an area of the draft that might produce one useful player if you are lucky.

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    5. Oh, and BTW, Shankbone. I look forward to your draft review which I am sure will be excellent as always.

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