3 replies to this topic

[BSLChrisStoner]

Tom Tango: Do some teams have better scouts than others?
http://www.insidethe...ts_than_others/

"I looked at every draft from 1985-2002. That’s 18 drafts. I considered a draft pick a success if he was able to get a total of three career WAR by the time he was 29. That standard is pretty low, but, I still only got 499 players. That’s an average of only 28 players per draft.

Anyway, for each draft slot, I assigned a probability of a team drafting a “success” pick. In those 18 drafts, 78% of those players got at least those three WAR, so I assigned 78% as the value for the overall #1 pick. And so on down the line. I smoothed it out so I had a continuous function."

[Oriole85]

I think without a doubt the answer is yes. I know this finding didn't show it but I don't think all scouting departments are created equal. To me, this is an area where smaller revenue teams can compete with big market teams and even exceed them since in many cases the higher revenue teams are focusing on elite FAs, the smaller revenue teams have to beat them this way.

[Oriole85]

I think it was interesting how they cited the Twins 1989 draft as one of the more successful drafts. To a baseball novice, four impact players by a single team in a single draft isn't going to see like a lot(out of 50+ rounds at the time), but that's like hitting the jackpot since getting two impact players in any one draft is usually considered a great one.

The best one though was probably in 1968 by the Dodgers(I saw them show this on MASN some years back).

Selections in that Draft included Bill Buckner, Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, Bobby Valentine, Geoff Zahn, Joe Ferguson and Tom Paciorek.

http://mlb.mlb.com/n...49567&fext=.jsp

[bnickle]

Of course some teams have better scouts.