The Diamondbacks and the Draft: A Blast From the Past
by Marc Fournier on May 12, 2011 8:20 AM EDT
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PrintI was really bored tonight so I started doing what any sane baseball fan does in the wake of restlessness, I made a baseball chart. What? You've never done that? Whatever, man. Anyway, with the upcoming draft rapidly nearing I figured I'd look into some of the successes and failures our brief franchise has encountered in the draft. Needless to say, the draft has been a huge crap shoot for the Diamondbacks. Not only has there been a meager four players surpass 10+ WAR in our 14-year draft history, none of them are with the team anymore and two of them never even appeared in a D-back uniform. More details after jump...
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Since 1996, when the Diamondbacks selected Nick Bierbrodt as their first overall pick in the franchise's brief history, they have drafted 779 players. To date, only 67 of them signed and made it to the MLB with at least one appearance. All of those 67 players are plotted on the graph above. Additionally, the D-backs have had the privilege of a first-round pick 24 times, drafting gems such as Nick Bierbrodt, Corey Myers, Jason Bulger, Brooks Brown and others. Without a doubt, the D-backs simply haven't had the kind of success with the draft that fans would expect. Given the amount of hype that prospects are usually tagged with, be it fairly or not, only adds more fuel to the fire that is the difficulty of drafting potential superstars.
So let's start with 1996. For the normal fan there's only two true names that will stand out: Brad Penny and Junior Spivey. Penny was a budding young boy, 18-years-old, coming out of high school with a string of awards. The Diamondbacks pounced on him in the 5th round and Penny rewarded the organization by pounding away the lower levels of the minor leagues and quickly became the 5th rated best prospect in 1999. He was then traded to the Florida Marlins in exchange for a much needed closer at the time in Matt Mantei; as the story goes, Penny went on to produce a 20.6 WAR for four different teams and is still going strong today. Junior Spivey was drafted in the 36th round and came out of the gates a-blazing, posting a 4.5 WAR in his first full season in 2002 and even gathered enough votes to place 14th in the MVP race that year. Spivey then fell off the map and never posted a WAR above 1 before retiring in 2005.
Jack Cust was the first overall pick in 1997 and, like the other top WAR producers, was traded before he ever played any meaningful games with the D-backs. His 8.1 career WAR is hard to gauge given his prominent DH status in the AL. Additionally, there were only three other players who went on to the MLB from the 1997 draft. Two guys who not many people know of in Brian Gordon and Ron Calloway, and one who a lot of us will remember in Alex Cintron. Interestingly, the D-backs decided to keep Cintron and his entire 1.9 WAR that he provided in five years with the team...
The next big hitter didn't come until 1999 when we drafted Lyle Overbay in the 18th round. Lyle played 96 games with the Diamondbacks producing 1 WAR before being packaged in the megatrade that brought Richie Sexson to Arizona. Overbay has produced 16.8 WAR since then.
The following year the D-backs drafted Brandon Webb in the 8th round. Webb may never again pitch like he used to and isn't very well referred to these days by Arizona fans, but the fact remains that he gave D-backs fans a reason to watch in the horrible 2004 season and beyond. He won a Cy Young in 2006 and placed second in '07 and '08. Finally, the D-backs could pump their fist and brag about one of their draft picks. Unfortunately, his shoulder exploded in 2009 and he still hasn't found all of the pieces that went missing. He's long gone from Arizona, but he still remains as the best draft pick Arizona has ever had.
Dan Uggla was drafted in the 11th round in 2001 and played over 500 games with nearly 2,400 plate appearances in the minor leagues. He posted a slash line of .276/.347/.442 during that time but never made it to Triple-A. In December of 2005, the D-backs chose not to protect Uggla in the Rule 5 draft and the Florida Malrins scooped him up. The rest is history.
Since then, we've seen some new stars begin to rise to the occasion. Stephen Drew is sporting a 9.0 WAR and Justin Upton isn't far behind at 8.7 WAR. Those are definitely improvements that should help erase some blemishes off of what has been a seemingly endless amount of bad luck and poor choices. Speaking of poor choices, let's go back to those first-round picks that I mentioned earlier...
* Supplemental pick
** Did not sign with team
| Year | Name | Pick | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Nick Bierbrodt | 30 | ||
| 1997 | Jack Cust | 30 | ||
| 1998 | no first-round pick |
|||
| 1999 | Corey Myers | 4 | ||
| 1999 | Casey Daigle | 31* | ||
| 2000 | no first-round pick |
|||
| 2001 | Jason Bulger | 22 | ||
| 2002 | Sergio Santos | 27 | ||
| 2003 | Conor Jackson | 19 | ||
| 2003 | Carlos Quentin | 29 | ||
| 2004 | Stephen Drew | 15 | ||
| 2005 | Justin Upton | 1 | ||
| 2005 | Matthew Torra | 31* | ||
| 2006 | Max Scherzer | 11 | ||
| 2006 | Brooks Brown | 34* | ||
| 2007 | Jarrod Parker | 9 | ||
| 2007 | Wes Roemer | 50* | ||
| 2007 | Ed Easley | 61* | ||
| 2008 | Daniel Schlereth | 26 | ||
| 2008 | Wade Miley | 43* | ||
| 2009 | Robert Borchering | 16 | ||
| 2009 | Allen Pollock | 17 | ||
| 2009 | Matthew Davidson | 35* | ||
| 2009 | Christopher Owings | 41* | ||
| 2009 | Michael Belfiore | 45* | ||
| 2010 | Barret Loux** | 6 | ||
Kind of mind-shattering how poor our first-rounders have been. Overall, though, the D-backs just haven't had many success stories come from the draft. That could all change within the next few years as Justin Upton continues to play and guys like Jarrod Parker and A.J. Pollock sit in the wings. We'll have to wait and see.
Sources:
http://www.baseball-reference.com
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/draft/teamsdraft.asp?T=2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arizona_Diamondbacks_first-round_draft_picks
http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com
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Spivey then fell off the map and never posted a WAR above 1 before retiring in 2005.
Well, he didn’t really retire from professional baseball in 2005, maybe from the Majors though. In 2009 I know he played for the Tucson Toros (IND).
Per Mare, Per Terras
Thank you for the Corey Myers reminder.
I needed a good laugh.
Founder of the Coalition to Light Vince Carter On Fire (CTLVCOF)
RIP Seasons of Discontent
Any data on overall draft success?
Like maybe average WAR/pick/draft slot across the major leagues? The DBacks data above looks bad, but is it really worse than average? Or is the draft just this big a crapshoot?
it looks to me like we seriously had no idea what on earth we were doing
up until the 2003 draft with Conor Jackson
for most teams, you can basically take our graph and just extrapolate it. our draft record doesn’t look abnormal to me at all. in fact, it actually looks better than what i suspect the average team’s looks like. you have to remember, we’re an extremely young organization. and like i said, we didn’t start drafting well until 2003.
this graph shows average value from draft picks. careful, it’s organized by pick number, as opposed to round, like Sprankton’s above, which means the 500th pick would cut you off at around the 15th Round. but basically what this shows you is that drafts in general start losing a ton of value once you get out of the top 50 picks.
http://cdn2.sbnation.com/imported_assets/205723/war4.gif
now granted, there’s a small flaw in this, because it ignores the Brad Penny and Mat Latos of the world who are actually top 50 or top 100 talents that drop due to signability concerns. but the number of these signees are so small compared to the average that their average career WAR is going to be a blip on the graph. and the Dbacks aren’t really know for paying overslot for these types of talents (which is, admittedly, probably a weakness in our drafting strategy in the past).
however, this type of analysis makes me feel extremely strongly that “good” drafting versus “bad” drafting is all defined within the top 50 picks. every organization is going to get lucky once in a while and find a “Brandon Webb” in the 8th round at some point in time, and get like 30 WAR from them. but what really shows how good your scouting team and drafting team is when you have to decide between those in the top 50. in particular, the draft picks in the top 15 have a huge effect on your future. there’s a ton of value that’s generated from players who are chosen in the top 15, and teams get it right enough that you should be reasonably expected to get it right, but teams still miss and when they do, it’s incredibly damaging. it’s the difference between the Mariners drafting Brandon Morrow with the #5 pick, when your scouts should have been all over a local Washington boy, and SF drafting Tim Lincecum with the #10 pick. so yeah…top 15 picks is where you have to make sure you don’t miss…where the important decision-making happens. so i can’t stress enough how important the upcoming draft is for the Dbacks.
as for the success of our drafts, if you look only at our top 50ish picks since 2003 it’s a pretty impressive group of players: Conor Jackson (19), Carlos Quentin (29), Stephen Drew (15), Jon Zeringue (56), Justin Upton (1), Matt Torra (31), Matt Green (49), Max Scherzer (11), Brooks Brown (34), Brett Anderson (55), Jarrod Parker (9), Wes Roemer (50) at which point we start getting into prospects who are still in development. But if you look at that objectively, that’s a pretty damn good collection of prospects. Most of the busts have been entirely because of health issues (CoJack, Torra) or borderline prospects (who the hell are Jon Zeringue or Matt Green?). And one of the reasons we’re in the position we are in now is because we’ve traded away a lot of talent (Quentin, Scherzer, Anderson). My point sticks though. The Dbacks were very very good at drafting during the Rizzo era, and I think we did better than the average team that drafted at our positions over that time.
by blue bulldog on May 12, 2011 10:55 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Rec'd
I love when you have really long replies.
Wear your own fur.
by Marc Fournier on May 12, 2011 3:05 PM EDT up reply actions
thanks
this is a great post
it’s stuff like this that keeps us fans all going, when our team is depressing the hell out of us in the regular season, right?
by blue bulldog on May 12, 2011 7:13 PM EDT up reply actions
Yeah, it's REALLY bad.
As bb noted in full detail. :-)
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
by Dan Strittmatter on May 12, 2011 12:08 PM EDT up reply actions
It's certainly more a crap-shoot
Than the NBA or NFL drafts, where talent can basically immediately get plugged-in at the major-league level. That basically doesn’t happen any more, Mike Leake excepted. The MLB draft is a lot more about spotting potential and tools than, necessarily, fully-fledged players.
I would agree that it’s what you do at the top of the draft that counts, which makes it vital we do well with the #3 and #7 picks this year. As long as we go “best available player”, and get ‘em signed, I’m happy with that – I don’t think there’s a “bad” pick among those names being tossed around as D-backs possibles.
Random trivia. Take a look at this page: it’s the 43rd round of the 1993 draft. None of the players concerned ever made the majors [Julio Lugo and Casey Blake did, and were still on the board at this point]. But what’s unique about it?
"I'm confused."
"Yeah, well. It's a big club. We should get t-shirts."
by Jim McLennan on May 12, 2011 12:19 PM EDT up reply actions
Marshall Faulk?
Only 27 picks? No 3B? What?
HEY, FRENCHY! STAR TREK OR STAR WARS?
by DbacksSkins on May 12, 2011 12:40 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Well...
The previous round had 28 picks, and the following round had 26 picks. I’m going to go with the 27 picks thing like ’Skins said.
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
by Dan Strittmatter on May 13, 2011 11:17 AM EDT up reply actions
Put the name of the White Sox pick
Into Google and hit ’I’m feeling lucky’ if you want the answer…
"I'm confused."
"Yeah, well. It's a big club. We should get t-shirts."
by Jim McLennan on May 13, 2011 12:46 PM EDT up reply actions
excellent writeup
also makes me more than a little happy that Barret Loux is finding success right now. makes me feel like it’s not just that we punted our pick, or was doing something douchebaggy
+1
As long as we get a good player seventh and sign him up (i.e. probably better than Loux), it’ll basically be a win-all.
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
by Dan Strittmatter on May 12, 2011 12:13 PM EDT up reply actions
also.....sign of a stupid stupid organization
when you trade away the 5th best prospect in all of baseball ALONG WITH TWO OTHER PITCHERS
for a closer….what a joke…..
can anyone imagine the Braves trading Julio Teheran away for a closer?
+1
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
by Dan Strittmatter on May 12, 2011 12:13 PM EDT up reply actions
Though, more appropriately
It’s a sign of a short-sighted organization.
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
by Dan Strittmatter on May 12, 2011 12:14 PM EDT up reply actions
+1
First of all, baseball in general didn’t value the draft as much as it does now. Secondly, the Dbacks, as an org, were structured more like a big market club, with major free-agent signings leading the push to win now. That’s how we won the WS, but it came at a dear price.
HEY, FRENCHY! STAR TREK OR STAR WARS?
by DbacksSkins on May 12, 2011 12:43 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
DBacks didn't have the worst pick ever
The Milwaukee Brewers drafted Alvin Morrow in the 2nd Round of the 1997 draft and passed on Chase Utley, Aaron Cook, Jeremy Affeldt and Grabow.
Not to mention the 1999 draft where every team passed on Pujols for 12 rounds.
Days until Aug. 18: 135
by Reynolds rapper on May 12, 2011 11:42 AM EDT reply actions
Pujols
is the perfect example of why when you get a star in the late round it’s almost entirely luck, when you just happen to have an area scout who feels really strongly about a player
every team has basically an equal shot at getting someone like that over the years in my opinion. it just happens that when Pujols happens everyone is sad they weren’t the ones who got lucky
by blue bulldog on May 12, 2011 12:29 PM EDT up reply actions
Scouting and drafting algorithms are so inefficient though.
Generally, taking high schoolers early are what makes it such a crap shoot. Any efficient algorithm would have taken Pujols between 4 and 8.
However, once one team worships at the alter of upside, they all need to.
Days until Aug. 18: 135
by Reynolds rapper on May 12, 2011 12:50 PM EDT up reply actions
Then again
Trust in area scouts is almost as important. There was a write-up on ESPN about a Tampa Bay area scout who wanted the Rays to pick Pujols as early as like the 5th round.
Imagine filling that team’s biggest hole with Albert Freaking Pujols…….
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
by Dan Strittmatter on May 12, 2011 1:56 PM EDT up reply actions
true dat
what i just mean though, is that getting reliable information from an area scout and making a good decision on it is just tough and more times involves luck than not
as opposed to the national attention and scouting resources devoted to those players at the top. think about it this way. general consensus Pick #1 and Pick #1a this year is Cole and Rendon. let’s say Rendon goes #1 and Cole goes #2, and Rendon ends up busting because of injury and Cole goes on to become the next Roy Halladay or something. that just sets the Pirates back a ton.
which is why (hate to repeat the same thing over and over again) we cannot afford to miss on both our picks this year. one of our top two picks needs to turn into a stud. at least. and hopefully both do.
by blue bulldog on May 12, 2011 7:20 PM EDT up reply actions
Can't argue with much of this.
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
by Dan Strittmatter on May 12, 2011 7:25 PM EDT up reply actions
No way.....
Worst pick ever has to go to Padres with Matt Bush at No. 1, and then seeing Justin Verlander go No. 2
basically you really really screwed up, when the average pick at No. 1 gets you 20 WAR over their career, and you end up with Matt Freaking Bush….
so yeah…if KT pulls something like that this year….i think i will give up on baseball
by blue bulldog on May 12, 2011 12:37 PM EDT up reply actions
Yeah,
besides a few lucky low-rounders, KT has a pretty sordid draft history. Let’s hope it was the SD scouts’ fault.
HEY, FRENCHY! STAR TREK OR STAR WARS?
by DbacksSkins on May 12, 2011 12:45 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
This was mentioned on Minor League Ball before
He also had San Diego-sized draft budgets to work with…
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
by Dan Strittmatter on May 12, 2011 1:59 PM EDT up reply actions
We could
Go on and on about terrible first-round picks. It’s actually kind of fun. Remember when the Pirates took Bryan Bullington in 2002 over guys like Prince Fielder, Zack Greinke, and Cole Hamels? Ooouucchh.
Wear your own fur.
by Marc Fournier on May 12, 2011 3:12 PM EDT up reply actions
wow
yeah…that one may actually top the Matt Bush (though Greinke, Fielder et al did go a lot later than #1)
i do think it hurts a lot more though, when you make a terrible pick, and the pick that comes right after yours turns into an other worldly talent
by blue bulldog on May 12, 2011 7:16 PM EDT up reply actions
Nice Chart
I like charts. They often convey perspective and transfer knowledge better than prose, and the bright colors comfort me.
by Diamondhacks on May 12, 2011 1:01 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
Yay infographics!
I should have a mfin theme song.
by emilylovesthedbacks on May 12, 2011 2:54 PM EDT up reply actions
Yeah !
Have you ever checked out FlipFlopFlyBall?
Awesome baseball inforgraphics. Very inventive fellow.
by Diamondhacks on May 12, 2011 3:24 PM EDT up reply actions
I'm so stoked
To buy that book.
Wear your own fur.
by Marc Fournier on May 12, 2011 3:26 PM EDT up reply actions
Thanks
Too bad I just noticed that I left Ian Kinsler off the list.
Wear your own fur.
by Marc Fournier on May 12, 2011 2:57 PM EDT up reply actions
Maybe he deserves two dots
since we drafted him twice :-)
Is Valverde on here, or not considered a draftee (ie amateur FA) for this exercise?
by Diamondhacks on May 12, 2011 3:18 PM EDT up reply actions
Nope.
Valverde was left off the list.
Wear your own fur.
by Marc Fournier on May 12, 2011 3:22 PM EDT up reply actions
Great article.
Unfortunately, seeing a chart that outlines the D-Backs’ collective draft suck, combined with what we already know about KT’s drafting record (Matt Bush, anyone?) is really beginning to scare me about this upcoming draft.
Rest In Peace: Me (2008-2010)
Good luck keeping your upper lip warm without MY help, Mr. Zavada.
by Zavada's Moustache on May 12, 2011 3:20 PM EDT reply actions
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