371 replies to this topic

[gunnarthor]

 

It's possible. Pedroia has a significant home/away split OPS: +.090 home with lots more doubles.

 

But Pedroia has a pretty balanced spray chart (actually, kind of ridiculously so) and the split could just be coincidence.

Like I said, I have no idea. I know Fred Lynn wasn't the same player after he left Fenway. And Fenway is such a hitter's park that maybe it masks problems. I'm sure there are some pitchers who did pretty well in Oakland that struggle elsewhere.

[jimmer]

I'm sure it's not useful at all, but I did find it humorous :-)

[birdwatcher]

 

 

 

 

 

I'm sure it's not useful at all, but I did find it humorous :-)

 

 

And I find it humorous that some people will think it's useful at all :-)

Edited by birdwatcher, 19 May 2017 - 06:05 PM.

[Mike Sixel]

So, if they aren't taken round one, they don't count as good drafting? What round do we cut it off?

[whydidnt]

So, if they aren't taken round one, they don't count as good drafting? What round do we cut it off?

I think the implication is that it's all luck after the first round. I'm thinking teams could save millions of dollars on scouting and MLB could just do a lottery and assign players that way. At least that's how some see things. In any event there also isn't any way to judge scouts performance so I think I've found my new career. Who doesn't want a job with zero accountability?

[The Wise One]

 

We're discussing the draft. 

 

If you've followed this thread and others, you will note that many of us, myself included, have talked about the organizational mistakes and possible weaknesses in other very important areas, especially trading, international free agency, prospect development, sell discipline (buy low sell high), processes and technology, facilities, ownership, Ryan, budget, etc.

 

I have consistently pushed back on one argument: that the poor record is a function of poor talent acquisition, and especially the "mistakes" people perceive to exist in the first round of the draft. I've studied the draft history of the Twins and compared it to the other teams. My conclusion is that the real culprits of their lousy record are these other things, some much more than others. Not talent evaluation.

 

Help me out with a conundrum please. Earlier in this thread, I used Kevin Youkilis as an example of one player whose selection dramatically alters the perception people have of a teams drafting expertise, having generated 30+ WAR as a late 8th round pick. What caused 29 teams to pass on a clear first round talent 8 times, and why did Boston opt to pass on him 7 times, with all but their first selection (Shoppach, 8 WAR) giving them zero WAR? I'd be happy to attribute this selection to skill. I don't know how, with Youkilis or Puckett, or Trout or Dozier...I can sort of buy an argument that if a team is "lucky" enough to do this more consistently than the competition, maybe there's some skill involved. But I'm much more inclined to think development played a bigger role. That seems more logical. 

 

This is why I find any debate about talent-finding skills using examples outside of the first round to be useless. The Twins did not calculate that every team would pass on a first round talent like Dozier five times. They thought he was a 6th round talent.

Dozier was drafted in the 9th round, pick number 252 of the draft

[The Wise One]

 

Absolutely, spycake, and they do. Some teams have a great track record in terms of producing talent from later rounds. The Cards for example. From 2001-2010, the Cards hit with 12 players after the 3rd round, generating 81.8 WAR from them. In contrast, the Twins had 10 4th round and later prospects "make it", generating 41.6 WAR, but half of them were Achter Tonkin O'Rourke Manship Tolleson. I can't prove it but my theory is that this extra success is due to three other things to a much greater extent than having better scouts on the staff and therefore consistently picking better talent:

 

1. Better development of talent because of a stronger financial and organizational commitment to it.

2. More WAR being generated by those players simply by being on better teams.

3. Better systems and processes and facilities.

Cards, 2001,  no players amounting to much. 2002, the same , 2003 Brendan Ryan, 14.9 war.the other 6 players 4.4. Kennedy and Scherzer do not count as they did not sign.2005 3 player, negative net war of 1.4. 2005 Jamie Garcia. 10.2 war 6-8 years of hoping he would repeat the good 2. 2006 Allen Craig 5Luke Gregerson 6 war. 2007 a bunch of nothing,2008 Siegrist, 4.7 2009 Matt Carpenter 18.8, Rosenthal, 5.7, mostly 2 good years and a lot of hoping he will match them, Mat Adams 4.3. 2010 and 2011, nobody of note.Matt Carpenter,a few relievers. No 12 players of consequence.A lot of players who had one or two good years and a lot of time hanging on trying to match itSorry, your premise the Cards are doing something better is correct. They find a lot of players almost good enough to make it,Late round diamonds, no better than anyone else.

[birdwatcher]

 

I think the implication is that it's all luck after the first round. I'm thinking teams could save millions of dollars on scouting and MLB could just do a lottery and assign players that way. At least that's how some see things. In any event there also isn't any way to judge scouts performance so I think I've found my new career. Who doesn't want a job with zero accountability?

 

So, if they aren't taken round one, they don't count as good drafting? What round do we cut it off?

 

Back to the examples: Boston hit on Youkilis with the 243rd pick. Meaning they passed on him 8 times and instead took prospects that sucked. And they took the risk, 193 times if you believe whydidn't's hypothetical, that all 29 other teams were too stupid to project him as any better than worthy of the 244th pick. Why did Boston do that? whydidnt was arguing that it was smart and intentional and an indication of skill. 

 

Boston missed on Matt Carpenter and Brian Dozier. All three teams passed on both of them many times over and instead took a bunch of prospects that sucked. The Cards and Twins were smart enough to know that Boston and 28 other teams would be stupid enough to pass on Carpenter and Dozier many times over.

 

Boston, St. Louis, and the Twins are all good at drafting. Personally, I think Boston and the Cards have both likely been just a tad better at talent evaluation than the Twins, but I can't prove it.  All three teams have been really smart and really stupid. Fans often want to point to their team's misses and the other teams' hits to justify their opinion that their own team's "mistakes" are blameworthy. 

 

The reason I reject simplistic conclusions about good and bad drafting based on adding up a bunch of WAR generated by players like those mentioned?  Two reasons. One, you guys haven't explained to me how teams can somehow be such geniuses and so stupid one round of the draft to the next, and how teams are so dang good at calculating the brainpower of the scouts on the other 29 teams and therefore know they're all going to stupidly pass on Brian Dozier 251 times or whatever it is.

 

As I pointed out, the Cards have generated 82 WAR from players taken in the 4th round and later from 2001-2010. The Twins have gotten 41.6 WAR. Personally, my bet is this difference is much more because of better player development than better talent evaluation. I can't prove it. I might be wrong.

 

But all of the inconsistencies I just described here, all this genius and stupidity exhibited by the same people? You guys want me to add up a bunch of WAR, or accept a list of random genius selections as evidence of good scouting? Trout's selection makes LAA geniuses, and yet they have two B- prospects or better in their system compared to the Twins' 14? 

 

For years, I've been saying they're all good at evaluating talent, and they all hit on some and miss on others. And yes, luck is involved. Lots of luck. It's the draft.

 

If you want to make a case that the Twins are lousy at the draft that I will accept, you're going to have to do better with the presentation of the evidence. And please don't point to the W-L record, or even to a list of their starting pitchers, and then tell me they don't know talent when they see it. I now view those "arguments" as obtuse rants. Those same evaluators passed muster on Ervin Santana and Brian Kintzler and Stephen Gonsalves and Fernando Romero and Lewis Thorpe and Taylor Rogers and...

 

And please, please, NEVER use the word "excuses" when you refer to a counter argument someone makes, Mr. whydidnt. It's disrespectful, okay? Thank you.

 

 

Edited by birdwatcher, 20 May 2017 - 04:19 AM.

[drivlikejehu]

You continue to make straw man arguments, which really is not helpful to supporting your viewpoint. No one in the world has ever said the Red So knew how good Youkilis would be.

The point is that they had him higher than other clubs. Mathematically, more accurate player rankings result in better picks and more WAR. That's a straightforward statement of fact.

How good every team was at ranking players is obviously a difficult question, since you have to account for draft position, compensation picks, etc.

But saying it's a crapshoot is just factually incorrect.

[whydidnt]

If you want to make a case that the Twins are lousy at the draft that I will accept, you're going to have to do better with the presentation of the evidence. And please don't point to the W-L record, or even to a list of their starting pitchers, and then tell me they don't know talent when they see it. I now view those "arguments" as obtuse rants. Those same evaluators passed muster on Ervin Santana and Brian Kintzler and Stephen Gonsalves and Fernando Romero and Lewis Thorpe and Taylor Rogers and...

And please, please, NEVER use the word "excuses" when you refer to a counter argument someone makes, Mr. whydidnt. It's disrespectful, okay? Thank you.

Okay, and PLEASE NEVER tell me what arguments I can use to justify my points or are valid. You have no more right to tell me what is a valid counter-argument than I do, right? It's disrepectful, isn't it? They are as valid as yours even if you chose to ignore them. Your opinion is that the we can't prove the Twins results the last 10 years are result of poor player evaluation. I get that, but you can't prove the opposite either. At the end of the day the results are what I chose to base my evaluation on, since drafting has to play a part in it, especially over a period of 10 years.

Oh and it's beyond hilarious that in the same post you call my posts "obtuse rants", you go on to lecture me about being disrepectful!

Edited by whydidnt, 20 May 2017 - 08:58 AM.

[Oxtung]

Back to the examples: Boston hit on Youkilis with the 243rd pick. Meaning they passed on him 8 times and instead took prospects that sucked. And they took the risk, 193 times if you believe whydidn't's hypothetical, that all 29 other teams were too stupid to project him as any better than worthy of the 244th pick. Why did Boston do that? whydidnt was arguing that it was smart and intentional and an indication of skill. 
 
Boston missed on Matt Carpenter and Brian Dozier. All three teams passed on both of them many times over and instead took a bunch of prospects that sucked. The Cards and Twins were smart enough to know that Boston and 28 other teams would be stupid enough to pass on Carpenter and Dozier many times over.
 
Boston, St. Louis, and the Twins are all good at drafting. Personally, I think Boston and the Cards have both likely been just a tad better at talent evaluation than the Twins, but I can't prove it.  All three teams have been really smart and really stupid. Fans often want to point to their team's misses and the other teams' hits to justify their opinion that their own team's "mistakes" are blameworthy. 
 
The reason I reject simplistic conclusions about good and bad drafting based on adding up a bunch of WAR generated by players like those mentioned?  Two reasons. One, you guys haven't explained to me how teams can somehow be such geniuses and so stupid one round of the draft to the next, and how teams are so dang good at calculating the brainpower of the scouts on the other 29 teams and therefore know they're all going to stupidly pass on Brian Dozier 251 times or whatever it is.
 
As I pointed out, the Cards have generated 82 WAR from players taken in the 4th round and later from 2001-2010. The Twins have gotten 41.6 WAR. Personally, my bet is this difference is much more because of better player development than better talent evaluation. I can't prove it. I might be wrong.
 
But all of the inconsistencies I just described here, all this genius and stupidity exhibited by the same people? You guys want me to add up a bunch of WAR, or accept a list of random genius selections as evidence of good scouting? Trout's selection makes LAA geniuses, and yet they have two B- prospects or better in their system compared to the Twins' 14? 
 
For years, I've been saying they're all good at evaluating talent, and they all hit on some and miss on others. And yes, luck is involved. Lots of luck. It's the draft.

Just because something is difficult to do doesn't mean that there isn't skill involved. Sano fails at the plate 70% of the time. Is it luck that he has a better stat line than Buxton? Sano routinely misses hitting breaking pitches but he is still better at it than Buxton. People can routinely mess up the same activity repeatedly but if they mess up less than their peers than there is skill there.

[Mike Sixel]

Back to the examples: Boston hit on Youkilis with the 243rd pick. Meaning they passed on him 8 times and instead took prospects that sucked. And they took the risk, 193 times if you believe whydidn't's hypothetical, that all 29 other teams were too stupid to project him as any better than worthy of the 244th pick. Why did Boston do that? whydidnt was arguing that it was smart and intentional and an indication of skill. 
 
Boston missed on Matt Carpenter and Brian Dozier. All three teams passed on both of them many times over and instead took a bunch of prospects that sucked. The Cards and Twins were smart enough to know that Boston and 28 other teams would be stupid enough to pass on Carpenter and Dozier many times over.
 
Boston, St. Louis, and the Twins are all good at drafting. Personally, I think Boston and the Cards have both likely been just a tad better at talent evaluation than the Twins, but I can't prove it.  All three teams have been really smart and really stupid. Fans often want to point to their team's misses and the other teams' hits to justify their opinion that their own team's "mistakes" are blameworthy. 
 
The reason I reject simplistic conclusions about good and bad drafting based on adding up a bunch of WAR generated by players like those mentioned?  Two reasons. One, you guys haven't explained to me how teams can somehow be such geniuses and so stupid one round of the draft to the next, and how teams are so dang good at calculating the brainpower of the scouts on the other 29 teams and therefore know they're all going to stupidly pass on Brian Dozier 251 times or whatever it is.
 
As I pointed out, the Cards have generated 82 WAR from players taken in the 4th round and later from 2001-2010. The Twins have gotten 41.6 WAR. Personally, my bet is this difference is much more because of better player development than better talent evaluation. I can't prove it. I might be wrong.
 
But all of the inconsistencies I just described here, all this genius and stupidity exhibited by the same people? You guys want me to add up a bunch of WAR, or accept a list of random genius selections as evidence of good scouting? Trout's selection makes LAA geniuses, and yet they have two B- prospects or better in their system compared to the Twins' 14? 
 
For years, I've been saying they're all good at evaluating talent, and they all hit on some and miss on others. And yes, luck is involved. Lots of luck. It's the draft.
 
If you want to make a case that the Twins are lousy at the draft that I will accept, you're going to have to do better with the presentation of the evidence. And please don't point to the W-L record, or even to a list of their starting pitchers, and then tell me they don't know talent when they see it. I now view those "arguments" as obtuse rants. Those same evaluators passed muster on Ervin Santana and Brian Kintzler and Stephen Gonsalves and Fernando Romero and Lewis Thorpe and Taylor Rogers and...
 
And please, please, NEVER use the word "excuses" when you refer to a counter argument someone makes, Mr. whydidnt. It's disrespectful, okay? Thank you.

You didn't answer the question. What rounds are luck, and what are skill?

[old nurse]

 

Back to the examples: Boston hit on Youkilis with the 243rd pick. Meaning they passed on him 8 times and instead took prospects that sucked. And they took the risk, 193 times if you believe whydidn't's hypothetical, that all 29 other teams were too stupid to project him as any better than worthy of the 244th pick. Why did Boston do that? whydidnt was arguing that it was smart and intentional and an indication of skill. 

 

Boston missed on Matt Carpenter and Brian Dozier. All three teams passed on both of them many times over and instead took a bunch of prospects that sucked. The Cards and Twins were smart enough to know that Boston and 28 other teams would be stupid enough to pass on Carpenter and Dozier many times over.

 

Boston, St. Louis, and the Twins are all good at drafting. Personally, I think Boston and the Cards have both likely been just a tad better at talent evaluation than the Twins, but I can't prove it.  All three teams have been really smart and really stupid. Fans often want to point to their team's misses and the other teams' hits to justify their opinion that their own team's "mistakes" are blameworthy. 

 

The reason I reject simplistic conclusions about good and bad drafting based on adding up a bunch of WAR generated by players like those mentioned?  Two reasons. One, you guys haven't explained to me how teams can somehow be such geniuses and so stupid one round of the draft to the next, and how teams are so dang good at calculating the brainpower of the scouts on the other 29 teams and therefore know they're all going to stupidly pass on Brian Dozier 251 times or whatever it is.

 

As I pointed out, the Cards have generated 82 WAR from players taken in the 4th round and later from 2001-2010. The Twins have gotten 41.6 WAR. Personally, my bet is this difference is much more because of better player development than better talent evaluation. I can't prove it. I might be wrong.

 

But all of the inconsistencies I just described here, all this genius and stupidity exhibited by the same people? You guys want me to add up a bunch of WAR, or accept a list of random genius selections as evidence of good scouting? Trout's selection makes LAA geniuses, and yet they have two B- prospects or better in their system compared to the Twins' 14? 

 

For years, I've been saying they're all good at evaluating talent, and they all hit on some and miss on others. And yes, luck is involved. Lots of luck. It's the draft.

 

If you want to make a case that the Twins are lousy at the draft that I will accept, you're going to have to do better with the presentation of the evidence. And please don't point to the W-L record, or even to a list of their starting pitchers, and then tell me they don't know talent when they see it. I now view those "arguments" as obtuse rants. Those same evaluators passed muster on Ervin Santana and Brian Kintzler and Stephen Gonsalves and Fernando Romero and Lewis Thorpe and Taylor Rogers and...

 

And please, please, NEVER use the word "excuses" when you refer to a counter argument someone makes, Mr. whydidnt. It's disrespectful, okay? Thank you.

 

You didn't answer the question. What rounds are luck, and what are skill?

With any of these players the skill is seeing what tools they do have. Athleticism is the easy one to spot. Projecting batting skills is hard. Bat andathleticism kind of determines the round. The luck comes in the player developing the talents. The luck for a team then is how long before the league figures out how to neutralize that talent.See Allen Craig, one of those gems Birdwatchers was talking about.3 seasons of mid 2 fWAR followed by falling off the face of the earth.So the second piece of luck a team needs is knowing when to move on a playerwhile they still have value. Give them finding one good player every 10 years as most teams seem to do,F That would be your 20 career WAR player. For the rest then on average you are then finding playerswho are good for a year or two replacement level the rest. The other is the relief pitchers.I think pitcher fall in the draft whit some ratio of speed to control. Baxendale had control but mediocre speed. Fell to 10. Corty has a plus speed fastball and likely negative control, thus falling to round 40. Do the math and you will find that some teams might be a little better then others at finding mediocre talent.

[birdwatcher]

 

You didn't answer the question. What rounds are luck, and what are skill?

 

 

Because it's an unanswerable question with no value whatsoever.

 

Mike, the scouts have the same skills in every round. Why would anyone think otherwise?

 

And if they apply the same skill regarding each and every decision, why isn't it painfully obvious that something other than their skill is coming into play? Because if good draft choices were solely the function of skill, wouldn't the skillful evaluators always make good choices?

 

How many times can a team take a chance that another team will select a player they like before

they're lucky someone else didn't take them?

 

If a player is really a first round value but a team mistakenly believes he's a 9th round value, why do you insist on tying the mistake to a skill deficit and the fortuitous selection to a skill advantage? The same evaluator made a fortuitous selection in one round followed by six straight mistakes in the subsequent rounds. 

 

Strassberg was a consensus #1, Had the Nationals passed on him, I think we could all agree they weren't unlucky. No team in baseball would have passed on him. If Strassberg delivers a HoF career, according to many of you, this would mean that Washington had superior talent evaluators on staff on that day.

I think that logic is kind of weak.

 

 

[Mike Sixel]

No, skill does not mean you are always right. You are the one saying picks after round one are luck, not me. I just want to know where should stops, and luck starts.

[birdwatcher]

 

Just because something is difficult to do doesn't mean that there isn't skill involved. Sano fails at the plate 70% of the time. Is it luck that he has a better stat line than Buxton? Sano routinely misses hitting breaking pitches but he is still better at it than Buxton. People can routinely mess up the same activity repeatedly but if they mess up less than their peers than there is skill there.

 

 

I couldn't agree more. Thank you for bolstering my point. There's more than one reason Buxton's stat line is inferior to Sano's. Similarly, there's more that one reason the Twins have a worse record than other teams. I have put forth one argument and one argument only, and that is that the reasons for the Twins' historically crappy record is primarily due to roughly ten other factors much more than it is to being poor at finding talent through the draft.

 

 

 

 

[birdwatcher]

 

No, skill does not mean you are always right. You are the one saying picks after round one are luck, not me. I just want to know where should stops, and luck starts.

 

 

Sorry Mike, I can't help you there. It's a question with zero relevance in my mind. Maybe if I tripped out on LSD, I could ponder such a question.

 

But you're choosing to assign an absolute to what I described that completely trashes the point I made. So let me repeat it for you. The scouts apply the same amount of skill whether the decision results in something good or something bad. Of course there's skill involved!

 

But you and others are the ones who insist on a direct link between a scout's skill and a prospect's results. And even a team's results. I have NEVER said talent evaluation doesn't play at least a minor role in team results, have I? I have consistently, for many years, pushed back at you and others about your bad results/bad scouts mentality. It's the draft. It's messy. Scouts make good decisions that go bad. Scouts miscalculate all the time. There are other variables at play. I've spelled them repeatedly for the purposes of discussion.

[ashburyjohn]

Moderator's note: The bickering leads me to think the value of this thread is about at an end. If someone has something new to say about the tangents raised, by all means say it, but do it without throwing shade on the other posters.

[birdwatcher]

 

You continue to make straw man arguments, which really is not helpful to supporting your viewpoint. No one in the world has ever said the Red So knew how good Youkilis would be.

The point is that they had him higher than other clubs. Mathematically, more accurate player rankings result in better picks and more WAR. That's a straightforward statement of fact.

How good every team was at ranking players is obviously a difficult question, since you have to account for draft position, compensation picks, etc.

But saying it's a crapshoot is just factually incorrect.

 

 

I'm wondering if you know what a straw man argument is. If you do, I take offense at being accused of intentionally misrepresenting another person's argument here. But I'll assume you're not making that accusation. I agree "no one in the world"said they knew how good Youkilis was going to be. But neither did I. To suggest I did might very well be a straw man. Oh, and I never called anything a "crapshoot".  That's not a description I'd generally use to discuss something so complex and nuanced.

 

Reiterating here:

 

I have asked others to put forth an argument that reconciles the inconsistencies between "skill" in one round and "withholding" that skill in the next half-dozen rounds by a given team. I'm merely pointing out the absurdity of this idea. I asked the question: if Boston didn't know what the other teams thought of Youkilis, weren't they lucky to find him still available for them to select? And if they did indeed exhibit superior scouting acumen, help me understand this. Did Boston rank him 30 picks better than the next team? Ten? And how much extra skill do you think this suugests? And missing on Dozier implies no skill deficit ?  And don't just add up some WAR and call it a day, pretending no other factor played into Youkilis's development and eventual success after the scouting decision. Don't you think there's at least SOME portion of his WAR that could be attributed to good development, or the Green Monster, or good teams, or good coaching?

 

You stated a couple of "facts" you couldn't possibly know, BTW. For example, another team may have had Youkilis ranked as, say, a 5th rounder but also had three other prospects available to them prior to the 8th round that they had ranked even higher. You also suggest this infallible connection between a team's player ranking (skill) and WAR, without accounting for any other possible variables playing into it and want to pass this off as a straightforward statement of fact. It isn't. Example: when Danny Hultzen was picked #2 in 2011, it was lauded as a great pick. He was "accurately ranked". Skill. Now ? No results. According to some, that equals skill deficit. I disagree. I don't believe skill played any role at all Injury did. Luck did. Really bad bad luck.

[Riverbrian]

I agree with Ash... A little less shade toward posters would be wonderful. 

 

I don't know if I'm going to help or hurt the conversation but I'm not sure why Bird is being asked to work so hard to make what I consider to be a valid point. 

 

Of course... there is skill but that skill is minimized considerably by a large number of factors.

 

Brian Dozier may have been a great 8th round pick. The scout who advocated his selection and sold him to the higher ups might even deserve a coupon to the Twins gift shop for that selection but we don't know if that same scout convinced them to take Brad Stillings in the 7th round and was more convincing than another scout of ours who was jumping on the table screaming... take Paul Goldschmidt. There are so many misses we just don't know but the fact that Brian Dozier was selected in the 8th round... his MLB Success would have to be considered a pleasant surprise because the odds were against him the second his name was announced. Kudo's to Brian for beating the odds. 

 

After the draft... Multiple factors take over. Injury/Health is obviously major. Sensible Development of each player is probably a huge factor and the attitude intangible of the player has got to be large. 

 

And lets not forget about opportunity. If Brian Dozier was drafted by the Yankees... Brian Dozier may have never seen the majors because of Robinson Cano. 

 

Brian Dozier was lucky enough to be drafted into an organization where he was able to rise to first in line for a call up and lucky enough to be in an organization that had an open door at 2B after he failed to walk through the open door at SS. 

 

I agree with Bird... There are way too many factors to simply add up WAR and declare winners.