jay

Neat. The best parts were the most detailed parts -- talking about pretending to be Twins in the backyard and thinking about how in the heck to get out a lineup full of Rangers All-Stars. Drive that type of detail throughout the video and it'd be a few notches better, imo.

Not really. Each player's valuation is likely to be significantly accurate even in a one year interval. You used the most extreme example possible to highlight the error range. Just like a bell curve, most are going to be closely centered around the average with a few outliers. When the vast majority are going to be extremely accurate, I think it is both fair and reasonable to use one-year figures in many contexts short of saying Player A is definitively better than Player B because he had 1 more WAR last year.

Maybe it comes down to your personal definition of "used correctly". Defensive stats can be used in smaller samples as long as we recognize they're likely to be slightly less accurate as a whole. I wouldn't think that means they can't ever be used as a reference without being incorrect. I also don't think someone referencing them in shorter periods should have to make a qualifying statement every time, which whether you're explicitly saying it or not, is the only middle ground left in your statement.

I'd venture to state that happens here with a much broader brush than this topic. I see the all-or-nothing rebuttal on both sides of just about every debate here (and across the interwebs). You're obviously welcome to enjoy baseball however you like. For me and a good number of others, that includes more stats and math in an attempt to increase our understanding of the beautiful game. For as much as you wouldn't want me to tell you how to enjoy the game, your strong hints don't lead me to believe you're open to letting others enjoy the game however they wish.

I do too, but that leaves me a bit confused on why this thread stirred up such a negative response to the concept of framing. The ESPN article largely cites multiple years of data and makes references to those who rated well or rated poorly. Those are pretty generic terms that seem to have built in plenty of skepticism in an attempt to use some of the data to talk about who might be influenced by it. It leads me to believe that part of the crowd here isn't open to the idea of using any of it for anything at all but is trying to pass that off as openness with some skepticism.

I think we've all witnessed some of that across the interwebs, but I don't personally perceive that to be much of a frequent issue here at TD. Even jimmer's posts here in this thread were pretty cautious and didn't proclaim exact precision. The quote of FG run values was only used to highlight an ordering of who is good and who is bad. Do others perceive there to be significant advanced metric gospelization taking place here?

I've made plenty of "pro-framing" posts in the past. I've tried to keep them more conversational than definitive. However, I'm concerned by what seems to be a group of smart folks that have rallied around discrediting metrics because they aren't as precise or objective as counting runs that crossed the plate. I get that it's much more comforting to say you can count with exact precision how many runs crossed the plate. I also don't believe there's a big contingency here at TD that cram metrics at people and proclaim them to be gospel. I further believe that most posts here on the topic recognize framing as a thing. Parochial tones on using stats rarely helps, but when a good portion of the posts questioning a metric can be refuted with some very standard principles of statistics, I wonder where the level of understanding is at on how these metrics are actually calculated. I really don't understand why we can't utilize the significant efforts and data available in an attempt to put some type of a value on these things without having to defend and justify the calculation methods and perceived level of precision just about every time it comes up. Maybe every post that uses any type of estimated metric needs to be qualified with something like "these figures are calculated with some level of subjectiveness and the values have a margin of error"... ??

Yeah, Plouffe is probably fringe top 10. I think you could make the same case for Mauer. Kind of interesting that the Twins offense was pretty darn solid last year despite so few "top 10" position players on top of a down year from Mauer. I can't quite decide if that means we have a bunch of guys who might be ready to climb these lists or if it means I should be more worried than I am about the offense.

If the roster was full of 9th best players at every position, we'd be in damn good shape. Is there even another position player that would be top 10 right now? Probably not...

The collective barf in this thread is going to be quite the mess to clean up. Good luck in the 'pen, Pelf.

Someone made a comment on the blog page about looking at draft bonus dollars and comparing that to actual WAR. That might be a good way to account for what you're talking about.

All totally valid points. It's not a perfect process, but the legendary 2005 class really helps throw off the normalization to 1.0. I thought about making an adjustment, but that was just more work when the results are what they are for that period. Note that I didn't create the equation or expected rates, but rather used tiers from analysis done elsewhere on a larger window. I'm happy to share the initial data used here if anyone wants to add more rounds or figure out WAR observed by the drafting team.

Earlier this week, Parker published an article looking at first round draft picks. I went off and did some number crunching based on the discussion that followed. The full blog with some additional analysis and the statistical approach can be found here: http://twinsdaily.com/blog/237/entry-6328-comparing-first-round-draft-pick-performance/ ********************** From 2003-2011, the Twins’ first-round picks were: 23rd in expected WAR per pick. This is an indication of their consistently low draft position due to successful teams and supplemental round picks. 15th in total expected WAR. The Twins make up ground here due to the additional picks they gained in the supplemental round as compensation for losing free agents. 19th in actual WAR generated. The Twins draft picks from 2003-2011 have produced WAR at a lower rate than the league average. 19th in pick efficiency. This most directly ties to “how well they drafted” after accounting for both draft position and total number of picks. I’m defining pick efficiency as the ratio of actual WAR to expected WAR.

Great analysis! I'm with you 100%. The only thing I'd add to your second point is that we only looked at first-round picks here. But, your point is right that the Twins would have had to somehow lead the league in total actual WAR from those picks to pick up +60 WAR. That would equate to a "pick efficiency" ratio of almost 3... something ZERO teams did. If they had gotten into the top 5 in "pick efficiency", they would have picked up something like 30 WAR. That still leaves plenty of gap to fill just to reach .500...

Neat idea... basically just replace expected WAR with draft bonus dollars. Probably need to adjust for inflation, but that's doable. Anyone know where to find draft bonus data? It'd be easy to plug in to my sheet.

To be fair, the % of HS picks making it to MLB from this pool is bound to improve a bit with some big prospect names still out there from 2010 and 2011. Taillon, Zach Lee, Syndergaard, Owens, Guerrieri, Bradley to name a few -- all HS picks.

Thanks, tobi. Good insights. Cain got left out here (like you noted) and Strasburg went to San Diego St, but here are the numbers for HS vs College pitchers from 2003-2011 using the same methods: College pitchers - 133 total picks, 368.3 Actual WAR vs 324.35 Expected WAR HS pitchers - 91 total picks, 171.4 Actual WAR vs 157.2 Expected WAR College pitchers hold a slight edge here in "pick efficiency", which is actually more pronounced over bigger samples of college vs HS picks if you look at Sky Andrecheck's research: http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/06/the_draft_and_w.php There's a common perception that HS players are more boom or bust compared to safer college players (which I've held as well). That didn't show up much within this limited data set. 10 college pitchers and 6 HS pitchers have > 10 WAR, 7.5% and 6.5% respectively from each group. That changes to 4.5% and 1.1% (Kershaw) if you raise the bar to 20 WAR. However, on the measure of simply making it to MLB, the two groups showed a big split -- 70% of the college picks made it to MLB whlie only 47% of the HS picks did.

Alright, here's the blog with some number-crunching analysis: http://twinsdaily.com/blog/237/entry-6328-comparing-first-round-draft-pick-performance/ To summarize, the total WAR from Twins first round draft picks (2003-2011) after accounting for draft position and total number of picks should have been right at league average. The results came in a bit below that, but not at the bottom of the league.

First, the results. Then, how in the heck I got them. We’ll use Wins Above Replacement (WAR) to assess how well the Twins have drafted in the first round from 2003 to 2011 compared to the rest of the league. From 2003-2011, the Twins’ first-round picks were: 23rd in expected WAR per pick. This is an indication of their consistently low draft position due to successful teams and supplemental round picks. 15th in total expected WAR. The Twins make up ground here due to the additional picks they gained in the supplemental round as compensation for losing free agents. 19th in actual WAR generated. The Twins draft picks from 2003-2011 have produced WAR at a lower rate than the league average. 19th in pick efficiency. This most directly ties to “how well they drafted” after accounting for both draft position and total number of picks. I’m defining pick efficiency as the ratio of actual WAR to expected WAR. This has certainly had an impact on the poor results we’ve seen out of the team from 2011-2014. Many other avenues of talent acquisition exist, but for teams like the Twins and many others, the acquisition of amateurs plays a large role. The draft goes much deeper than the first round, but failing to get significant production there can be quite the challenge to overcome. It’s amazing how a Mike Trout or a Clayton Kershaw can make your team look good at first round draft picks, as seen by the Angels and Dodgers. The Red Sox did poorly from 2006 going forward as shown in Parker’s recent analysis, but they get credit for Jacoby Ellsbury and a few others here. The Diamondbacks did well, but traded away Scherzer, J. Upton and Stephen Drew – their top 3 performing picks. You might also notice a pretty strong correlation between the teams at the bottom of the list and the teams that have stunk in recent years. Sure would hate to be a Phillies fan – that organization has managed to get negative WAR out of their first rounds picks – yow-ouuch. The Twins didn’t hit any homers with their first round picks in this timeframe. However, expectations needed to be tempered in the first place. They’ve underperformed even to that lowered standard, but this analysis doesn’t show them to be among the very worst either. Smack-dab middle of the pack in total expected WAR + below average pick efficiency + trading away the draft pick that represented over a third of the actual WAR generated (Garza) for a terrible left fielder = very little visible MLB production for the Twins out of the 2003-2011 first round picks. ***************** Now, for those so inclined, the approach. Over the last decade, a number of extremely smart statistical researchers have explored the value of draft picks. I am not one of them. For simplicity, I decided to use the figures created by Andrew Ball (which are quite similar to others out there): Tier 1 – Pick #1 Expected WAR = 11.83 Tier 2 – Pick #2 Expected WAR = 10.09 Tier 3 – Pick #3-7 Expected WAR = 5.37 Tier 4 – Pick #8-15 Expected WAR = 5.21 Tier 5 – Pick #16-30 Expected WAR = 2.65 Tier 6 – Pick #31-60 Expected WAR = 1.41 It is important to note that the expected WAR figures represent only the first 6 years of a player’s career. This is done with the expectation that teams are paying market rates for players that have reached free agency and their draft value has been expended. Data on first round draft picks and the WAR they have generated was collected from Baseball Reference. I wanted the results here to reflect on the struggles from 2011-2014, so I intentionally didn’t go any further back than 2003 because those players had largely used up their first six years early in that period or before it. An argument could be made to include the 2002 class since most of the big names wouldn't have reached free agency until the 2013 season (Greinke, Hamels, Cain, BJ Upton), but I’ve excluded them. Note that this leaves out Denard Span from 2002 and Joe Mauer from 2001, both resounding successes of first-round picks. With our time frame selected and the expected values defined, I tried to account for the fact that the more recent draft years are unlikely to have utilized all of their pre-free agency years by discounting the expected WAR for those more recent draft classes. The expected WAR in the first 6 years for the 2007-2011 draft classes were reduced by the following factors: 2011 = 1/6 2010 = 2/6 2009 = 3/6 2008 = 4/6 2007 = 5/6 This factoring isn’t perfect, as players come up at different rates, but the ratios of actual to expected WAR within the draft class stay reasonably steady at these rates. This discounting is actually a benefit for teams that have already gotten MLB production from these recent draft classes, which seems fine to me with our goal of assessing impact on the 2011-2014 seasons. We also might get some WAR from the older draft classes beyond their first 6 years. To adjust for this, I looked at the individual players in the 2003-2005 classes with more than 5 career WAR, looked up their stats on BRef and reduced their WAR by any amounts earned beyond 6 years (this sounds like a lot of work, but it was really only like 20 guys). In looking through the data, I’m satisfied that we’re at least close enough to get a good gauge of team drafting performance. If you’ve made it this far, I’d be happy to share the Excel file with anyone interested (send me a PM with your email). I’ve also done some analysis specific to the Twins’ picks and whether or not they made it to MLB in relation to league averages, so I might follow up with that. I hope the info here provides some help in assessing the Twins’ recent first round draft performance. Thanks in advance for your comments, insights and feedback. Photo credit to Mizzou Media Relations

If we're trying to look for causes of sucking so bad for the last four years (2011-2014), what are the right draft years to look at? I'm thinking 2003-2009. Before 2003, those guys have mostly all used up their six-years of arb control by early in our downturn. After 2009, it's very TBD (but to be transparent, the Twins top picks don't look promising in '10 or '11).

This is completely in line with what I've found so far in the analysis I'm working on. The Twins should have expected below average results based on their draft position, but the results have been even further below that.

I get the Parmelee and Boyd storylines for choosing 2006-2011, but the data presented here isn't the best choice for correlating to the terrible team performance from 2011-2014. Plenty of big time prospects from the '11 and even the '10 classes haven't even debuted yet (especially the HS picks) and players from before 2006 are still big-time contributors. The more relevant previous drafts don't look much better, so no, that's not an attempt to justify or defend anything. The premise and results would be largely the same, but let's at least look at the right window and the right data if we're going to relate it to the losses.

Other teams wouldn't have the same number of expected WAR. That figure is dependent on both the number of draft picks and the position of those draft picks. The whole point is that it's not apples to apples and you can't use a median to accurately compare.

Lol... this is the blog post I'm drafting right now in far fewer words.

Didn't intend anything about causes for desire to visit the site. My intent from that specific line was that without more analysis on the "why", it's too easy to simplify the explanation. The Twins didn't get great results out of those top draft picks. That's clearly a problem and there's nothing wrong with pointing it out. When I see a problem, I look for justifiable explanations and/or solutions. I'm curious to see whether draft position provides a sufficient explanation on its' own or not.