2009 Overall Draft Review

Starting later this week I’ll begin with the individual reviews of everyone’s draft. But I wanted to begin with a brief general overview of the draft along with a few comments about a few specific situations and people who shaped this year’s draft.

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This year’s draft is why I do not like the ESPN live draft system. Raul Ibanez doesn’t fall into the late rounds if we are using ESPN. Alex Gordon doesn’t go in the third round if we had used the ESPN system.* There is an element of the unknown that you get by doing the draft live on AIM or in someone’s living room; when we are all using a different list to draft from, with different philosophies and different strategies. ESPN, I think, can make one lazy and let the “system” dictate how they draft. A setting like the one we have doesn’t easily allow for that, thus making the draft far more unpredictable and interesting.

*I think. And on a side note: Gnarls Barkley looks a lot like a cross between Barry Bonds and Emmitt Smith. I felt you should know this.

With that, this draft sucked. What the hell were you guys thinking?

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You’ll find throughout the draft reviews that I will be referring to the ESPN Average Draft Positions that I printed off on March 14, the day before the draft. Those positions were dictated by ESPN’s mock and live draft results in the week leading up to our draft (so it included AROD’s injury). What I did was eliminate all of the players who were kept from the list and reorganized the list to better reflect what players should be taken in what rounds in our draft. I did this for myself to help determine value. Little did I know it would be used to help me become more aware of how stupid some of the pitching selections were. Unbelievable.

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The top ten rounds were divided into three pitching phases. Phase One: Crazy pitching selections. Phase Two: Crap, we have to draft hitters too. Phase Three: Screw it, I’m just drafting pitchers.

Phase One

Phase one consisted of “what the hell” picks. There were 10 pitchers selected in the first four rounds, six of which were drafted too high. Here are the six from worst to last:

Round – Player – ADR
2 – Francisco Liriano – 5
4 – Jon Lester – 7
3 – Felix Hernandez – 5
2 – Roy Oswalt – 3
3 – John Lackey – 4
4 – James Shields – 5

Without going into detail, it was clearly stupid to draft Liriano and Lester where they were taken. Not so much because they are crap players, but because how much value those players lost being selected where they were.

For example, drafting Francisco Liriano in the fifth round (where he had been going at the time) made more sense because of his clear high-ceiling, but question marks as to if he would reach that ceiling this season due to his previous injuries. So, if he reaches his ceiling, you’re getting a second production from a fifth round pick. If he’s average by his standards, you’re getting what you should out of a fifth or six round pick. Drafting him in the second round demands that he produce at his ceiling now, which seems unlikely this season. And even if he does reach his ceiling, you’re getting what you ought to get out of a second round pick, which means you’re getting what you paid for. This all but eliminates Liriano’s value. Imagine if one had selected Jake Peavy there (a small reach) and waited to take Liriano in the fifth round. That would be a far more stout combination at much better value. And if you didn’t get Liriano, you’d still have Peavy and a boat load of excellent hitters still available to round out your lineup.

It was picks like this that really screwed up a lot of people’s draft. I’m sure if you ask some of these individuals about their draft, I’m sure they’d say it was excellent because they got superstar A, B and C to go along with hot prospects D and E. The problem they fail to see is what they had to pay to get those players and what the quality of players F through Y are. So what if you have Albert Pujols and CC Sabathia if the rest of your line up is a bunch of Tony Pena Jr.’s and the rest of your rotation is handful of Brett Tomko’s.
Three players are not going to win a league, because every team is going to have three or so great players on it; it’s a bunch of consistent quality players. Need an example, ask Tony. He started the season with Albert Pujols, Jose Reyes and Johan Santana on his team as keepers and finished the season with the second worst record in the league. Again, it’s not about having a few great players, it’s about having a great team.

Phase Two

Round five was the round where everyone suddenly realized they had to fill out their line up. Only one person picked a pitcher (me, of course…) and it was a reliever.

What was surprising to me was how many terrible picks were made in that round. Here is the recap:

Weseloh – Johnny Damon
Allen – Vladimir Guerrero
Willey – Joe Mauer
Keller – Curtis Granderson
Nielsen – Joe Nathan
Morris – Alfonso Soriano (Keeper)
Schilb – Matt Holliday (Keeper)
Kimball – Robinson Cano
Johnson – Chipper Jones
Wessley – Bobby Abreu

The amount of guys taken on the downward side of their career selected in this round were incredible: Johnny Damon, Vladimir Guerrero, Chipper Jones and Bobby Abreu. It would have been a fantastic round to take guys like Francisco Liriano and Felix Hernandez, but of course they were gone three rounds earlier for no real reason…

Robinson Cano is a guy who had a .715 OPS last season with a .305 OBP and has seen a drop in his OPS in three straight seasons. Add in the AROD-less lineup and an outfield that features Xavier Nady, aging stars Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon and the black hole that has become Jorge Posada and things don’t look so good for a Robinson Cano comeback.

Curtis Granderson has high upside, but is overvalued at round five.

Phase Three

Twenty-seven pitchers were taken between rounds six and 10, which doesn’t sound too insane at first glance. But when you think about how many pitchers were over-drafted in the first five rounds and all of the pitchers that were kept, then you start to think, “Who the hell was left of value as a pitcher to warrant 27 pitchers be taken?”

Here are some other fun stats:

Nine of the 10 picks in the 9th round were pitchers.

At least four pitchers were taken in rounds six through 10 (that’s insane, I promise).

Seven of the 27 pitchers taken were taken below value (taken later than expected). Of those seven, five were closers.

Fourteen of the 27 pitchers were taken at least TWO rounds too high, based on ESPN’s ADP.

Six of the nine 9th round picks were drafted two rounds too high. Four were taken at least three rounds too high. Three were taken at least four rounds too high. Two were taken five rounds too high. One was taken six rounds too high.

ESPN had 200 players listed on its ADP. J.J. Putz, drafted in the 10th round of our draft, was not on that list. A couple of picks later, B.J. Ryan was taken one round below where he was projected to go.

In a regular draft, David Price was going, on average, around round 18. Adjusted for our draft, that would put him around round 16. Instead, he was taken in round 10.

In other news: Raul Ibanez was taken in round 17; Jim Thome was drafted in round 19; Fausto Carmona, Billy Butler and J.J. Hardy were taken in round 20; David DeJesus was taken in round 21; John Smoltz went in round 24; J.D. Drew and Kelvim Escobar went in round 25.