MoneyBall Draft Revisited

The early chapters are all about the 2002 draft, the first year Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta took over from the scouts. Billy had 5 first rounders to play with… and was trying to make them pay off quickly without picking guys who would break the bank with signing bonuses. Much is made of picking Alabama prospect Jeremy Brown, a fat catcher with an insane OBP, in the first round of the 2002 draft. Scouts didn't even have him in the top 25 ranked catchers!

I decided to look up his career stats to see how that panned out for Beane and company... he had a cup of coffee with Oakland, but retired in February of 2008, after putting up an .833 OPS in his 2007 season at AAA Sacramento. He did show good plate discipline throughout his minor league career, with an overall OPS of .809.

Looking over the rest of the Oakland draft:

Beane's biggest prize was Nick Swisher (with the 15th pick.) Swisher enjoyed 2 productive seasons with Oakland before being shipped off for Ryan Sweeney and two minor league pitchers with high k/9 rates.

Another pick (straight out of Paul DePodesta’s laptop) was Mark Teahen and his .493 OBP from St. Mary’s. He had a very good year in AA ball for Oakland before being shipped to KC. His rookie year with the Royals made him a household name… .874 OPS. Now, at 26, he’s tailed off each year and is posting a measly .706 OPS in 2008.

The last bat taken in the opening round was John McCurdy, who absolutely destroyed the competition with a 1.324 OPS at U Maryland… but posted a .667 OPS in the minors, never making it past AA, and retiring after 2006.

The first round also netted Beane three pitchers: Joe "Cupcakes" Blanton (who got rushed to the show and has been a solid middle of the rotation guy for the A’s over the last 3 years,) and two other college pitchers. Ben Fritz looks like he couldn’t succeed beyond AA, though he’s still trying in the Detroit organization now. Meanwhile Steve Obenchain (despite his awesome name) couldn’t do squat above A ball. He spent 2007 in the Independent League. Fun fact: Cupcakes threw 230 innings last year.

2nd Round pick Steven Stanley, a 5’7" outfielder, topped out with a half-season of AAA ball.

The 3rd rounder was William Murphy, a pitcher who impressed, and was part of the deal that landed Mark Redman, who was later flipped for Jason Kendall.

4th Rounder John Baker was a catcher that played the last few years at AAA, he was traded to the Marlins for Jason Stokes, a younger power hitting first baseman (who was picked in the 2nd round of the same 2002 draft.)

Mark Kiger, slap-hitting infielder, kicked around the minors, and now (at 28) is playing for the M’s AA farm team.

Brant Colamarino was touted by DePodesta as "possibly the best hitter in the draft", and he may have been but the #218 pick never managed to hit above the AA level.

6th rounder Brian Stavisky put up some pretty numbers… until he hit AAA where he was overmatched or hurt. LAA picked him up however, and he’s still playing in 2008.

Then there’s a whole lotta names I’m not going to look up… until, sitting way down at the bottom, I see the Athletics’ 40th round pick: Jonathon Papelbon. He elected not to sign, and was then picked in the 4th round by the Bosox the next year. I’m sure Billy Beane threw a chair at a wall when Paps went on to "smear" the rest of the league. (You see what I did there? Haha!)

So Beane and DePodesta actually pulled off an upset in getting good value out of 3/5ths of their first rounders... especially when you consider that they weren't going to touch anyone (outside of Swisher) with a huge signing bonus demand.

---

Looking at the Mariners’ 2002 draft… hmm… #1 John Mayberry is a good player… good enough that the Texas rangers drafted him 3 years later with the 19th pick overall (he elected to attend Stanford.) Mayberry, now 24 is putting up a .905 OPS in AAA.

Our 2nd rounder, Josh Womack spent the first 5 years of his career struggling at A ball.

We also failed to sign our #3 pick, who was redrafted by the Giants the following year.

Our #4 completely sucked and never made it out of A ball.

We tried to draft Travis Buck in the 23rd round. Another signing failure.

But the 39th round saw us pick Bryan LaHair, who’s going into this 3rd year of .800-ish OPS at AAA. He’s only 25.

---

Look at the whole draft here: http://www.thebaseballcube.com/draft/2002/Round-1-1.shtml

The first two rounds contain an awful lot of talent… much of it just now emerging.

You can really see the impact of drafting college guys… most teams are just reaping the benefits of the 2002 draft, while Oakland has already (in Swisher’s case) gotten two good years out of him and dumped him for more prospects.

Fun fact: Micah Owings was actually the second Micah in the draft… behind Micah Schilling.