Trying to Better Understand the Value of First Round Draft Picks

I've long been interested in trying to shed more light on the true value of first round draft picks... those fascinating commodities... so full of talent and potential. I've often heard arguments about the value of a prized draft pick in terms of his value vs. that of an established major league player. And many of these arguments have seemed to me to be overblown and ignorant of the statistical destiny of our beloved blue chips. In order to be more informed, I decided to do some sloppy half-assed research.

My own personal prejudice is that we tend to overvalue prospects because we cannot help but see them for all their potential and none of their warts. We don't imagine them succumbing to injury in their sophomore year or the hole in their swing causing them to flame out when they get to AAA. We imagine that 2 sandwich picks are excellent compensation for losing a veteran player. But what can history tell us about the true value of those early picks? I spent an hour today looking at all the first round draft picks from 1990 to 1999 to see what percentage of these players wound up being impact players at the MLB level.

I looked at all the first round picks from these years, and sorted the players into 3 categories: all-star, useful player and bust. I have to admit that this was a subjective process. (I'd love to see what another researcher would find.) There were 280 total picks to rank. I also broke out the top 10 picks from each year and did a sub-analysis.

Since I am aware of a personal prejudice I tried to grade fairly. But there are obvious flaws in my research. I was unwilling to look up stat lines for every player. (That would take too much time.) As a 35 year old baseball fan, I have a decent memory of the years when these players established their careers... but I may have graded someone as a bust that actually had a useful career as a relief pitcher for some lame national league team (though I did catch Matt Thornton as a "useful player".) It may also turn out that some of the 98/99 draft picks still blossom into quality ML players. I tried to choose a cut off date long enough ago that that wouldn't be a factor, but I also had to choose an era when I would be instantly familiar with the players. Also, some players show up twice... so Jason Varitek counts in the "all-star" bracket two times, since he was drafted two times. I didn't control for this factor, guessing that it evened out over the long haul. Lastly, as scouting and analysis has improved, the quality of the draft may have improved as well. Fewer teams may be making bad draft picks now as compared to the 90's.

Total number of first round draft picks from 1990-1999: 280

Total number of "all-stars": 31 or 11%

Total number of "useful players": 64 or 23%

Total number of "busts": 185 or 66%

Total number of top 10 draft picks from 1990-1999: 100

Total number of "all-stars": 13 or 13%

Total number of "useful players": 29 or 29%

Total number of "busts": 58 or 58%

As you would expect there is a small, but significant difference between the top 10 picks and the rest of the first-rounders.

If you are evaluating a first round pick, you can expect a 34% chance (or about 1/3 of the time) that that player makes an impact at the major league level. If it's a top-10 guy, you can bump that percentage up to 42%. Assuming there's no gross irregularities in the system, I assume sandwich picks are only about 25-30% likely to make an impact at the MLB level.

This is actually a slightly higher success rate than I thought I would see... though that 66% doom rate (58% for top 10 picks) still makes me more cautious than the average LLer when it comes to setting a value on prospects. These were all guys that looked like studs at some point... often older and further along when drafted than Triunfel (just to pick an example) is now.