The Twins suck.
Sorry, had to be said. The reward
for sucky teams is a good draft pick. I
was talking with a friend of mine and he said, "who cares about the draft,
it's a total crapshoot." This got
me wondering; is the draft a crapshoot?
Yeah, probably.
However, is the MLB draft more of a crapshoot than the other
3 major sports' drafts? I did some
research to see if any one league has a more crapshooty (crapshootish?) draft
than any of the other sports.
I wasn't able to do any super extensive research, as I do
have a pretty awesome social life to maintain (Netflix, Dog Walks, Couch,
etc.). As a result, I looked at a 10
year sample of MLB, NFL, NHL and NBA drafts.
I looked from 1981 to 1990, so that most players would be done with
their careers. I am going to spit this
up a bit, to give me time to do my shoddy research properly. I will investigate 3 different factors:
·
- What is the percentage of 1st round picks that made an All-Star team?
- How does the average career length of Top 10 picks compare to the average career length of a player in that league?
- Where do MVPs come from?
While these are obviously not perfect measures, I feel they
give some sort of data to look at and then analyze. Some might accuse me of cherry-picking, but I
could give one rat's behind about that.
This isn't a research journal, last time I checked.
So, here are the results:
Question 1 - What is
the percentage of 1st round picks that made an All-Star team?
This was the easy one to figure out. I just looked at draft results, all-star
appearances and did some simple division.
Full disclosure: Excel did the
division for me. Here is a chart of the
results:
Chart 1 - Percentage
of 1st Round Picks that became All-Stars from 1981 to 1990.
|
MLB
|
Total
|
|
# of 1st Round All Stars
|
52
|
|
# of 1st Round Picks
|
269
|
|
% of 1st Round All Stars
|
19.33%
|
|
NFL
|
Total
|
|
# of All Stars
|
118
|
|
# of 1st Round Picks
|
275
|
|
% of 1st Round All Stars
|
42.91%
|
|
NBA
|
Total
|
|
# of All Stars
|
61
|
|
# of 1st Round Picks
|
244
|
|
% of 1st Round All Stars
|
25.00%
|
|
NHL
|
Total
|
|
# of All Stars
|
46
|
|
# of 1st Round Picks
|
189
|
|
% of 1st Round All Stars
|
24.34%
|
Well, obviously this is a flawed design. This is true for a couple of reasons. Not all drafts have the same amount of
rounds. Not all leagues had the same
amount of teams. Not all leagues have
the same rules for player eligibility. Not
all all-stars are created equal. Draft
strategies could be evolving and changing since the '80s. However, in a perfect world, the first round
would produce the most talent, regardless of these differences.
It does appear that in this decade, it was more difficult to
find an All-Star in the MLB draft first round than in any of the 3 other
leagues first rounds. There doesn't seem
to be any trend data throughout the years as the percentage was pretty stable
from '81 to '90. Over 40% of first round
picks in the NFL became All-Stars. The
number is under 20% for MLB, the lowest of the 4 leagues. Obviously, I am using the terms All-Star and
Pro-Bowler interchangeably.
The total number of All-Stars from the 1st round are pretty
comparable when you compare MLB and NHL.
However, there were fewer players drafted in the 1st rounds overall in
the NHL. So, the 1st round of the MLB
draft is a bit of a crapshoot, especially when compared with other
leagues. However, does this mean that
the top end of the draft is a crapshoot?
If not, it might point toward teams being even more likely to try to get
the top end picks. Here is another
chart:
Chart 2 - Number of
Top Ten Picks that became All-Stars between 1981-1990.
|
MLB
|
Total
|
|
# of Top Ten Pick All Stars
|
30
|
|
NFL
|
Total
|
|
# of Top Ten Pick All Stars
|
54
|
|
NBA
|
Total
|
|
# of Top Ten Pick All Stars
|
35
|
|
NHL
|
Total
|
|
# of Top Ten Pick All Stars
|
43
|
Since there were a total of 10 Top Ten picks in each draft,
the total number for the decade would be 100.
So, all these numbers are equal to the percentages as well. Therefore, we can see that Top Ten picks are
easily more likely to become All-Stars than just 1st round picks. That makes sense as the top ten should be the
real cream of the crop. However, the gap
between leagues widens slightly between the MLB and NFL, significantly between
the MLB and NHL, and narrows between the MLB and NBA. When you consider that far fewer NBA
All-Stars are named each year, the narrowing seems less significant. 70% of MLB top ten picks failed to become
All-Stars.
When you think of it that
way, it is a bit worrisome for teams looking for All-Star players.
My main problem with this data is that the MLB draft is just
so much longer than other drafts. The
player pool is so much larger. The top
ten of 1500 players is a much smaller percentage than the top ten of 250
players. So, I thought it might be
interesting to look at a percentage-based player pool. Here is another chart:
Chart 3 - Number of
Players selected in the Top 5% of Drafts that became All-Stars between 1981-1990.
|
MLB
|
Total
|
|
# of Top 5% All-Stars
|
72
|
|
NFL
|
Total
|
|
# of Top 5% All-Stars
|
78
|
|
NBA
|
Total
|
|
# of Top 5% All-Stars
|
32
|
|
NHL
|
Total
|
|
# of Top 5% All-Stars
|
47
|
Just for explanation sake, I took the total number of
players drafted, multiplied by 5% and then counted the number of All-Stars
taken within those pick values.
Ah, perhaps a point in the MLB's favor! When you look at all players selected in the
top 5% of these drafts, the number of MLB All-Stars is much higher than the NBA
and NHL and right in line with the NFL. Maybe
this simply means that we have to consider the size of the player pool, in
order to see that the MLB draft is not a crapshoot. Well, maybe not. Here is another chart:
Chart 4 - Percentage
of Players selected in the Top 5% of Drafts that became All-Stars between 1981-1990.
|
# of Top 5% Picks
|
# of Top 5% All-Stars
|
% of Top 5% Picks All-Stars
|
|
|
MLB
|
538
|
72
|
13.38%
|
|
NFL
|
167
|
78
|
46.71%
|
|
NBA
|
79
|
32
|
40.51%
|
|
NHL
|
123
|
47
|
38.21%
|
Giving you all the data is quite important, eh? Now MLB doesn't look so great. When you look at the top 5% of any NFL, NHL,
or NBA draft, there is close to or more than a 40% chance that a team will get
an All-Star. In the MLB, that number is
under 15%. Yikes.
According to this data, if you wanted to draft an All-Star
in the 80s, you should have been a terrible team the year before and had a top
ten pick. Even then, you were going to
fail to get an All-Star 70% of the time.
Once you leave the Top Ten, the numbers are pretty awful. There were only 22 players drafted in the
first round, but outside the Top Ten from 1981 to 1990 that became an All-Star,
only about 2 players per year. It
appears that the MLB draft is a bit of a crapshoot, and much more of a
crapshoot than any of the other leagues.
This does not surprise me though. Well, one part does. The NHL seems like it should have had numbers
more in line with MLB. After all, their player pool seems to be the most similar,
with high school players and young foreign players making up a lot of their
first rounds. I guess the one
explanation would be the glut of Club and Junior Level teams that younger
players could play for. These types of
teams produce a higher level of competition than simply high school teams that
future MLB draftees would play for. If I
had no life whatsoever, I might investigate High School vs. College, but that
seems like a huge undertaking.
To me, the MLB draft is more about upside than the others,
especially in the very early picks. NFL
and NBA teams have the benefit of watching their players in college. The NHL teams can see how players fare in
either Junior, Club or College hockey. These
leagues can have a pretty good idea of what type of player they are
getting. MLB is often relying on high
school leagues, which would seem to have the most volatility. The MLB draft lacks certainty, almost by its
design and structure. However, I am 100%
certain that no team would ever want to create a system where high school players
are not drafted, so the uncertainty is here to stay.
I wish that I could travel ten years in the future to do
this same exercise with the 1991 to 2000 drafts, but many players (especially
in the later years) are still active and the data points for All-Star
appearances could change over the next few years. Someone please remind me in 2022 that I have
work to do.
You can see the full charts here, with each year shown
individually:
Please feel free to
question my methods and criticize my lack of devotion to the Scientific
Method. Part 2 will investigate career
lengths in the Top Tens of these drafts.
