11 of BA's top 100 prospects drafted via comp picks

[Sports Guy]

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2011/02/top-100-prospects-drafted-with-compensation-picks.html

[Stotle]

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2011/02/top-100-prospects-drafted-with-compensation-picks.html

Comp picks are generally in the top 50 overall. Seems to make intuitive sense that the best players in the minors were picked in the top 50 overall. Not sure what the author's point is. If he is claiming that getting rid of comp picks will hurt teams that can't afford to keep their homegrown talent, he should double-check how many of those comp picks were really for "impact" players.

[Frobby]

Comp picks are generally in the top 50 overall. Seems to make intuitive sense that the best players in the minors were picked in the top 50 overall. Not sure what the author's point is. If he is claiming that getting rid of comp picks will hurt teams that can't afford to keep their homegrown talent, he should double-check how many of those comp picks were really for "impact" players.

Since all 11 guys come from the 2006-10 drafts, I thought I'd count up how many 1st round comp picks there were in those drafts:

2006: 20 comp picks out of 44 1st round picks

2007: 40/64

2008: 15/46

2009: 24/49

2010: 24/50

Total: 123/253

Considering that almost half of all first round picks are comp picks, it is not too surprising that 11 of the top 100 prospects are comp picks. If anything, I'm surprised the number isn't a little higher.

[MurphDogg]

If anything the article goes to prove the opposite point the author was trying to make if you look at the teams that got the comp picks and who they lost.

It wasn't that the Angels couldn't afford to resign Teixeira, the comp picks were part of the valuation when they traded for him. If comp picks didn't exist then the Angels wouldn't have given up as much for him at the deadline. Similarly with Jason Bay, the comp picks were part of the equation, and the Red Sox aren't the type of team that comp pick system was designed to protect.

Delucci, Riske, Miller, Hudson, Cordero, and Bradley were not home-grown stars their teams couldn't afford to retain. They are decent major leaguers who became free-agents and their team declined to resign them. The comp system was not designed to reward teams who lost role-players like those above but it was designed to protect teams who lost their home-grown stars. The problem with this is that teams trade their home-grown stars before free-agency and the big-market team they trade him to then gets the comp-pick benefit. Of course, this isn't really a problem if comp picks are added to the valuation of the star players in trades but it still deflates the value of middling players who are unfortunate enough to reach type A status.