Camden Depot: Overrated, Expensive, Central And South American Prospects

[Stotle]

Also, if any believe you can get success stories from every player you draft in the 1st 5 rounds..you are crazy.. which is why you draft as many players as you can.. Here is a list of late round picks: Pujols, Nolan Ryan, Sandberg, Smoltz, Piazza, Thome, Mattingly, Lofton, Kent, Saberhagen, Buehrle, Hershiser, Pettitte, Oswalt, Kinsler... just to name a few.

That type of late round pick is irrelevant under the current draft rules. There's a reason your examples are players drafted like 20-30-40 years ago.

[weams]

That type of late round pick is irrelevant under the current draft rules. There's a reason your examples are players drafted like 20-30-40 years ago.

Absolutely. The slot money format removed that completely.

[BradyBunch]

I guess it comes down to this for me ...... that, broken or not, the system is the system and the Os have chosen a path that procures less of a critical resource than most every other team in MLB. For a team reputed to have outsized profits, being cheap in the international prospect signings is disappointing to me.

It's the current system now, but come end of 2016 it's gonna change if MLB has it's way come 2016/2017. MLB wants an international draft.

Procurse less? Or spends less.. there is a difference. As I pointed out in 2013/2014 period Orioles signed 17 guys for $1.78m in the interenational market. Also don't include signing Wei Yin Chen, Gonzo, Soon, and the others the Orioles signed over the last 4 years. It's not like they aren't spending. They just are spending more money then anybody else.

Besides, no one has advocated that the Os "break the bank". People have advocated that the Os jump into the pool like the other kids in the playground - even the poor ones.

You may say you aren't. But you are. When you see what the Orioles have brought in internationally over the last few years, you actually realize the O's are very active. It's just not headline names. Nobody knew who Chen was. Urrutia, Alvarez, Schoop, Miranda, and Jonatan Isenia are some more that could be depending on how you view it as gems (cost vs return). It's not like the Orioles are not signing guys. They just aren't signing what YOU and others want, hence a break the bank mentality.

Btw, Cheap got the Orioles Chen and Schoop.

[DrungoHazewood]

Also, if any believe you can get success stories from every player you draft in the 1st 5 rounds..you are crazy.. which is why you draft as many players as you can.. Here is a list of late round picks: Pujols, Nolan Ryan, Sandberg, Smoltz, Piazza, Thome, Mattingly, Lofton, Kent, Saberhagen, Buehrle, Hershiser, Pettitte, Oswalt, Kinsler... just to name a few.

You know you're pointing out the outliers. There is a predictable relationship between draft position and quality. Especially in the first round each pick is more likely than the one following to produce X value, and each round is more likely than the next to produce. The first pick is always more valuable than any other, the first round more valuable than any other. You would always take the 30th pick over the 50th or the 100th.

[DrungoHazewood]

You may say you aren't. But you are. When you see what the Orioles have brought in internationally over the last few years, you actually realize the O's are very active. It's just not headline names. Nobody knew who Chen was. Urrutia, Alvarez, Schoop, Miranda, and Jonatan Isenia are some more that could be depending on how you view it as gems (cost vs return). It's not like the Orioles are not signing guys. They just aren't signing what YOU and others want, hence a break the bank mentality.

Btw, Cheap got the Orioles Chen and Schoop.

More investment got other teams their own Chens and Schoops and a bunch of other players.

[BradyBunch]

That type of late round pick is irrelevant under the current draft rules. There's a reason your examples are players drafted like 20-30-40 years ago.

Don't disagree, but the claim was would teams pass on those later rounds. That's not true. Teams will take as many players as they can.

But, I could have listed Bautista, he was a 20th rounder. Kevin Gausman was drafted 6th round in 2010. I could add, from that 2010 draft.. DeGrom, Bryant (didn't sign), Pederson, Evan Gattis, Kevin Kiermaier and Corey Dickerson.

[BradyBunch]

More investment got other teams their own Chens and Schoops and a bunch of other players.

Did they get them at value or did they over pay... that's the question.

[DrungoHazewood]

Teams will take as many players as they can.

No, they won't. They could sign all the players who are in the indy leagues now. But they don't. Nobody is stopping them from having 12 or 15 minor league affiliates, but they don't because the odds of finding a good MLB player in all that very late round/undrafted talent is very slim. There is no return on that investment. They agreed to limit the number of rounds in the draft precisely because the late rounds were just overwhelmingly just randomly picking organizational guys who'd rarely make it out of A or AA.

[DrungoHazewood]

Did they get them at value or did they over pay... that's the question.

No, the question is did they get the talent within their budget to win baseball games? It's one thing to say "look, we stayed out of this risky market because it's a bad investment" but the follow-on question is what productive thing did you do with all that money you supposedly saved? The Orioles appear to be taking their savings and using it to do things unrelated to building a better organization. Or maybe phrased better, are just not allocating any money to this type of investment in the budget.

[BradyBunch]

You know you're pointing out the outliers. There is a predictable relationship between draft position and quality. Especially in the first round each pick is more likely than the one following to produce X value, and each round is more likely than the next to produce. The first pick is always more valuable than any other, the first round more valuable than any other. You would always take the 30th pick over the 50th or the 100th.

I am not pointing out outliers. It's a huge myth about draft level and talent. Huge myth. You get drafted there because of scouting opinions and scouts get it wrong as it's not an exact science.

Go look at the 2009, 2010, 2011 (was weak on both sides of the coin).. and any draft you want. You will find guys from the 5th round on.. being true talents. Goldschmidt, Dozier, Holt, Carpenter, J.D. Martinez, Mike Fiers and Dallas Keuchel all post 5th round draft picks in 2009.

[DrungoHazewood]

I am not pointing out outliers. It's a huge myth about draft level and talent. Huge myth. You get drafted there because of scouting opinions and scouts get it wrong as it's not an exact science.

Go look at the 2009, 2010, 2011 (was weak on both sides of the coin).. and any draft you want. You will find guys from the 5th round on.. being true talents. Goldschmidt, Dozier, Holt, Carpenter, J.D. Martinez, Mike Fiers and Dallas Keuchel all post 5th round draft picks in 2009.

No, that's wrong. There's a predictable relationship between draft position and likelihood of success.

[Stotle]

Absolutely. The slot money format removed that completely.

I mean, he was naming guys from the draft-and-follow days, too!

[weams]

I mean, he was naming guys from the draft-and-follow days, too!

It fit the narrative...

Plus when you draft someone and they don't sign...it does not mean that they were a 20th round talent. It means you did not pay them the first round money they were after.

[BradyBunch]

No, they won't. They could sign all the players who are in the indy leagues now. But they don't. Nobody is stopping them from having 12 or 15 minor league affiliates, but they don't because the odds of finding a good MLB player in all that very late round/undrafted talent is very slim. There is no return on that investment. They agreed to limit the number of rounds in the draft precisely because the late rounds were just overwhelmingly just randomly picking organizational guys who'd rarely make it out of A or AA.

Yes, every team will sign and draft as many players as they can to fill out their rosters (major and minors). They will always sign players from the 6th to 40th rounds as they are cheap low risk projects.

MLB's MiLB system is self-limiting in structure as to the size that it can grow. After the reorg in 1963 it ended the boom era of minor league baseball. The system went from close to 450 teams (59 leagues) in 1949 to 19 leagues and 246 teams today. Only new leagues since 1985 are Rookie ball.. Arizonia League, DSL and VSL. Orioles have ran two teams down in the DSL and so have others. Yankees run two teams in the GCL.

Rookie ball is where you hash it out and find who's got it.

And no the draft wasn't shorten from 50 to 40 rounds under the current CBA because of what you claim. Rather it was shorten because typical those in the 41st to 50th round didn't sign and went back to college (either JuCo to 4 year or a Junior going to finish out their Senior year) to boost their stock and then you had those who were gonna sign a undrafted contract anyways (Seniors) so why draft them?

Just like reporters and bloggers are calling for the draft to be shorten again because of the same issues as before.

[DrungoHazewood]

They will always sign players from the 6th to 40th rounds as they are cheap low risk projects.

...

And no the draft wasn't shorten from 50 to 40 rounds under the current CBA because of what you claim. Rather it was shorten because typical those in the 41st to 50th round didn't sign and went back to college (either JuCo to 4 year or a Junior going to finish out their Senior year) to boost their stock and then you had those who were gonna sign a undrafted contract anyways (Seniors) so why draft them?

Just like reporters and bloggers are calling for the draft to be shorten again because of the same issues as before.

You have it partly right, partly wrong. The players after, say, the 20th round are low-probability prospects. They're overwhelmingly unlikely to amount to anything. So they're heavily incentivized to go to school rather than hang out hitting .189 in A ball and getting released without having a degree as a backup plan. The teams would just as soon not draft them because they're just filling out the back end of lower level rosters with guys who're not going to make the majors 90 percent of the time.

You keep picking out outliers, but look at, say, 2008. From round 30-40 by far the best player picked was Yan Gomes, career value of 8 WAR. Out of 300 players taken about half a dozen had a career as valuable as Ryan Flaherty.

Any one of them could be looked at as a "low risk project". But you have 20 players you bring in every year that are basically lottery tickets who you have to pay room and board and per diem and a little salary for, and you have to sort through a couple busloads of these non-prospects and decide who gets cut and who gets to be the Shorebirds' second utility player.