The way to win the World Series is to lose big for three years

[now]

5 hours ago, Frobby said:

Here’s an interesting piece from ESPN saying that players 25 and under are making up 27% of the at bats, which is the highest in 40 years, and they are hitting 103 OPS (3% above league average), which is unusually high for that age bracket.  http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/25417893/young-players-officially-taken-major-league-baseball

Fascinating, to see how things have changed in the game in respect to the aging curve. I have long thought it wiser to bring up pitchers younger, not only because of peaking early (25-26 in the chart you posted earlier, thru 2013; I suspect it's younger now, five years later) but to take advantage of them before their arms fall off. Now the batters have shown they're better earlier too.

Play the kids!

 

[BarclaySouthway]

On 11/18/2018 at 1:01 PM, now said:

Viewing the link from Melewski's post today on 1:1 draft picks, I did a little data collection to compare WARs of the first five picks overall. Here are the average career WAR values for the top overall picks (since 1965):

#1: 22

#2: 15

#3: 14

#4: 14

#5: 13

It appears it really is a big deal to get the first pick overall: almost 50% better production than the #2 pick! After that, more of a crapshoot. Of course, the sample size is relatively small, could be skewed by a few big successes. Plus all years are not equal talent pools. Anyway, good to have that #1 in the bag (assuming signability).

Getting the first pick is a sizable advantage without a doubt, but even that is a crapshoot.  I looked back at the top three picks in the 20 drafts from 1996-2015 to see how many stars came out of each of those slots.   My criteria for that was a pretty subjective, but if you made multiple all-star teams and had a good number of at least 4ish-WAR production, you were pretty much in.  Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, and Pedro Alvarez are not stars.  JD Drew, Josh Beckett, Troy Glaus, and Mark Prior (he got hurt, but whatever, he was awesome) are.  If you didn't sign the guy, oh well, that's a goose egg- it counts.

The results aren't completely in from 2014 and 2015, but since Bregman's  already a star, I included them.  I made the (maybe reckless) assumption that the other guys from those years won't make it big, though some of them will likely be at least solid regulars.

For the last 20 years, the numbers are:

• 1st pick: 9/20 became stars
• 2nd pick: 8/20 became stars
• 3rd pick: 4/20 became stars

What's striking is even the 1st pick works out less than half the time!  And that third pick has been almost cursed over the last 20 years.  

I guess the take away is that if you can't finish with the worst record, second-worst works almost as well.  (Just don't do any better than that.)

 

 

 

 

[Camden_yardbird]

On 11/14/2018 at 10:41 AM, wildcard said:

John Angelos could have went a difference way.  Ben Cherington probably does not follow the "Houston plan".  When he got control of the Red Sox he traded a bunch of expensive players and then in the same year signed a bunch 2nd tier major leaguers.  He kept his veterans that he thought he could win with.   In that scenario Bundy, Cobb,  Givens, Mancini probably all stay.   Cherington won the World Series in his 2nd year.  When he got to pick his own manager.  Cherington's scouting and player development skills allowed him to win the WS and still accumulate  young players to position the Red Sox to win in 2018..

There is a big difference between the way a small market team has to rebuild and the way a large market team can rebuild.  Large market teams can choose a Houston method with a longer rebuild or can choose to turn it around very quickly by being big free agency spenders.  That's not always an option on more limited fiscal constraints.