What constitutes a good draft? My study of 1998-2005

[HowAboutThat]

There’s been a lot of discussion about how one defines Success, and it occurred to me that the minimum qualification for “success small ‘s’ would be production that surpasses the combination of signing bonus and training expense. So at about 7 million per WAR, any WAR>bonus/training cost would be considered a success.

That would indicate that Mancini has been a resounding success, while, for instance, Cody Sedlock has not been( though of course he might be.)

Matusz also would have to be called a success, for instance, but I’m not signing off on that.

[HowAboutThat]

11 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Most do not.   A small number vastly exceed them.   

Agreed. That led to my next comment attempting to define “success”

[Frobby]

On 8/14/2021 at 8:44 AM, Frobby said:

At some point I’m going to try to list all the players over a certain threshold in that period.   Maybe 30 rWAR.   I’d guess the average draft has 10-15 players above that and they make up more than half the WAR in that class.

So, I'm back to drilling down on the 1998-2005 drafts to study what constitutes a good draft.  There were 75 drafts in that 8-year span that produced 30+ WAR.   So, that's the top 30% or so of all drafts.   I looked at all of them to see how many players with 10+ WAR were drafted in those drafts.   

In only seven of the 75 was a team able to draft three players who produced 10+ WAR.   The other 68 were evenly split, 34 with two 10+ WAR players, 34 with only one 10+ WAR player (who, in most cases, was worth 30+ WAR by himself, carrying the team total to 30+).   All in all, there were 49 drafted players who were worth 30+ WAR, so about six per year (not 10-15 as I had guessed above).    Here are the seven teams that managed to draft three 10+ WAR players in the same year:

2000 Braves (74.8 WAR): Wainwright 44.5, K. Johnson 16.6, LaRoche 14.2

2001 Cubs (49.1 WAR): Prior 16.6, Nolasco 13.6, G. Soto 12.0

2000 Expos (96.2 WAR): Sizemore 27.8, C. Lee 43.2, Bay 24.8

1998 Phillies (53.7 WAR): Burrell 18.9, Madson 13.7, Punto 15.4

2005 Red Sox (64.8 WAR): Ellsbury 31.2, Buchholtz 16.7, Lowrie 17.0

1998 Reds (46.0 WAR): Kearns 13.0, Dunn 17.9, BJ Ryan 11.0

2002 Twins (52.4 WAR): Span 27.9, Crain 11.4, Neshek 10.7

Here's a few big scores with two different players:

2004 Astros (78.3 WAR): Pence 30.8, Zobrist 44.5

2005 Brewers (80.3 WAR): Braun 47.1, Brantley 32.9

1999 Cardinals (133.5 WAR): Crisp 28.9 WAR, Pujols 99.6

1999 Devil Rays (70.6 WAR): Hamilton 28.2, Crawford 39.1