A difference between the "NFL BPA" and the additional strategy in the MLB draft.

[2001OriolesFan]

In the NFL it is rare for a player not to sign and almost all the players come out after 4 or 3 years of college and then go directly onto a NFL roster.  The BPA (best player available,"BPA", is an NFL draft strategy and its rival is the "player at position of greatest need")

... In MLB, you have young players, high school graduates, who have the option of going to college for one or a couple of years and then moving up in the draft to get drafted higher and get a big bonus. BUT you might seduce these young, high ceiling guys to sign early by giving them a big quarter of a million or more bonus, grown up in the minor leagues and you got yourself a high ceiling guy cheap, with in inverstment of time, that you might not ever be able to draft with your first round pick. So there is the "underslot" "overslot" game. THERE IS another thing in play other than "BPA". Signability with overslot bonus and the investment of development time is the ADDITIONAL factor compared to NFL practice.

The Orioles do NOT have a strong pipeline of top pitching  and it looks like, with the position players, have a 4-7 year window of excellence coming up. They can trade surplus present good veterans for pitching.  They can trade surplus OF and IF for pitching.  They can trade surplus high ceiling prospects for pitching prospects (not a common approach but it could work now and here).  They can really concentrate on pitching in the upcoming draft.  I wonder i they should drop back from drafting the BPA with their #17 pick and take some college pitcher, expected to be in the 25-35's.  They could pay him money from that zone of bonus money and get a million or so to then go after high ceiling players who probably are going to decide to wait a year or two before going pro, so they would get more money later as they would be picked in a higher round.  It might be the best way to get higher quality pitching a few years down the road.

 

By the way, if you think that the O's would never do anything like this,,,, remember Carter Young.  He was drafted in the 27th round of the 2022 draft and got a bonus for signing of $1.325 million.  .....  I guess you all forgot.  https://www.anchorofgold.com/2022/8/1/23287992/orioles-sign-mighty-carter-young-for-1-35-million     .   https://www.tennessean.com/story/sports/college/vanderbilt/2021/04/30/carter-young-9-facts-vanderbilt-baseball-shortstop/4894085001/

 

[Alasdaire]

1 hour ago, 2001OriolesFan said:

I wonder i they should drop back from drafting the BPA with their #17 pick and take some college pitcher, expected to be in the 25-35's.  They could pay him money from that zone of bonus money and get a million or so to then go after high ceiling players who probably are going to decide to wait a year or two before going pro, so they would get more money later as they would be picked in a higher round.  It might be the best way to get higher quality pitching a few years down the road.\

I hope the front office follows whatever their model tells them to do. It has worked out smashingly so far, and you can never have too many good players at any position. My only ask is that they not close themselves off to any options. If your model tells you a college bat, then fine. But design the model to fairly consider prep bats and pitchers.

Would you really have them take a college pitcher who they don't believe in over a position player who fits the criteria they have relied on to select multiple players with all star trajectories? It would be one thing if there was some sort of certainty with college pitching, but TINSTAAPP comes for all pitching prospects.

Quote

By the way, if you think that the O's would never do anything like this,,,, remember Carter Young.  He was drafted in the 27th round of the 2022 draft and got a bonus for signing of $1.325 million.  .....  I guess you all forgot.  https://www.anchorofgold.com/2022/8/1/23287992/orioles-sign-mighty-carter-young-for-1-35-million     .   https://www.tennessean.com/story/sports/college/vanderbilt/2021/04/30/carter-young-9-facts-vanderbilt-baseball-shortstop/4894085001/

Coby Mayo and Creed Willems are better examples of a conscious underslot strategy than Carter Young. It's widely believed that they threw money at Carter Young only because they couldn't agree to terms with Nolan McClean and not because they were targeting him.

[Sports Guy]

BPA should always be the strategy, regardless of sport.

[Can_of_corn]

49 minutes ago, Alasdaire said:

I hope the front office follows whatever their model tells them to do. It has worked out smashingly so far, and you can never have too many good players at any position. My only ask is that they not close themselves off to any options. If your model tells you a college bat, then fine. But design the model to fairly consider prep bats and pitchers.

Would you really have them take a college pitcher who they don't believe in over a position player who fits the criteria they have relied on to select multiple players with all star trajectories? It would be one thing if there was some sort of certainty with college pitching, but TINSTAAPP comes for all pitching prospects.

Coby Mayo and Creed Willems are better examples of a conscious underslot strategy than Carter Young. It's widely believed that they threw money at Carter Young only because they couldn't agree to terms with Nolan McClean and not because they were targeting him.

It was also the thought at the time that they threw money at Creed Willems because they had missed on some of their earlier targets.

[Can_of_corn]

6 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

BPA should always be the strategy, regardless of sport.

Trading down for additional picks is a valid NFL strategy.

[Sports Guy]

4 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Trading down for additional picks is a valid NFL strategy.

I know 

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Sports Guy said:

I know 

So taking the BPA shouldn't always be the strategy in every sport.

Should be in this sport.

I'm not even sure it should always be the case in the NBA.  If you have an established star player, say on a max contract, you might not take the BPA if his game doesn't mesh with your established roster.  You might take a slightly less talented player that is a better fit.

[Sports Guy]

Just now, Can_of_corn said:

So taking the BPA shouldn't always be the strategy in every sport.

Should be in this sport.

I'm not even sure it should always be the case in the NBA.  If you have an established star player, say on a max contract, you might not take the BPA if his game doesn't mesh with your established roster.  You might take a slightly less talented player that is a better fit.

When you actually make the pick, BPA should always be the strategy. I know you like to play the semantics game but that is very obviously what was being said.

And yes, an NBA team may not do that…and they would be wrong. A lot of awful NBA draft picks every year and it’s largely by the same teams year in and year out.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

When you actually make the pick, BPA should always be the strategy. I know you like to play the semantics game but that is very obviously what was being said.

And yes, an NBA team may not do that…and they would be wrong. A lot of awful NBA draft picks every year and it’s largely by the same teams year in and year out.

It's not semantics.

It's being tired of you saying things are absolutes when anyone with an ounce of sense knows they aren't.

Just don't do it.

You just admitted that you stated a falsehood.

Just don't.

It's not hard.

[Sydnor]

1 hour ago, Can_of_corn said:

So taking the BPA shouldn't always be the strategy in every sport.

Should be in this sport.

I'm not even sure it should always be the case in the NBA.  If you have an established star player, say on a max contract, you might not take the BPA if his game doesn't mesh with your established roster.  You might take a slightly less talented player that is a better fit.

This is correct. In the NFL and NBA teams draft the player where value meets need unless they need everything. The Bills, Chiefs, Bengals, and Eagles aren’t drafting a QB with their highest pick regardless of whether the QB is the highest graded player on their board at the time. 

[Alasdaire]

2 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

It was also the thought at the time that they threw money at Creed Willems because they had missed on some of their earlier targets.

You mean they wanted to draft and then offer the overslot to someone more than they did Creed but those guys weren't available to them?

I'm sure that's the case, but I can't believe they didn't anticipate that. Taking Cowser means they presumably went into 2021 consciously employing the underslot approach, so surely they had guys all over the board who they were comfortable with offering the leftovers to, and that had to have included Willems. Because if alternative is that they went underslot at 1:5 and then ran out of players who they deemed worthy of the overslot, then they're naive, and I don't think they're that.

OP's strange accusation was that no one believes the O's would go underslot with their first-round pick and then pass on the savings to a late-round pick, and OP pointed to 2022 and Carter Young. But that signing wasn't due to money being passed on from their first-round pick, it was just a zero-sum game that they constructed as between McLean and Young, which is a different approach.

[Hallas]

6 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

So taking the BPA shouldn't always be the strategy in every sport.

Should be in this sport.

I'm not even sure it should always be the case in the NBA.  If you have an established star player, say on a max contract, you might not take the BPA if his game doesn't mesh with your established roster.  You might take a slightly less talented player that is a better fit.

There is always nuance to every situation, but I'd probably argue that, you should pretty much always draft BPA if you're drafting in the top of the draft in any sport, but the threshold for drafting BPA vs need changes based on draft position.  In the NFL I would consider the practice of trading down to still be BPA assuming that you draft as such when you actually make your pick.  So i think BPA is always the best option in the NFL.  In the NBA I think BPA in all situations is  the best strategy only for top-5 or top-10 picks, and after that you should be factoring in need and roster construction.  The NBA hit rate for draft picks is kind of wacky, roster construction is more important because there's only 5 players on the floor and only 13 people on the roster, so it might make sense to look for a serviceable player that fills a hole if you have a solid team otherwise in the late lottery.

 

The fact that baseball gives teams allotments rather than slotted contracts means that signability matters much more in baseball than in other sports.  But as a general rule, need doesn't factor into it, and it's still in a sense BPA; but it's BPA relative to their expected contract demands, rather than absolute BPA.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Hallas

[Moose Milligan]

All I know is I’m happy that we’re not obsessing over who to take with our top 5 pick. 
 

At any rate I hope the Orioles draft the BPA. Best Pitcher Available. 

[mhd24]

10 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

When you actually make the pick, BPA should always be the strategy. I know you like to play the semantics game but that is very obviously what was being said.

And yes, an NBA team may not do that…and they would be wrong. A lot of awful NBA draft picks every year and it’s largely by the same teams year in and year out.

 

Well, it depends in the NBA.  Say Denver (for example) was picking in the first and a center was deemed the highest rated player based purely on talent.  They really would have no reason to take such a center since he'd never play with Jokic.  Denver (due to luxury tax concerns) would rather take BPA at any other position as that player would get far more minutes than a backup center would and would be cost-controlled for 4 years at least.  

 

Specifically, say in this last draft, Denver had the 12th pick for some reason.  They are not taking Derek Lively because he makes no sense on that roster because Lively will never play with Jokic there.  They'd probably take the best wing instead even if they individually had Lively rated as a better prospect than anyone on the board.

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, mhd24 said:

 

Well, it depends in the NBA.  Say Denver (for example) was picking in the first and a center was deemed the highest rated player based purely on talent.  They really would have no reason to take such a center since he'd never play with Jokic.  Denver (due to luxury tax concerns) would rather take BPA at any other position as that player would get far more minutes than a backup center would and would be cost-controlled for 4 years at least.  

 

Specifically, say in this last draft, Denver had the 12th pick for some reason.  They are not taking Derek Lively because he makes no sense on that roster because Lively will never play with Jokic there.  They'd probably take the best wing instead even if they individually had Lively rated as a better prospect than anyone on the board.

They 100% would have taken Lively. Having him as a run protector on the floor would be huge for them, especially since that’s not what Joker is.

You have  second units and Denver believes in size.