Re-drafting 2019 draft

[Jammer7]

30 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Actually we had Tony DeMacio making picks, not Thrift. While DeMacio and his scouts certainly whiffed way more than they hit with those picks (Brian Roberts the last of the 7 being the only hit), this was under a system that did not have slot bonus amounts and I was told DeMacio had to make several of the picks due to signability vs talent. 

Plus, the 1999 draft was not a strong one overall. Picks #3-#8 saw just two players make the major leagues and they put up a combined -1 WAR at the major league level.

DeMacio whiffed on Mike Paradis (#13), but when you look at the picks behind him for college pitchers, he really only missed on Jason Jennings (11.9 WAR) who was selected #16. Alex Rios (27.3 WAR, #19, who also signed for the least amount of money of anyone within the first 37 picks at $845K) was the biggest miss for him since he took both Paradis and Richard Stahl ahead of him. 

As for Stahl, I don't consider him a whiff per se, because he's an injury cause miss. Stahl had a mid-90s fastball and some good offspeed pitches, but back problems ended his career unfortunately for him and the Orioles.

Larry Bigbie looked like a pretty safe pick when he was selected and did put up a nice year in 2004 at the major league level before some injuries and lack of power limited his career. Keith Reed had upside tools, and was a bit of a lottery ticket that did not pay off. He may have become a better player in a better organization.

LHP Josh Cenate's career was ended by a torn labrum in his left shoulder after his first season so he's similar to Stahl. And then you have Scott Rice who was the youngest player drafted and did eventually make the major leagues as a situational lefty. 

We also have to remember that DeMacio and all of the other scouting directors did not have the luxury of having rapsodo and other technologies that they use now at showcases for high school players and with data they get from college games. 

They also bring players into pre draft camps and can run them through these systems giving them a leg up on identifying talent better than the old school way of having scouts put eyes on them only. 

I'm not taking anything away from Elias and his crew because they use the technologies to their advantage, just that it was much different back in 1999 when Demacio had all those picks.

 

 

Great post! It was a different era for sure, and I was being tongue-in-cheek just a bit. The development side of things was so bad then, but much of MLB PD was poor then as well. The Orioles PD side was widely maligned at that time for not doing much with the talent they had. They sometimes did not hit on the field, much less take infield, according to scouts and coaches I know. It was a bad situation.

Did DeMacio have autonomy in these picks? I remember you being close to him. It was a poor draft, absolutely. In fairness to DeMacio, they may have had a good draft, within the context of what they had to work with. When the PD side is poor, it almost didn’t matter much. I would love to speak with Roberts and Markakis to learn how they developed, and if it had anything to do with the Orioles coaches.

[Frobby]

2 minutes ago, Jammer7 said:

Great post! It was a different era for sure, and I was being tongue-in-cheek just a bit. The development side of things was so bad then, but much of MLB PD was poor then as well. The Orioles PD side was widely maligned at that time for not doing much with the talent they had. They sometimes did not hit on the field, much less take infield, according to scouts and coaches I know. It was a bad situation.

Did DeMacio have autonomy in these picks? I remember you being close to him. It was a poor draft, absolutely. In fairness to DeMacio, they may have had a good draft, within the context of what they had to work with. When the PD side is poor, it almost didn’t matter much. I would love to speak with Roberts and Markakis to learn how they developed, and if it had anything to do with the Orioles coaches.

I went through this recently in another forum.   Not as bad a draft as you think.  I’ll repeat here what I wrote:

It wasn’t as bad as some make out.  There were 51 first round picks that year and combined they produced 220 WAR, about 4.4 per player.  With 7 picks, that would equate to about 31 WAR for the Orioles.  Our group produced 31.8.  Also, of the 220 WAR drafted in the first round, 131 was from the first 12 players drafted, all before the O’s made a pick.  So, you could say we had 7 out of 39 picks and got 31.8 of the 89 WAR selected in that part of the first round.  

Also, you can dismiss the later Bedard pick if you want, but that made it a 50 WAR draft.  The average team only has one 50 WAR draft every 7 years.  The O’s only got about 55 WAR from the 2000-2005 drafts combined.  

So, while we did miss some opportunities that year, we actually had many drafts worse then that one even when you account for all the no. 1 picks.  

 

[Moose Milligan]

16 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I think Gunnar has very good intangibles too.  He is intense and does not like to lose, and he holds himself to a very high standard.   I feel very fortunate to have these two as cornerstones of our team.  

Yeah, but Adley hugs.  

[Jammer7]

10 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I think Gunnar has very good intangibles too.  He is intense and does not like to lose, and he holds himself to a very high standard.   I feel very fortunate to have these two as cornerstones of our team.  

No doubt about it. I watched Gunnar and Westburg take pre-game infield for over an hour on a Sunday in July at Tampa. Attention to detail, very hard workers, and showed great intensity throughout. They focused on the little things, and their improvement during the year is certainly thanks to that work ethic. Mansolino is an underrated infield coach. 

[Tony-OH]

46 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I went through this recently in another forum.   Not as bad a draft as you think.  I’ll repeat here what I wrote:

It wasn’t as bad as some make out.  There were 51 first round picks that year and combined they produced 220 WAR, about 4.4 per player.  With 7 picks, that would equate to about 31 WAR for the Orioles.  Our group produced 31.8.  Also, of the 220 WAR drafted in the first round, 131 was from the first 12 players drafted, all before the O’s made a pick.  So, you could say we had 7 out of 39 picks and got 31.8 of the 89 WAR selected in that part of the first round.  

Also, you can dismiss the later Bedard pick if you want, but that made it a 50 WAR draft.  The average team only has one 50 WAR draft every 7 years.  The O’s only got about 55 WAR from the 2000-2005 drafts combined.  

So, while we did miss some opportunities that year, we actually had many drafts worse then that one even when you account for all the no. 1 picks.  

 

While you numbers are correct, I think this analysis is missing a lot of context by just going with overall WAR and averages. Let's face it, Brian Roberts made up almost all of that WAR for the Orioles in the first round (taking all the supplemental picks into consideration). At the end of the day, DeMacio and his scouts only hit on one of seven selections, two if you want to lower the bar for a "hit" to include Bigbie's one decent year.

I will say hitting on Roberts and Bedard in a draft overall made it a decent draft for DeMacio, and if he didn't have 7 "1st" round selections, you probably would be very happy with the draft overall. 

The Orioles certainly had much worse drafts than 1999 though. Heck you can go back to the 1970's and 80s draft and they were mostly absolutely awful. 

[sportsfan8703]

55 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Yeah, but Adley hugs.  

There’s Adley hugs, but Gunnar ran to second when he only needed a single for the cycle. 

[Frobby]

Just now, Tony-OH said:

While you numbers are correct, I think this analysis is missing a lot of context by just going with overall WAR and averages. Let's face it, Brian Roberts made up almost all of that WAR for the Orioles in the first round (taking all the supplemental picks into consideration). At the end of the day, DeMacio and his scouts only hit on one of seven selections, two if you want to lower the bar for a "hit" to include Bigbie's one decent year.

I will say hitting on Roberts and Bedard in a draft overall made it a decent draft for DeMacio, and if he didn't have 7 "1st" round selections, you probably would be very happy with the draft overall. 

The Orioles certainly had much worse drafts than 1999 though. Heck you can go back to the 1970's and 80s draft and they were mostly absolutely awful. 

How many guys did “hit” that year?  Only 9 of 51 1st round picks that year were worth more than 4 WAR.   Beyond that, only another 8 had positive WAR.  Larry Bigbie, at 2.5 WAR, was the 14th most valuable player taken in the 1st round of that draft!  So, we really didn’t do worse than other teams picking in the first round that year.

[sportsfan8703]

2 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Actually we had Tony DeMacio making picks, not Thrift. While DeMacio and his scouts certainly whiffed way more than they hit with those picks (Brian Roberts the last of the 7 being the only hit), this was under a system that did not have slot bonus amounts and I was told DeMacio had to make several of the picks due to signability vs talent. 

Plus, the 1999 draft was not a strong one overall. Picks #3-#8 saw just two players make the major leagues and they put up a combined -1 WAR at the major league level.

DeMacio whiffed on Mike Paradis (#13), but when you look at the picks behind him for college pitchers, he really only missed on Jason Jennings (11.9 WAR) who was selected #16. Alex Rios (27.3 WAR, #19, who also signed for the least amount of money of anyone within the first 37 picks at $845K) was the biggest miss for him since he took both Paradis and Richard Stahl ahead of him. 

As for Stahl, I don't consider him a whiff per se, because he's an injury cause miss. Stahl had a mid-90s fastball and some good offspeed pitches, but back problems ended his career unfortunately for him and the Orioles.

Larry Bigbie looked like a pretty safe pick when he was selected and did put up a nice year in 2004 at the major league level before some injuries and lack of power limited his career. Keith Reed had upside tools, and was a bit of a lottery ticket that did not pay off. He may have become a better player in a better organization.

LHP Josh Cenate's career was ended by a torn labrum in his left shoulder after his first season so he's similar to Stahl. And then you have Scott Rice who was the youngest player drafted and did eventually make the major leagues as a situational lefty. 

We also have to remember that DeMacio and all of the other scouting directors did not have the luxury of having rapsodo and other technologies that they use now at showcases for high school players and with data they get from college games. 

They also bring players into pre draft camps and can run them through these systems giving them a leg up on identifying talent better than the old school way of having scouts put eyes on them only. 

I'm not taking anything away from Elias and his crew because they use the technologies to their advantage, just that it was much different back in 1999 when Demacio had all those picks.

 

 

Awesome post. I remember reading this as a teenager during one of the early versions of the OH. Keith Reed looked every part of being a stud RF too, except those massive holes in his swing. 

The stuff that Tony was doing back then was just crazy impressive. Especially the Markakis pick analysis. Nobody knew what a “draft and follow” was. Nobody could understand why we were turning him from a lefty throwing mid 90s to a hitter. 

[Tony-OH]

19 minutes ago, Frobby said:

How many guys did “hit” that year?  Only 9 of 51 1st round picks that year were worth more than 4 WAR.   Beyond that, only another 8 had positive WAR.  Larry Bigbie, at 2.5 WAR, was the 14th most valuable player taken in the 1st round of that draft!  So, we really didn’t do worse than other teams picking in the first round that year.

You are trying to pick a fight where there is no fight to pick. 

I even said that the 1999 draft was pretty weak overall, especially in the 1st round where if you take away the big performers, you get a lot of misses. I'm not really sure why you seem to want to play contrarian (something you love to do with me which is fine) when we are not disagreeing. I even broke down each draft pick explaining two were injury washes. 

Sure, he could have selected Jennings instead of Paradise or Rios, but that's nit picking and can be done in any draft. 

However, I'm not going to say it was a good 1st round for DeMacio because he had 7 chances to take good talent and ended up with Roberts.

[Tony-OH]

17 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Awesome post. I remember reading this as a teenager during one of the early versions of the OH. Keith Reed looked every part of being a stud RF too, except those massive holes in his swing. 

The stuff that Tony was doing back then was just crazy impressive. Especially the Markakis pick analysis. Nobody knew what a “draft and follow” was. Nobody could understand why we were turning him from a lefty throwing mid 90s to a hitter. 

Thanks. I had a lot of access back then to people like Tony DeMacio, Shawn Pender, Gil Kubski, and Marc Trumata from the scouting side to learn from. Shawn Pender may have taught me more about scouting and the scouting process than anyone else. Of course I also used to spend ungodley amount of hours at minor league parks before and after games, talking with scouts, coaches and executives. I still remember having a conversation about job from the Mets after meeting one of their assistant general managers. Of course I was in my early 30s back then and had a lot more energy and drive and still thought I would one day work in professional baseball.

But in the end, it made more sense for my family to stay in the military and finish out the career. But by that time, kids were in private school or college and I couldn't take the financial hit to try and work my way up through the ranks of baseball. 

Now, organizations like the Orioles want young, cheap, smart guys/gals willing to work ungodly hours for the chance to be involved in baseball operations. It's a completely different world then it was 25 years ago. Now you have to know how to use the metrics and date provided by the exquisite systems now used to access players. everything from their spin rates, to their extensions, to their hip to hand rotations speeds are captured and now scouts are replaced by analysts who put that together into a projected picture.

Because we're still talking about humans, it's not perfect by any means, but I think we will see a lot less misses in the upper portions of drafts like we used to see.

I mean think about scouting before the internet or computers. It's almost amazing that outside of the obvious talents (that still ended up missing a lot) that teams found players, especially in high school where it was word of mouth or scouts connected to their local high school coaches network that keyed them in on talent. 

The teams with the most scouts back then typically were the teams that did better in the draft because they could see more players. 

Now top high school players go to showcases where they are seen and accessed by every team and I believe most DIV1 programs have trackman and/or rapsodo collecting data on players. 

The one thing we can say since Elias got here is that the Orioles don't seem to completely swing and miss on a top 5 selection. In other words, they at least have some minor league success vs flaming out in rookie ball or Low-A. Sure, there are misses like Servideo (2020 draft plus injury) and Watson, but both did make it to AA. 

A lot of that is the data they have before making the selections and of course the quality of their analysis of that data.

[Frobby]

44 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

You are trying to pick a fight where there is no fight to pick. 

I even said that the 1999 draft was pretty weak overall, especially in the 1st round where if you take away the big performers, you get a lot of misses. I'm not really sure why you seem to want to play contrarian (something you love to do with me which is fine) when we are not disagreeing. I even broke down each draft pick explaining two were injury washes. 

Sure, he could have selected Jennings instead of Paradise or Rios, but that's nit picking and can be done in any draft. 

However, I'm not going to say it was a good 1st round for DeMacio because he had 7 chances to take good talent and ended up with Roberts.

I’m not trying to pick a fight.  Just wanted to point out that there wasn’t a lot of talent chosen in the first round by anyone that year even if you look one by one.  I agree you can’t call that DeMacio 1st round “good.”  Luckily, he picked up Bedard in the 6th round.   By the way, there was a ton of talent in that draft that all 30 teams missed in the first round, including:

Pujols 101.5 WAR 13th round

Peavy 39.2 WAR 15th round

Crawford 39.1 rWAR 2nd round

Lackey 37.3 WAR 2nd round

Ellis 33.5 WAR 9th round 

Victorino 31.5 WAR 6th round

Crisp 28.9 WAR 7th round

B.Phillips 28.4 WAR 2nd round

Morneau 27.0 WAR 3rd round

Byrd 25.8 10th round

Harang 20.0 WAR 6th round 

Pagan 18.0 WAR 4th round

Bedard 17.4 WAR 6th round

Overbay 16.5 WAR 18th round

Blalock 13.5 3rd round

C. Ross 13.5 4th round 

Putz 13.1 WAR 6th round 

Ludwick 11.5 2nd round 

Reed Johnson 10.6 17th round

That’s a really poor job of first round drafting by just about every team that year.

 

 

 

[emmett16]

17 hours ago, now said:

For all his hype and well-deserved early fame, I feel Adley flies under the radar a bit when compared to this level of competition, since he doesn't dominate with a top hit tool or power tool. At least, I confess to undervaluing him somewhat for that reason. But this stat from MLB's latest feature is eye-opening:

Rutschman is the first catcher in MLB history with at least a 125 OPS+ in each of the first two seasons of his career (min. 400 plate appearances in each).

For me it’s not about Adley, but the drop off in talent at the C position after him.  The talent drop off at SS isn’t nearly as drastic. 

[now]

1 hour ago, emmett16 said:

For me it’s not about Adley, but the drop off in talent at the C position after him.  The talent drop off at SS isn’t nearly as drastic. 

That's a good point.

[ShoelesJoe]

20 hours ago, now said:

For all his hype and well-deserved early fame, I feel Adley flies under the radar a bit when compared to this level of competition, since he doesn't dominate with a top hit tool or power tool. At least, I confess to undervaluing him somewhat for that reason. But this stat from MLB's latest feature is eye-opening:

Rutschman is the first catcher in MLB history with at least a 125 OPS+ in each of the first two seasons of his career (min. 400 plate appearances in each).

Piazza had a cup of coffee in 1992, and then in his true rookie season of 1993 he had a 153 OPS+ (and won Rookie of the Year in the NL), followed by a 140 OPS+ in 1994.  Buster Posey would have likely matched the above stat if he hadn't been blown up in a home plate collision early in his sophomore season, and missed the rest of the year. Adley is certainly in good company when you're comparing his offensive output to guys like Piazza, Posey, Bench, and Berra. 

[emmett16]

22 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Thanks. I had a lot of access back then to people like Tony DeMacio, Shawn Pender, Gil Kubski, and Marc Trumata from the scouting side to learn from. Shawn Pender may have taught me more about scouting and the scouting process than anyone else. Of course I also used to spend ungodley amount of hours at minor league parks before and after games, talking with scouts, coaches and executives. I still remember having a conversation about job from the Mets after meeting one of their assistant general managers. Of course I was in my early 30s back then and had a lot more energy and drive and still thought I would one day work in professional baseball.

But in the end, it made more sense for my family to stay in the military and finish out the career. But by that time, kids were in private school or college and I couldn't take the financial hit to try and work my way up through the ranks of baseball. 

Now, organizations like the Orioles want young, cheap, smart guys/gals willing to work ungodly hours for the chance to be involved in baseball operations. It's a completely different world then it was 25 years ago. Now you have to know how to use the metrics and date provided by the exquisite systems now used to access players. everything from their spin rates, to their extensions, to their hip to hand rotations speeds are captured and now scouts are replaced by analysts who put that together into a projected picture.

Because we're still talking about humans, it's not perfect by any means, but I think we will see a lot less misses in the upper portions of drafts like we used to see.

I mean think about scouting before the internet or computers. It's almost amazing that outside of the obvious talents (that still ended up missing a lot) that teams found players, especially in high school where it was word of mouth or scouts connected to their local high school coaches network that keyed them in on talent. 

The teams with the most scouts back then typically were the teams that did better in the draft because they could see more players. 

Now top high school players go to showcases where they are seen and accessed by every team and I believe most DIV1 programs have trackman and/or rapsodo collecting data on players. 

The one thing we can say since Elias got here is that the Orioles don't seem to completely swing and miss on a top 5 selection. In other words, they at least have some minor league success vs flaming out in rookie ball or Low-A. Sure, there are misses like Servideo (2020 draft plus injury) and Watson, but both did make it to AA. 

A lot of that is the data they have before making the selections and of course the quality of their analysis of that data.

Data available on these High School kids is insane.  Couple that with the data they get while they are in college and these teams have a full picture.  Here is data available on Ethan Jackson (as an example) for a non-paying  PG account.  Then scouts & teams have more access than this.

 

https://www.perfectgame.org/Players/Playerprofile.aspx?ID=530129

Edited December 30, 2023 by emmett16