Is Elias/SIGBOT and crew really good at drafting and development after the 1st round?

[Tony-OH]

I was looking at how the system has really struggled a bit this year and got me thinking about Elias' drafts. After the first two months of the minor league season, I would not be surprised if the Orioles take a pretty big drop in the MLB system rankings after this season. 

While Elias has certainly hit on his high draft choices like Rutschman, Gunnar, Westburg, Cowser (it appears) and we hope Kjerstad, his drafted college hitters afterwards are not exactly killing it. Even his higher picks of late are not exactly looking special. Horvath, Wagner, Fabian, and even Bradfield to a lesser extended have not exactly set the world on fire.

So I decided to take a closer look and what I've found is that Elias has really missed on a lot of college hitters after the 1st round despite focusing on them over pitching until the 2023 draft. 

Beavers, Norby, and Stowers and the only three college hitters drafted since 2020 from the 2nd round on to show major league starter's abilities (Not counting 2023 draft) and the jury is still out on what they will be at the major league level.

Elias' only established major leaguer drafted after the 1st round as a college hitter is Joey Ortiz. This despite using 12 picks from 2nd-5th rounds on college hitters between 2019 and 2023. 

So while Elias has certainly hit on his 1st rounders and even late 1st rounders like Westburg, once it gets murkier in the 2nd round and after, he hasn't shown any significantly good drafting ability afterwards, especially when it comes to drafting college players.

Heck, he hasn't even drafted one pitcher that has made the major league yet and he's been drafting since 2019. In fact, his best pitching prospects in his system were acquired in trade (Povich/McDermott) or out of the Dominican program (De Leon). 

Outside of the 2023 draft (which is too early to draw any type of indications from), Trace Bright (2021, 5th rounder) is the best pitching prospect in the system drafted by Elias and crew, and he's got heavy reliever vibes to him. 

How can Elias and company not draft and develop one pitcher yet? Well, for one, he basically ignored them through the first 7 rounds of the draft (5 from 2019-2022) until 2023 when he took 5 between the 2nd and 7th rounds. 

But how do you not even take a guy who you can develop from a average college starter and make him a major league reliever? Where are those fast trackers who can help in the bullpen? And people wonder why they are going into games short on relievers with guys like Vieira in the bullpen. 

So is it drafting, or development or a lack thereof. Now the development has done a good job with guys like Bradish and Kremer (two guys acquired in trades), but they've failed to develop any of their own drafted pitchers into a true major league starting prospect or even a reliever yet. 

The Orioles claim to be ahead of the game by drafting guys with good pitch shapes, spin rates, and IFV, but what has that produced? Are they ahead of the game? If they are, why have they not developed one pitcher that they've drafted into a major league pitcher yet after five drafts?

Is it just drafting? Well outside of Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall (both 1st round picks by Gary Rajsich), Mike Baumann (2017, 3rd round) is the last pitcher this organization drafted and developed into a major league pitcher. 

Now the major league results have been great, and I'm not arguing that Elias/SIGBOT and crew have not totally turned this franchise around, but I am questioning their current drafting philosophies after the 1st round and their ability to identify and develop hitting and pitching out of college. 

Maybe to start, they can stop drafting guys like John Rhodes, Carter Young and Jud Fabian after poor college seasons and expect that they can develop them at the pro level. If they can't hit college pitching, they will not be successful at hitting professional pitchers. 

Also, maybe stay away from the high ERA guys with good arms/pitch shapes/etc and think they will suddenly find consistency at the pro level. Sounds good in theory, but the results have been an utter failure.

Maybe they should look to high school more where they've found Gunnar and Coby Mayo. I know I'd rather see a high risk/high reward high school hitter taken in the 3rd or 4th round then going with the Reed Trimble or Donta Williams of the world (low ceiling, low reward).

Sure, the draft can be a crap shoot and sure, there are always going to be more misses than hits, but there are way too many times I've scratched my head after looking at a college players stats when the Orioles drafted him, only to watch them fail at the professional level as well. 

Now maybe Baumeister or Forret (who looks promising) out of the 2023 draft will pop, or maybe they'll find a guy out of Bright, Young, Weston, Tavera, Strowd, Wells, Lord (if he ever gets healthy) or Cravey, but the results so far have not been good. 

After five drafts, hopefully they will start to make some adjustments on what works and what doesn't. Elias/SIGBOT and crew are a huge part of why this team has the best record in the AL over the last two years combined. But there is room for improvement with their drafting and development, especially now that they will not be getting those top-5 picks anymore.

[Hallas]

In general I don't love college players.  Sure they come in more polished but they don't have enough hours put into baseball at age 18 and 19.  Best case scenario, they're drafted at age 20, go to AA at 21, AAA at 22, and are ready for the bigs at age 23.

 

But if they're drafted at age 22, it's super dicey.  They have to hit AA at age 23 and get a midseason promotion to AAA in order to stay on schedule.

 

I mean, drafting is also hard and we've hit on picks that weren't first overall, so at the very least we're good at identifying first and 2nd round talent.  But taking a bunch of mediocre college prospects really puts a damper on the farm system's ceiling IMO.

[Frobby]

Well, Gunnar was a 2nd round pick.  I think that by itself justifies anything Elias did after round 1 in the 5 years he’s been drafting for us.  

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Well, Gunnar was a 2nd round pick.  I think that by itself justifies anything Elias did after round 1 in the 5 years he’s been drafting for us.  

 

[capyy]

No one is hitting on picks after the 1st round or 2 at a high rate.

 

Of the current top 35 prospects, almost all of them were taken in the 1st round or were an international signing. A handful were taken in the 2nd. 

 

In fact there is only one player in the top 35 prospects who was not 1st/2nd round pick, or an international signing. Coby Mayo (4th)

 

Elias/Sigbot are great.

[Morgan423]

Also keep in mind that we're going from a state where we were primarily tanking and rebuilding almost our entire roster from the draft (mission accomplished), to a point where we're primarily trying to replace players who are churning off the roster, and using anything left over for trade pieces.  So we're not going to need to have quite the same hit rate going forward as we did coming through the rebuild.

Although I share the concern regarding our ignoring of pitching in recent drafts.  It's being felt and needs to addressed going forward. 

[RZNJ]

I did start a thread in the Draft Section regarding his drafts and we touched on this exact thing.  I do think they need to take a look and think about doing things differently.   In a way, they did with Lord and Baumeister.  We'll see with this draft but we haven't gotten much from round 2-4 with college position players since 2020.

[Frobby]

A couple of years ago I did a study of the 1998-2005 drafts, to get a sense of what a good draft looked like.  I found that the mean average team draft produced players worth 22.3 rWAR in their careers, while the median draft was lower at 14.5 rWAR.   I also found that, while the percentages varied a lot over the 8 years, roughly 38.5% of the value of the draft came in the first round, 54.5% in the first three rounds.  So, based on that I'd calculate that on average, a team was getting maybe 13 rWAR per draft from players drafted after the first round, though the median outcome would be lower than that.  Over a 5-year span, if a team's players selected after the first round accrued more than 65 rWAR in their careers, that would be an above average outcome.

It will be a very long time -- more than a decade -- before we know if Elias & co. beat that average.   Might Gunnar beat that all by himself?   That's not probable, but possible.  

[bpilktree]

As I have always said the fact that the draft prospects go from metal bats to wooden bats is huge.  It would be like college basketball players playing with an 8 foot room then going to the NBA with the 10 foot rim.  Some guys can make the adjustment better than others and some look great with metal bats but then with the wooden bat the ball doesn’t come off the same.  The only time you see any of the college guys play with a wooden bat is in the cape cod or some other summer league showcase but there they are only getting 50 or so at bats at most and many of the guys that make a longer run in the NCAA tournament which goes into June opt out of a lot of summer ball.  Plus the draft is usually before many of the wooden leagues even get ramped up so you are trying to evaluate a guy with wooden bats from a year ago.  I understand the reasons for the metal to wooden bats but now with all the money MLB makes it wouldn’t be a terrible idea with putting some of that into college ball going wooden bats. 

[DirtyBird]

31 minutes ago, Frobby said:

A couple of years ago I did a study of the 1998-2005 drafts, to get a sense of what a good draft looked like.  I found that the mean average team draft produced players worth 22.3 rWAR in their careers, while the median draft was lower at 14.5 rWAR.   I also found that, while the percentages varied a lot over the 8 years, roughly 38.5% of the value of the draft came in the first round, 54.5% in the first three rounds.  So, based on that I'd calculate that on average, a team was getting maybe 13 rWAR per draft from players drafted after the first round, though the median outcome would be lower than that.  Over a 5-year span, if a team's players selected after the first round accrued more than 65 rWAR in their careers, that would be an above average outcome.

It will be a very long time -- more than a decade -- before we know if Elias & co. beat that average.   Might Gunnar beat that all by himself?   That's not probable, but possible.  

I wonder if that study took as long as Moose’s banner.

[Aristotelian]

Gunnar, Ortiz, Mayo, Stowers, Hernaiz (turned into Irvin), and Norby is pretty solid. Beavers could be coming soon. Handley is still interesting. I would guess that group stacks up as well as any organization in the game.

[wildcard]

Westburg was a competitive balance pick

[Frobby]

2 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

Gunnar, Ortiz, Mayo, Stowers, Hernaiz (turned into Irvin), and Norby is pretty solid. Beavers could be coming soon. Handley is still interesting. I would guess that group stacks up as well as any organization in the game.

Beavers is a first rounder.  

[Aristotelian]

1 minute ago, Frobby said:

Beavers is a first rounder.  

Comp balance pick, like Westburg. Maybe they don't count for this question but they are great value for those picks. Etzel is another interesting one 

[Three Run Homer]

I agree with the idea of targeting high-upside overslot high school bats instead of college bats once you get past the first couple of rounds.  It's probably worth using a few top 10 picks on college seniors with low ceilings just to get enough slot savings to take a shot a the next Coby Mayo.  

I still think that the biggest weakness of our farm system is the imbalance between hitting and pitching prospects.  The front office did finally invest more draft capital in pitching last year; it's too soon to see how it will work out.  They may need to get some fresh blood on the scouting and development side when it comes to pitching.