The Value of a Draft Pick

Today, we're going to look at the value (in terms of WAR) of a draft pick.

I only have WAR values and draft data for 2014 onward, so the results presented here reflect only that portion of the data.

The first thing we'll take a look at is the value of a draft round overall. Here's a graph of the data (I eliminated rounds 16-25 since that only happened one year -- this past one -- and none of them have yet played in the majors.)

This chart shows the average WAR of all the players selected in any given round.  If a player never made it to the majors, I changed the NULL WAR value to 0.

As you can see (and probably knew already), the first round draft pick is, by far, the most valuable, with an average WAR of 3.35 per player.  After that the value steadily decreases per round until the fifth round where the value drops, essentially, to 0.  There is an odd blip in the ninth round, but that is caused by two players drafted in the ninth round in 2016 -- Juan Gomez (Brooklyn) and Gene Reynolds (New York), who have lifetime WARs over 20.   In fact, those two players are the only two players (so far) to be drafted anywhere after the fourth round and have a WAR value over twenty.  Personally, I'd love to say that it was my genius that recognized Juan Gomez's talent at that late round, except for two facts:  (1) I probably had the computer pick him at that late round and (2) I ended up trading him to Mack anyway.

Next, let's take a look at the value of a first round draft pick.  As we saw above, a first round pick is, by far, the most valuable pick a team has.  However, even within the first round, there is quite a bit of variability:

I'm not quite sure to make of this data.  Clearly the first two picks are the most valuable, as you would normally expect.  The blip by pick #7 is the result of two players with WARs over 30 -- Masahide Ueda (Ohio, 2016) and Jonathan Anderson (Seattle, 2017).  The fact that my sample size is so small (only 12 elements) may be allowing Ueda and Anderson to have undue influence on the totals.

I am surprised, however, by the fact that values for the last two picks of the first round do not even measure up to an average pick in the third round.  There are no #11 or #12 picks with WARs over 10.  However, you do find them at almost all pick in the second round -  #13 (two players), #14 (3), #15 (1), #16 (2), #17 (3), #18 (1), #20 (1), #21 (1), #23 (1) and #24 (1).  I'm not sure why players selected at the end of the first round have generally been not as good as the average for players selected in later rounds.

Want to see any other statistical analyses?  Let me know...

Zev