Tigers 1st Round Draft Wins Above Replacements

Over at Beyond the Boxscore, Erik has three different posts looking at the Wins Above Replacement totals for each player in the first round of the 1994, 1995, and 1996 drafts. This, inspired Justin to take a look at all of the Reds 1st round draft picks and their total WAR's since the draft came into existence in 1965. Well, that made me want to look at the same thing for the Tigers history in the first round of the draft.

To do this, I only looked at the drafts from 1965 through the 2005 draft when the Tigers took Cameron Maybin. I'm doing this because there isn't much WAR a player can accumulate from 2006-2008 and a month of the 2009 season, unless you're Evan Longoria or Tim Lincecum. WAR totals for players from 2002-2005 are taken from Fangraphs, and anything from 1965-2001 are taken from Sean (Chone) Smith's Pitcher or Hitter WAR Database at Baseball Projection. These are also the players total career WAR's. So, there's a lot in here that aren't all for the Tigers, like, say, Lance Parrish who spent time elsewhere.

Year	Rnd	OvPck	Player	Pos	G	TM WAR
1965	1	13	Gene Lamont	C	87	0.0
1966	1	14	Rick Konik	1B	0	0.0
1967	1	15	Jim Foor	LHP	13	0.0
1968	1	18	Robert Robinson	OF	0
1969	1	19	John Young	1B	2	0.0
1970	1	20	Terry Mappin	C	0
1971	1	11	Tom Veryzer	SS	996	-5.7
1972	1	20	Jerry Manuel	SS	96	-0.4
1973	1	19	Charles Bates	3B	0
1974	1	16	Lance Parrish	C	1988	26.8
1975	1	3	Les Filkins	OF	0
1976	1	2	Pat Underwood	LHP	113	0.8
1977	1	5	Kevin Richards	RHP	0
1978	1	12	Kirk Gibson	OF	1635	22.3
1979	1	13	Rick Leach	OF	799	0.3
1979	1	23	*Chris Baker	OF	0
1980	1	18	Glenn Wilson	3B	1201	3.6
1981	1	17	Ricky Barlow	RHP	0
1982	1	20	Rich Monteleone	RHP	210	1.6
1983	1	15	Wayne Dotson	RHP	0
1985	1	26	Randy Nosek	RHP	5	-0.9
1986	1	18	Phil Clark	C	264	0.5
1987	1	20	*Bill Henderson	C	0
1987	1	21	Steve Pegues	OF	100	-0.7
1987	1s	30	*Travis Fryman	SS	1698	26.5
1988	1	26	Rico Brogna	1B	848	-1.0
1989	1	21	Greg Gohr	RHP	66	0.7
1990	1	2	Tony Clark	OF	1540	11.3
1991	1s	41	*Trever Miller	LHP	533	-0.3
1991	1s	32	*Justin Thompson	LHP	103	11.9	7.2 in 1997
1992	1	16	Rick Greene	RHP	1	0.0
1993	1	9	Matt Brunson	SS	0
1994	1	18	Cade Gaspar	RHP	0
1995	1	11	Mike Drumright	RHP	0
1996	1	6	Seth Greisinger	RHP	42	0.3
1997	1	1	Matt Anderson	RHP	257	-0.6
1998	1	14	Jeff Weaver	RHP	288	9.7
1998	1s	34	*Nate Cornejo	RHP	56	0.2
1999	1	3	Eric Munson	C	360	-1.1
2000	1	8	Matthew Wheatland	RHP	0
2001	1s	32	*Mike Woods	2B	0
2001	1	11	Kenny Baugh	RHP	0
2002	1	8	Scott Moore	SS	39	0.0
2003	1	3	Kyle Sleeth	RHP	0
2004	1	2	Justin Verlander	RHP	105	12.6
2005	1	10	Cameron Maybin	OF	58	-0.4

Players with asterisks by their names were compensation picks. The compensation picks we got, were:

Drafted Chris Baker for Jim Slaton
Bill Henderson for Lance Parrish
Travis Fryman for Lance Parrish
Trever Miller for Mike Heath
Justin Thompson for Jack Morris
Nate Cornejo for Willie Blair
Mike Woods for Juan Gonzalez

Yeah, we didn't really hit on any of them. Travis Fryman gave us some very good baseball at the hot corner while Justin Thompson turned in 7.2 of his nearly 12 WAR in his spectacular 1997 season.

In five year increments, I've reduced players with negative WAR to simply zero. Tom Tango pointed out that a negative WAR would make a player less valuable then someone who didn't even make it to the majors which just isn't right at all. Here's how the Tigers have drafted for the 40 drafts I've looked at:

Year	Players	WAR	WAR/PLAYER
65-69	5	0.0	0.0
70-74	5	26.8	5.4
75-79	6	23.4	3.9
80-84	4	5.2	1.3
85-89	7	27.7	4.0
90-94	6	23.2	3.9
95-99	6	10.2	1.7
00-05	7	12.6	1.8

The first 5 drafts were unsuccessful and the first 5 of the 1980's were terrible as well. Most of the WAR in each 5 year increment are sustained by one good or great pick. For instance, the early 1970's were helped by Lance Parrish. And by "helped" I mean Parrish made up that entire 26.8 WAR. In the late 1980's, Travis Fryman made up 26.5 of the 27.7 WAR.

So, while the baseball draft is the biggest of the major sports drafts in the country, it's the most hit-or-miss -- probably just due to sheer volume. When you have 50 rounds and teams accumulating more then just one pick per round, the odds are that you're going to miss a lot more then you'll hit. But, just hitting on one player like a Travis Fryman or Kirk Gibson really helps wipe out all of the misses.