Evaluating the Tigers through a Sabermetric lens

Sunday, May 17, 2009

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.

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