http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-changing-value-of-draft-picks/
文章有一丁点长，所以我先说重点：
因为大联盟球团不愿意扔选秀权来签下自由球员，所以Boras哭哭。
在旧制CBA中丢了选秀权，可以在后顺位洒美金捕捞要去念大学的肥鱼，
现在的CBA则是把选秀顺位的额度给砍掉。差很多啊！
按照这篇文章的说法，选秀第一顺位的签位价值+20WAR，不过如果是第十顺
位则只有+6WAR，第三十顺位为+4WAR；第二轮签的价值则是+3.5WAR，如果以
1WAR等于5.5M来算，第二轮的签就值19.25M。
所以，要不是像Z魔神、Anibal Sanchez这种不用丢选秀的FA，能够爽快的得
到大合约；要不然就要像汉神这种练武其才，让球团愿意赌这把。如果不是这
样的球员，比如Kyle Lohse，要丢选秀权、年纪又大、贡献又不稳定。
那自求多福....
With January here and a few big name free agents still on the market, one of
the popular stories of the week is how the new compensation system is
affecting free agent pricing. I wrote about it yesterday, as did Jeff Passan,
and this morning, C. Trent Rosencrans documented some comments Kyle Lohse
made on the radio. He seems to have a pretty good understanding of what’s
going on:
“It’s not exactly an open, free market when you attach such things on a guy
like myself, but yet a guy like a Zack Greinke or Anibal Sanchez got a
get-out-of-jail-free card because they got traded midseason, so the rules don
’t pertain to them,” Lohse said. “I’m obviously a little biased, but the
rules could use some tweaking.”
Of course, Greinke and Sanchez also have the advantage of being younger and
better than Lohse, but their lack of draft pick compensation almost certainly
helped drive up their price a little bit, so Lohse isn’t wrong here. But,
rather than spend another day talking about the rules themselves, I want to
talk about the actual change that teams appear to be making this winter –
significantly inflating the valuation of a draft pick.
It’s not like draft pick compensation for signing a free agent is a new
thing, after all. Last year, the Angels, Tigers, and Phillies all surrendered
first round picks in order to sign Type A free agents. The year before, the
White Sox, Tigers, Rangers, Red Sox, Yankees, and Phillies did the same. In
2010, it was the Mariners, Braves, Tigers, and Red Sox. Detroit clearly had
no problem surrendering draft picks to sign a free agent, as they did it
three years in a row, but between those three years, you have nearly a third
of the teams in baseball punting a first round pick to sign a free agent.
This wasn’t just limited to a small group of teams who valued veterans more
than prospects. Punting a first round pick to sign a premium free agent has
always been part of the deal.
But, of course, punting that pick now comes at a greater cost, as the new
draft rules also lower a team’s bonus pool, making it impossible for a team
to simply reallocate their budget to later picks in order to mitigate the
loss of the high pick to some extent. And, by decreasing the pool of
protected picks from the top 15 to the top 10, the rules also make it more
difficult to for losing teams to sign a free agent while retaining their
first selection. There’s no question that the combination of these changes
makes the cost of signing a qualifying offer free agent higher than signing a
Type A free agent used to be.
But, at the end of the day, the cost is still a draft selection. And
mid-to-late first round draft picks aren’t any more likely to turn into
future big leaguers now than they were under the old system. The reward for
having that kind of pick hasn’t changed significantly, and there is perhaps
no better example of diminishing returns in baseball than the expected
production of players by draft position. Let me borrow a chart from this well
done post at Baseball Analysts on the subject to illustrate the effect.
The first pick in any given draft is insanely valuable. The next few picks
are pretty great too. It falls off in a hurry, though. When Sky Andrecheck
(now with the Indians, by the way) did this analysis back in 2009, he had the
#1 pick producing an average of +20 WAR, but the #10 pick was just at +6 WAR,
while the #30 pick was only +4 WAR, and then every pick after that leveled
off pretty substantially, to the point where it’s not clear that a fourth
round pick is that much more valuable than an eighth round pick.
It’s probably not a coincidence that the CBA left the top 10 picks
protected, because those regularly turn out to be franchise building block
kinds of players. The middle to end of the first round, though? It’s all
kind of a crapshoot, with scattered stars here and there and way more busts
than successes. You don’t want to just give those picks away for no reason,
but at the same time, we have to acknowledge that these picks aren’t nearly
as valuable as the earlier selections, and teams are generally doing well if
they get a league average player with a mid-to-late first round pick.
Just as an example, let’s take the 11th pick in the draft since the turn of
the century. This is the best possible pick that can be surrendered as
compensation for signing a free agent. From 2000 to 2012, those picks have
been:
2000: Dave Krynzel
2001: Kenny Baugh
2002: Jeremy Hermida
2003: Michael Aubrey
2004: Neil Walker
2005: Andrew McCutchen
2006: Max Scherzer
2007: Phillippe Aumont
2008: Justin Smoak
2009: Tyler Matzek
2010: Deck Mcguire
2011: George Springer
2012: Addison Russell
McCutchen is a huge score for the Pirates, and Walker has turned out nicely
for them as well, even though he took a while to become a useful player.
Scherzer is another win for this slot. Addison Russell had a great debut and
has prospecters excited, so he’s probably got a decent amount of trade value
at the moment. George Springer might turn into something, maybe. But after
that? Justin Smoak hasn’t developed as expected. Tyler Matzek is still
trying to figure things out in A-ball. Phillippe Aumont might have a future
as a bulpen guy. Yeah, try to contain your enthusiasm.
A one-in-ten shot at getting the next Andrew McCutchen is an asset worth
having, especially if some of the consolation prizes are pretty decent too.
But, let’s keep in mind that the changes to the draft rules haven’t changed
the fact that teams are still drafting kids who aren’t anywhere close to the
big leagues, and the path from draft pick to productive big leaguer is long
and treacherous. Having draft picks is a good thing. Teams should value them.
But they should know what that value is, and be willing to trade it in for an
established Major League player when the price is right.
Simply looking at a guy like Kyle Lohse and saying “he’s not worth a first
round pick” is just incorrect. He’s not worth a first round pick and the
kind of contract he was probably looking for at the start of the winter. But
if a few more weeks pass and no one is stepping up with any kind of
multi-year offer, even Scott Boras will eventually bring the price tag down.
As Lohse notes, he’s going to sign eventually. The key is to find the right
number that makes it worthwhile for a team to give up that pick.
What’s the right number for a 34-year-old innings eater with peripherals
that suggest he’s an average-ish starter? Well, if we think he’s a +2 to +3
win pitcher, that makes him worth something between $10 and $15 million per
year. In a lot of ways, he’s the pitching version of Torii Hunter, who
signed for 2/26 without any compensation attached. So, depending on what
price a team puts on their draft pick, maybe the right price for Lohse is
2/20, or 3/24, or something in that range. After all, there is real value in
having a guy who can throw 200 average innings, especially for a team with a
weak rotation who has aspirations of contending in 2013.
The same goes for Michael Bourn and Rafael Soriano. Yeah, it’s a
speed-and-defense guy heading into his 30s, and its a reliever with some
history of arm problems, and yeah, they’ll cost you your first round pick if
you sign them. But pricing the cost of that pick into the offer is different
than just not offering a contract to begin with. There are teams out there
who could use Michael Bourn and Rafael Soriano more than they could use a
first round draft choice in the #11-#25 range.
Even a rebuilding team should see these guys as potential options at the
right price, as they could theoretically sacrifice their first round pick to
sign them to a deflated contract, then market them as trade chips this
summer, when there aren’t as many ways to acquire talent and the loss of a
draft pick is no longer in play. While MLB might frown upon sign-and-trades
during the same winter, they have no capability of stopping a team from
trading a player in July that they signed in January. Teams regularly sign
players to short term deals, then flip them for prospects at the deadline.
This isn’t a new strategy, it’s just a new twist on it.
In fact, if I’m Scott Boras, that might be exactly what I start pushing for
pretty soon. I only half-jokingly suggested that Roy Oswalt ask for a “must
trade clause” last winter, allowing him to spend the start of 2012 with a
non-contender in a pitcher’s park who would then flip him to a contender at
the deadline, so that he could be part of a pennant race and not have to
spend his whole season on a losing team. Perhaps Boras should aim for
something similar for Soriano, even if it’s not actually spelled out in the
contract. Landing Soriano or Lohse in a pitcher-friendly environment for a
few months, then having them traded at the deadline, might be the best
possible outcome for both players, and a team could potentially get more in
return for them in June or July than the expected value of the pick they gave
up to sign them in the first place.
The changes to the draft have made specific picks more valuable, and the cost
of giving them up more harmful, but there still needs to be a realistic
valuation of that selection in relationship to having a quality Major League
player on your team in 2013, even if that player might not finish the season
on your roster. Lohse, Bourn, and Soriano are worth giving up a first round
pick for. The key is to just find the right price, and the right landing
spot, in order to make sure that everyone comes out ahead.