Visualizing 2011 Draft Spending
With the August signing deadline having come and gone close to two weeks ago, taking the time to look at which teams chose to spend big on the draft and those that took a more conservative approach is always an interesting task.
Baseball America does a fantastic job of covering the draft every year, and I recommending checking out the series of posts they ran covering draft spending this year. But sometimes I find it easier to view this type of data visually.
There will be some differences between BA’s numbers and mine. First, Baseball America limited what they considered draft spending to bonus totals. In the graphs that follow, I incorporated all spending. For example, the Mariners signed Daniel Hultzen to a major league deal worth at least $8.5 million. As part of that deal, Hultzen received a bonus worth $6.4 million. Baseball America would record the Mariners as spending $6.4 on Hultzen, I record them as spending $8.5. I don’t think either way is necessarily right, they’re just different.
The second difference is that BA’s numbers are going to be more accurate, as they do an excellent job of collecting a tremendous amount of data on player bonuses. I wasn’t able to find information on every player who signed, so my numbers will underestimate how much each team actually spent on the draft. That being said, the numbers shouldn’t differ to such a degree that the analysis is substantially affected. I believe I’ve included all major signings, and the relative order of team spending is similar to BA’s list.
*Click for a clear and enlarged view. (The Giants and Twins are the two teams on top of each other at about (4,5.4))
The y-axis gives an indication of how much each team spent on the draft this year, while the x-axis gives an approximation for how widely each team spread their spending. The thick blue line represents the mean amount that teams spent, and each dashed blue line represents a standard deviation from the mean.
The first thing that jumps out to me is just how much money the Nationals and Pirates spent. The Pirates signed their second round pick, Josh Bell, for $5 million. With Bell’s signing alone, the Pirates spent more on the draft than over a third of all major league teams!
Unsurprisingly, with so many extra picks in the early rounds, the Rays and Jays both spread their draft dollars around. On the other side of the coin, The Diamondbacks limited much of their spending to Trevor Bauer, Archie Bradely and their supplemental first rounder, Andrew Chaffin.
Another thing that jumped out to me was that, even without any extra picks, the Royals were active. In any other year, the Royals would likely be the talk of the draft, but it appears they were somewhat over-shadowed by the Pirates’ and Nationals’ spending sprees.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Rangers are a surprising team to see toward the bottom of the list, given the team’s recent history of being fairly aggressive in the draft and the fact that they had a supplemental first round pick. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Rangers divert some of their draft savings to the international free-agent market. Of course, the Rangers may have used some of their draft budget to sign Leonys Martin.
*Click to enhance clarity and enlarge
My hope with this graph is to represent how much each team spent compared to what we would expect them to spend based on the number and position of their selections. The y-axis still represents total spending, but the x-axis is now an estimate what each team would pay in the first ten rounds if they paid slot for each pick. Major league baseball only recommends slot for the first five rounds, but I simply extended the data into the tenth round to come up with a rough estimate.
The line in the graph is a plot of a less regression equation. Teams above the line spent more than what we would expect the average team to spend, given the same picks. Teams below the line spent less. There are certainly some limits to this method, but the graph gives us a fairly decent representation of which teams went out of their way to spend.
Although the Red Sox, Padres, Blue Jays, Diamondbacks, and Rays all ranked near the top of the list in draft spending, given how many picks each team had, none of those teams spent a surprising amount.
One of the reasons I like this graph is it shows just how much the Nationals and Pirates spent. Even if you assume that an early first rounder’s bonus will exceed MLB’s slot recommendation by a substantial amount, the regression suggests the Pirates and Nationals would spend a similar amount to the Red Sox, Jays, and Padres, but the two groups aren’t even close.
*Click to enhance clarity and enlarge
This graph has the same axes as the previous graph, but the size of each team’s circle represents the percentage of that team’s spending that occurred after the tenth round. Larger circles indicate a higher percentage of the team’s spending went to players drafted after the tenth round. The sizes of the circles in the legend are based on the Cubs’, Mets’ and Astros’ spending.
The Cubs are the big outlier in this graph. Most of the bigger circles belong to teams in the bottom-left portion of the graph, as just a few over-slot signings after the tenth round would constitute a sizable portion of these team’s overall draft budgets. But the Cubs not only spent a substantial amount overall, they spent the highest percentage of their total budget signing players outside of the first ten rounds.
The Cubs signed 14th rounder Dillon Maples, who Baseball America ranked as the 46th best prospect in the draft, for virtually the same amount as they signed their first rounder, 9th overall selection Javier Baez. The Cubs also nabbed 11th rounder Shawon Dunston Jr for north of $1 million dollars. Although the Cubs were outspent by four teams, there is certainly an argument that they were one of the most aggressive teams in this year’s draft.
Good article.
I think it’s interesting that the Jays spent about what they would be expected to spend based on slot, except they were the only team not to sign their first round pick. If Beede takes the $2.5M he was offered, the Jays become one of the bigger spenders in the draft.
Sorry, I didn’t make what the regression line represents clear enough. The Jays spent well more than than slot, overall. But they spent an average amount compared to what we would expect the average team to spend given the same draft picks.
Efficient…
The Padres are somewhat similar except that their unsigned pick was a Compensation rounder. It does sound like they didn’t offer Brett Austin a huge amount though so they wouldn’t have shot too far up but far enough to make them top 5.
Supposedly they offered Brett Austin 1.5m. Hoyer made it sound like he wanted him even after getting Hedges, but who knows if that offer exisited once Hedges signed.
As a White Sox fan who values to draft, I find those graphs to be incredibly depressing. Hey Jerry and Kenny, spend some damn money on the draft!
Yeah, I know the White Sox were missing a first round pick, but they just continue refusing to get better. With a draft as deep as this one, they certainly could have taken a chance on an over slot pick or two with their first selections.
They must be hurting really really bad financially, cause this draft, even for the White Sox, was uncharacteristically dull. Their bottom of the league farm system rating will continue getting worse.
I don’t think it’s a revenue problem. I think Jerry Reinsdorf and Kenny Williams are obsessed with adhering to slot. I can’t remember them ever going more than a few thousand over slot for anyone. Even Beckham and Sale both signed for right around slot. Yet their payroll has gotten fatter. They aren’t directing money into Latin America either, so I think they don’t care about amateur talent. They’d rather build through trades (and it’s hard to make good trades when you don’t have any prospects) and free agency. Unless you have the Yankees resources, that’s a really bad strategy. Like I said, it’s really depressing and frustrating for White Sox fans.
I think the Jackson trade showed they are beyond the threshold of financial stability after investing so heavily to compete for now and falling very short of expectations. Yes, they never go above slot, a philosophy for sure, but I’m going to bet that they went into this draft knowing they would be right at the bottom of spending.
Enter Keenyn Walker…
“He has been very successful. He is a high-ceiling athlete. Unlike some high-ceiling athletes, this kid really has a feel for playing the game.”
-White Sox director of amateur scouting Doug Laumann
If the White Sox draft a position player, you can bet that they will draft a college player who is/was a two-sport athlete, even though each in the past has quickly proven to be incapable as a baseball player no matter how athletically gifted he is. These types of players are the most volatile investments an organization can make it seems (more than most pitchers).
In the future, It would be nice to see a visualization that includes draft pick types to better get a grip on where spending is taking place and the potential volatility of pick investments. Maybe it just starts by compartmentalizing pitching and hitting… HS and NCAA… etc…
I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. I’m not writing him off, but Jarred Mitchell had an unbelievable debut until he suffered that terrible injury. I’m not sure we’ve seen the same Jarred Mitchell since then.
That’s a cool idea about breaking it up into hitting pitcher, and high school and college. I might mess around with that.
An injury like that to a player of his strength probably exposed his offensive/defensive flaws a bit sooner than expected. I know it’s probably unfair and extremely generalized, but even in the case of Jarred Mitchell, while his injury was substantial, K% and contact ability at his age and levels of competition have always been alarming. (and to be even more unfair, haha) similar trends took place with the past athletic/toolsy upside selections of Joe Borchard, Brian Anderson, and Josh Fields.
cool, even if pick division doesn’t show a whole lot of recognizable visual pattern, that’s interesting enough to know.
On the final graph, is the expected slot total based on the picks the teams had or the picks they signed? In other words, are the Blue Jays and Padres right on target for all the picks they had, or right on target if you do not include the slot recommendations for Beede and Austin, who went unsigned?
The latter. I counted the value of slot regardless of whether or not the player signed.
It makes no sense to me how the Tigers run their franchise. Mike Ilitch, who also owns the Detroit Red Wings, has by far the best scouting and player development in hockey. Yet in baseball it seems that it is not a priority at all. You would then look at the front office, which includes Dave Dombrowski, who built winning franchises in Montreal and Florida through player development. The Tigers are rarely big spenders outside of huge bonus babies like Porcello and Castellanos choosing less-upside college players compared to high school prospects. This year didn’t have any large bonus players and the spending was 2nd last to the White Sox. Also, they rarely spend big in the international market. With a payroll lowered by 27 million this year I don’t understand how some priority isn’t set to player development. The Detroit economy is obviously struggling but that is a terrible reason not to build your franchise the most economical way possible. Spend on the draft and international prospects.
The spending probably would have been a little higher if they didn’t lose all their picks to signing Type A and B free agents.
“The Giants are the two teams on top of each other…”
How can the Giants be on top of themselves? Seriously, though, is it the Giants and the Twins? I don’t see the Twins out there.
Haha, ya, sorry about that. I’ve got it fixed now.
This is a neat article, the sort of thing that I’m obviously too lazy to ever do for just myself, but know it can exist and wonder about it. Since if I wonder about it, I know you will too, thus I can wait for you guys to do it because there is a lot more benefit in 1,000′s of people reading it than just me!
Anyway, here is my comment:
I think the second graph would make a lot more sense if you only included players who actually signed, otherwise as you stated above, it doesn’t represent a clear draft strategy intention. That is, if I’m reading your words right – maybe I’m not.
You used the Jays as an example, so I will too, not to mention I’m more familiar with their draft myself. You stated both that they spent on target as compared to what an average team in their position would spend. But I think that what myself (and others) would find interesting is how much a team spent on the players they actually signed vs the amount slot recommended on the players they actually signed.
Does that make sense? It leaves unsigned players out of the equation, so you see how willing teams were to go overslot, and by how much. By leaving unsigned picks in (ie, Greedy Beede) it doesn’t properly reflect a teams willingness to go overslot, even if they were.
Or maybe I’m completely wrong.
Personally I’d like to see both. How they spent compared to total expectations and how they spent compared to expectations on the players they did sign. More pretty pictures is always good.
It’d be interesting to see how this would look with the inclusion of spending on international prospects.
In graphs 2 and 3, I’d love to see a different x-axis. I’d love to see a curve-fit done for what teams actually spent on the draft based on draft pick #. Then, I’d love to see actual spending compared to “average spending weighted by draft picks.” Using the official slot recommendations despite the fact that tons and tons of teams go overslot really doesn’t help as much as it should.
Interestingly, the figure looks eerily like the Hertzprung-Russell diagram turned 90 degrees counterclockwise. If we can’t perform an economic assessment of these investments in a few years, at least we should be able to determine the absolute luminosity of each team’s selections.
So we’ll have main sequence organizations, and then the wacky Cepheid front offices that don’t fit?