Stolen Goods: Comparing Draft Picks And Prospects

In a piece that is less than a year old, Sky Kaulkman of Beyond The Boxscore analyzed the value prospects versus draft picks. Of most interest to me was the exponential disparity between the top 10 draft picks of the first round and the bottom 10 (pictured below).



As Kaulkman observes:

"the top picks are extremely valuable, and expected value drops quickly after the first ten or so picks, so that the value of a 16th-30th pick is closer in value to the 500th pick than the first pick."

For those interested in how much of a "bargain" prospects are for teams, generally, Victor Wang broke it down as follows:

16th-30th Surplus Value: $5.2M (late first round)
31st-45th Surplus Value: $2.6M (supplemental)
46th-60th Surplus Value: $0.8M (early second round)

The article is most certainly worth a full read (at the very least a glance), but if you want the short in simple answer, Kaulkman concludes that "while free agent compensation picks aren't worth giving away, a package of decent prospects will almost always be more valuable."