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."

Stolen Goods: Disabled List Trends & Team Information

Jeff Zimmerman of Beyond The Boxscore has a great piece up comparing cumulative injury histories by team from 2002 to 2009. Care to guess which team has had the most/least number of injuries over the past seven years? Answers below (charts are from the link):

Stolen Goods: 2010 UZR Projections

Three months ago, Jeff Zimmerman of Beyond The Boxscore calculated regressed and age-adjusted 2010 UZR/150 projections. With baseball season on the horizon (I promise to stop saying that after Thursday...), I think readers might be interested in how their team's fielding is reasonably projected to fair. The data is available in a sortable excel spreadsheet here.

BTB's Projected Top Defenders By Position:Position Name Projected UZR

Position	Name	Projected UZR
1B	Albert Pujols	+5.5
2B	Chase Utley	+11.0
3B	Evan Longoria	+11.0
SS	Adam Everett	+8.6
RF	Austin Kearns	+8.3
CF	Franklin Gutierrez	+14.8
LF	Carl Crawford	+9.8

BTB's Projected Bottom Defenders By Position:

Position	Name	Projected UZR
1B	Mike Jacobs	-5.6
2B	Kelly Johnson	-5.2
3B	Ryan Braun	-12.4
SS	Yuniesky Betancourt	-9.7
RF	Brad Hawpe	-19.3
CF	Jacoby Ellsbury	-9.0
LF	Adam Dunn	-13.4

Dusty Baker Flow Chart

Continuing this week's Dusty Baker theme, here is the greatest flowchart ever created by man (click to enlarge):



Reproduced with permission of Beyond The Boxscore.