There’s no question about it: the MLB draft is an absolute crapshoot; probably more so than any of the other major sports.
Having said that, every draft class has its fair share of hidden gems waiting to be unearthed by astute franchises. A couple of such gems include Mookie Betts, drafted by the Red Sox in the 5th round of 2011, and Albert Pujols, drafted by the Cardinals in the 13th round of 1999. Heck, even Mike Trout was taken 25th overall in 1999 and was actually the Angels' second pick (Grichuk, 24th) of that draft.
Many examples can be cited where the best player of the entire draft class gets picked after the first round, which typically means means all 30 teams passed on them at least once. Sometimes, prospects that showed tremendous promise in college, and were highly-touted and drafted early, end up slowly drifting away in a farm system. 18-year-old high school arms with jaw-dropping stuff that have been drafted highly in the past two decades have often either not made it up to the minor leagues or ultimately find themselves in MLB bullpens. This trend has caused teams to be more skeptical of ranking high school arms too highly.
The first prep pitcher taken in 2019 was Quinn Priester, the 18th pick by the Pirates. This is a far cry compared to the four high school pitchers taken in the top 10 of 2016: Ian Anderson, Riley Pint, Braxton Garrett, and Matt Manning. Though every draft class is unique, teams have trended away from gambling on young arms with top 10 picks. Right-handed high school pitchers, especially, simply because history shows they’re the riskiest demographic to gamble on. Guys like Daniel Espino, the most electric arm in the 2019 draft class, fell to Cleveland with the 24th pick.
Whether it’s injuries or sub-performance, prospects bust all the time in baseball. Even with an evolving team of coaches armed with cutting-edge player development tools like Trackman and Rapsodo and ample developmental time inside an entire minor league system to nurture them, prospects all too often end up failing and weeded out while climbing the ladder to the major leagues.
So why are there seven teams currently within the range to lose over 100 games this season? Major League Baseball is facing a crisis of teams not competing, which has dragged down the free agent market. Why spend significant money when your team is rebuilding and has no chance to make the postseason?
With so much luck involved in the MLB draft, there’s a large debate out there whether tanking works in baseball when everything is such a crapshoot. But with the recent success of the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros - both teams having taken their teams all the way down to the bushes and then proceeded to win a World Series - copycat teams have taken note and are following a similar rebuild strategy.
The idea is that, “there’s no point being mediocre. Fans will not watch or show up if the team is not good. If you’re not going to be competitive, might as well get the highest draft pick possible.”
But baseball is different, one does not simply “Tank for Zion Williamson” and proceed to win games. Baseball is a sport where one outstanding player cannot guarantee you pennant races, Ex. A: Mike Trout and the LA Angels. Trout is a 2-time MVP and 7-time All-Star that has only seen the postseason once with the Angels during the 2014 season.
In a sport where the draft is a complete shot in the dark, that prospect might not arrive for another 3 to 5 years and probably won't make a difference by himself anyway. Why do teams continue to avoid spending money in free agency and deliberately field bad teams before the season even begins?
Is the 5th overall pick that much better than the 12th overall pick?
The easy answer is, of course, yes. But exactly how much better is it? Enough to deliberately tank just to move up a few spots? Does losing 100 games guarantee you better options than a mediocre team that picks 12?
Some will argue it’s a no-brainer, just based on higher draft pool money. Teams picking 5th have more money to spend in the draft than teams picking 12th. In 2019, just bumping up 7 slots from 12th to 5th, the slot value increases from $4,366,400 to $6,180,700. Every single pick the team possesses gets a bump in slot value as well. That extra dough adds up, especially when you consider how teams often ask seniors to take a massive haircut in their signing bonuses in rounds 5-10 just for a bit of extra cash to sign their 2nd or 3rd round picks.
Others will argue it’s not worth fielding a team that miserable, alienating your fan base along the way. Dramatic drops in attendance and bad publicity are a very real by-product of such a strategy. But is losing 100 games really that much worse than losing 90 games?
These questions are especially relevant to the 2019 Blue Jays.
There have been many losing seasons in franchise history, but there’s only a handful of times when the team was bad enough to pick inside the top 5 of the MLB draft. More often than not during their non-competitive years, the Blue Jays have finished as a mediocre team that picked in the 11-20 range of the draft. Making the postseason in the AL East division has been no easy task.
If the season ended today, the Blue Jays would have a top 5 pick in the 2020 MLB draft. They are currently on pace to win 58 games and have the 3rd overall pick.
The starting rotation has been on life support and the offense has been putrid. Rookies have taken over the lineup and mostly suffered through slow starts, as could reasonably be expected. But getting that elusive #1 overall pick is quite a difficult task, as you’d have to leap over the juggernaut Baltimore Orioles and Miami Marlins - both teams have fully embraced the tank, I might add. The Blue Jays' offense has also had spurts of heating up led by their young kids, so it’s possible for the team to slide up a little bit in the standings.
This is not an exact science of course, but today we try to bust the myth to see if getting the 5th overall pick is worth taking a few extra beatings during a rebuilding year.
Before we tackle this myth in-depth, let’s first look at what we’re dealing with when it comes to the Blue Jays: how many times have they picked in the top 10? How many times have they picked 11-20? And which players did they draft in those years?
*compensation picks
One easy glance and it’s easy to see that since 1990, the Blue Jays have not picked in the top 10 very often. In fact, they’ve picked inside the top 5 only twice since 1990. 50% of these picks had at least one All-Star selection, but only one of them was truly a great player in Vernon Wells.
The Jays have picked 20 times in the 11-20 range, and 6 of those instances were compensation picks. And let’s be honest, the list is pretty ugly. The Blue Jays have had very limited success in drafting mid-1st rounders for a good part of two decades.
The best names are Roy Halladay, Chris Carpenter, Alex Rios, Aaron Hill, Shawn Green, and Shannon Stewart. Five of these guys (or 20% of the 20 players) had at least one All-Star selection. Although it’s not a huge sample size, 50% to 20% in prospect turned All-Star ratio is a pretty huge drop.
During their 1994 to 2014 postseason drought, the Blue Jays picked inside the top 10 only 6 times and within the 11-20 range 15 times.
What does this all mean?
For a team that competed in a very tough AL East division for two decades, they have generally avoided tanking and have tried to compete despite having little to no chance at a pennant race. History also shows that from 1994-2014 they didn't enjoy much success drafting in the 11-20 range.
Over the past 10 seasons, the 5th worst team in baseball has averaged 67.5 wins or 41.7% winning percentage. In contrast, the 12th worst team has averaged 77 wins or 47.5% winning percentage.
The Tigers only won 64 games last season and there are more projected sub-65 win teams this season, thus making it even more difficult to tank for a more favourable draft slot. The 77 wins it's historically taken for the 12th highest draft slot has stayed about the same, roughly.
Now that we’ve established that the Blue Jays have generally avoided tanking despite 20 years of despair, we move onto the original question: “Is the 5th overall pick worth tanking for?”
To generate a baseline, we will be comparing options at the #5 overall pick vs. options at the #12 overall pick. Again, this is appropriate because the Blue Jays have generally picked 11-17 in their bad years, and are currently projected to pick top 5 in 2020.
Hopefully this exercise helps answer the question of whether or not it's worth losing those extra 10 games.
Here are some examples of players available at the 5th pick that were NOT available at the 12th pick, sorted chronologically:
Four immediate thoughts come to mind going through the list of the past 18 drafts:
1. There have been so many great players picked between 5 and 11, all of which wouldn’t have been a choice for the 12th pick.
2. Many of them turned out to be all-stars and productive MLB players. Not surprisingly, there have been some very poor picks at both #5 and #12, which is further evidence that the draft is a crapshoot even at such a high draft slot. (e.g. Brandon Morrow in 2006 and Bubba Starling in 2011)
3. To give credit, there were a few good MLB players or highly-touted prospects selected with both draft slots: Matt Wieters, Buster Posey, Drew Pomeranz, Clint Frazier, Kyle Tucker, Shane Baz, Jered Weaver, Yasmani Grandal, and Jay Bruce.
4. In most years, bumping the pick a few slots higher from 12th could’ve made a tremendous difference for those teams.
Of course, there are examples of botched 12th overall selections that could’ve easily had a better result if the team had taken someone else. For example, in 2012 the Mets could’ve taken Corey Seager or Marcus Stroman, or in 2009 the Royals could’ve taken A.J. Pollock or, you know, Mike Trout.
Though the draft is mostly a crapshoot and relies heavily on good luck and health, it’s pretty safe to say that in most years the team picking 12th could’ve had much better drafts if they picked 5th. Sometimes losing that extra 9 games (68 vs 77 wins) is a big enough difference to be a franchise-altering draft pick.
Let's look at 2005, where the Texas Rangers were 79-83 and subsequently drafted Kasey Kiker 12th overall in 2006. If they instead were 70-92 (lost 9 more games) they would’ve drafted 6th, giving them an option between Clayton Kershaw, Tim Lincecum, Max Scherzer, and Andrew Miller.
In 2010, the Milwaukee Brewers were 77-85 and drafted Taylor Jungmann 12th in 2011. If they were instead 68-94 (lost 9 more games) they would’ve drafted 6th, giving them an option between Anthony Rendon, Francisco Lindor, Javier Baez, and George Springer.
In 2008, imagine the Oakland Athletics got Buster Posey instead of Jemile Weeks, or in 2013 the Seattle Mariners got Clint Frazier, Hunter Dozier, or Austin Meadows instead of D.J. Peterson.
The list goes on and on and there are more examples, but it’s very easy to see the value of drafting a few slots higher.
Of course, not every draft is going to be that strong up top and a team could end up missing on their pick anyway. But based on this data, more often than not teams have a better chance at impactful talent by just losing a few extra games in a season that they already have no chance of making the postseason.
The MLB draft, in general, is absolutely a crapshoot. But over the past four decades, scouting departments have improved in identifying first round talent and standouts that belong in the top 10 picks. The longer the draft goes on, the randomness increases and it truly becomes a crapshoot. But the first 10 players picked in the draft tend to have a fairly good chance at becoming premium MLB talent.
Another key is that bumping up your draft slot from 12th to 5th is more than just picking sooner for the first round, the team moves up seven spots for ALL 40 rounds in the MLB draft. That can be pretty significant on the whole.
There are, of course, repercussions for teams deliberately tanking. The Blue Jays are a prime example of how significantly attendance can drop once the team admits to or displays that they’re rebuilding and not spending any significant money in free agency.
But would losing 90 games vs. losing 100 games this season result in much of a difference in the dropping attendance? I’m not sure many fans would attend either way. The market has clearly illustrated in the past that fans will support a winning team that’s competing deep into September.
The same fan that attended a 70-win Blue Jays team would most likely still attend if the team won only 60 games that year. An empty stadium that’s slightly more empty ultimately has no impact on the team’s bottom line.
Let’s think about it this way: is it better to be mediocre for ten years but not lose too many games, or absolutely stink for three years and then have studs in the farm system with the higher draft picks acquired during that time? It’s arguable that the Blue Jays have already found their franchise players in Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, so they wouldn’t have to tear it down like the Astros and the rebuild wouldn’t take as long in theory.
It’s not difficult to see why so many teams are taking the same approach that the Astros and Cubs did recently. Whether it truly works or not is completely debatable, but it's an interesting and enticing strategy for a rebuilding team, even with the uncertainty of the MLB Draft.
So for a team like the Blue Jays that was 73-89 last season and ended up picking 11th in 2019, they are currently on pace to win 58 games and pick 3rd overall in 2020.
Is the 5th overall pick worth tanking for? History shows it might not be the worst idea.
Thanks for reading "Myth Busters: Is Tanking Worth It" by BlueRocky. If you have any questions or comments relating to this article, we encourage you to leave them below.
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