We Own the #5 Pick!

Of course, it's not official, but I went through the standings and with their extended losing skein to end the season, the Giants have "earned" the 5th pick in the draft. There are only 4 teams which won less games: Tampa Bay Rays, Kansas City Royals, Baltimore Orioles, and Pittsburgh Pirates. The Giants are actually tied with Florida, but from my understanding about ties, the first tie-breaker is the team's record the year before, and the Giants had two less wins than the Marlins in 2006, which would give them the #5 pick overall in the 2008 amateur draft.

From my previous study of the amateur draft, I found that the proportion of good players selected dropped significantly after the 5th pick, so it is not a small deal that we got the 5th pick and not the 6th, on a general basis. Of course, each year has it's own level of talent and one year's #10 pick could be better than another year's #5 pick, but I'll take any bit of additional advantage we can get in the draft.

In addition, good players often fall down a bit due to signability issues. For example, this year, Matt Wieters was considered one of the best hitter in college, if not the best, and he played a premium position - catcher - and was considered to be very good defensively. However, partly because he had Boras as his agent, most draft experts had him falling into the teens of the draft, which excited me because the Giants had the 10th pick. Alas, the Orioles screwed up that scenario by picking him with the - wait for it - 5th pick overall. And, of course, Lincecum fell to us for other issues when he could have been a top pick also. So each pick up overall gives us a better chance of having a top player fall to us for whatever reasons.

Hopefully it will be a good draft year for college position players, as those normally develop and produce faster than a high school player, and we can pick up a good hitter and hopefully at one of the premiere offensive positions: LF, RF, or 1B. Though an outstanding 3B would be good too, but they are much more rare to find, those you need to hold onto them. If he is good enough, maybe he'll be contributing to the team as early as 2010. A high schooler falling to #5 probably is still a bit of a project, whereas a good college player will be that much more polished and developed, and hopefully can move up faster.