ogc thoughts
As was covered in the first of the series, the Sabean era started out with a huge gaping hole in the development pipeline, as there were no good players drafted (though it would have been a whole lot better if the rumored pick of CC Sabathia had happened instead of the owners going cheap, forcing the pick of Torcato) in the first five years of his reign.
Still, showing how underpaid these prospects are paid in bonuses, Sabean still found enough talent that he averaged about 7-10 times the return, on average, for each draft (based on current numbers - $5-17M slots, $70M in WAR production, so roughly 7-10 times as the Giants were mostly playoff competitive in that period). So the Giants still made out like bandits with the draft, with great ROI.
But you can't keep a team competitive without good players. And he was actually likely to have found at least one good player in all that time, there was only 17% odds of no good player, which means 83% chance of finding at least one good player. It would all start to get better with the next draft, and eventually get better than average.
2002 Draft
This was Sabean's first great draft, producing 40.9 bWAR altogether. In addition to Matt Cain (29.1 bWAR; would have reached great at 36.0 bWAR, using my definitions) as their first round pick, they also selected Freddie Lewis, Dan Ortmeier, Kevin Correia, Clay Hensley, and Matt Palmer, plus their bonus baby pick, in the 21st round, when they drafted Travis Ishikawa, paying him nearly $1M in bonus. People forget that Sabean did things like this too, thinking him staid, and by the book; he also did a number of draft and follow picks as well, though none of those ever worked out.
In spite of the greatly improved production, the sum of the picks only added to 0.1726, lower than any of the prior five seasons, for a total of 1.87 expected good players. There is an 83.7% chance of ending up with no good player in this draft. Now that he has found a good player, there is no need to check on the odds of not finding a good player over his reign as GM.
It took a long time before Cain could be verified as a good player. Although we credit Sabean with finding Cain in 2002, that's only through hindsight, knowing what we know in the future. However, he didn't reach the majors until the end of 2006, and while he was good, we didn't know he was good until he passed 18.0 bWAR in 2009, and even then, as we saw with Lincecum, the decline phase could take out a chunk of their positive production, so probably not sure until 2012, which is 10 years after Cain was drafted by Sabean.
2003 Draft
With 8 picks, this is the max for the rest of the Sabean era (only reached again in 2007). Aardsma was the first round pick, Nate Schierholtz (4.6 bWAR) the third round pick, and altogether this draft generated 13.7 bWAR, which included Brian Wilson, 723rd player picked, their 24th round pick (5.6 bWAR). I've often though of Wilson as a pretty good player, but he really only had a good four year period for the Giants, a comet blazing through the orange skies of SF,
The probabilities for this draft added up to 0.3326, making it a cumulative total of 2.20 good players, so Sabean is behind again. And a high 70.9% chance of ending up, as they did, with no good players found.
2004 Draft
Among the worse of the drafts in the Sabean era, with only 0.1 bWAR total for the whole draft. Bowker was the only interesting prospect drafted, third round pick. Kevin Frandsen was the 12th round pick. But both were negative WAR players. The player who put this draft in the positive, barely, was Jonathan Sanchez, 27th round, 820th player selected, though only 2.6 bWAR total. In his Giants career, he produced 5.2 bWAR, but he was really useful only over the three seasons of 2008-2010, peaking with his 2010 season, producing 3.2 bWAR. We needed every win that season because of that umpire's bad call, calling Ishikawa out at the plate, when he was the winning run, even though he couldn't actually see the play (he said afterward that he liked the swipe of the catcher, and Ishi "looked" out).
There were only 5 picks out of the first 200, with the good probabilities adding up to 0.1206 (total of 2.32). It was a high probability that none were found, with 88.5% chance of no good player found, tied for second worse out of all the Sabean drafts.
2005 Draft
A bad draft overall, really nobody of note except for the pick way back in the 28th round of Sergio Romo. Total 9.6 bWAR, of which Romo has produced 10.7 bWAR (and counting, he's still slinging those sliders). The probabilities only added up to 0.0472 (total of 2.368) and 95.35% chance of not finding a good player among the first 200 picks (worse chances of Sabean's era).
2006 Draft
Basically, any draft can be a great draft based on one good player, and the Giants Front Office hit it with their selection of Tim Lincecum, good for 19.7 bWAR, so far. So far because he hasn't officially retired and could come back and drop that figure below the 18.0 bWAR threshold that I've been using to define a good player.
That's a limitation of my data: ideally, I would capture the total WAR for the player's pre-free-agency seasons, and then find a threshold for that. Unforrtunately, that would exponentially increase the time for (free) collection (I probably could get it by buying it from baseball-reference.com). Still, most players catch a clue pretty quickly (and teams figure it out fast too), so that the drop isn't too great.
Still, Lincecum peaked early and went down over a number of years, as the Giants bet on him coming back, and he came up short. He peaked at 24.1 bWAR, and dropped 2.8 bWAR in his last four seasons with the Giants (he was actually slightly positive in his last Giants season, though, at +0.3 bWAR), and another 1.6 in his final season with the Angels, for a total drop of 4.4 bWAR (oddly, the draft data has him at 19.7, but his player card is at 20.0; so I subtracted the difference from his peak).
No other draftee produced over 1.0 bWAR (Brett Pill was the closest at 0.6, Matt Downs next at 0.5). Emmanuel Burris is the best known name of the rest of the bunch, but ended up -2.7 bWAR. He aggravated Carney Lansford, as Carney loved the strength of Burris's wrists, and wanted him to change his swing to take advantage of them, but Burrris was taught by his Dad, and understandably stuck to it to the end (given how badly he hit, and his speed, plus how upset Lansford was, he undoubtedly was taught to swipe at the ball to hit to the ground, and to use his speed to get on base; this works great in amateurs - Gary Brown appears to be another to have been hurt by this - but not in the majors, that's why Andres Torres, in desperation, sought out a batting instructor who taught him to swing like Albert Pujols, who was using the methods 90% of major leaguers use, and as espoused and taught by Ted Williams in his great book on hitting, The Science of Hitting).
The probabilities added up to 0.2766 (total of 2.6226) and 74.66% chance of not finding a good player (and he hit it out of the park with this one).
2007 Draft
The Giants continued the hot streak by selecting Madison Bumgarner, who is at 37.1 bWAR right now, which puts him into the Great player category. Hall of Fame is generally at 54.0 bWAR or greater, from my view and categorization, so he's got a long way to go for that, and unfortunately in another uniform (maybe he can pull a McCovey?).
Nine of the selections made the majors, which is probably on the high end, but again, most were in negative territory. Dan Otero was the best of the rest at 5.1 bWAR, I was sad that Sabean let him go, but felt vindicated when he because a useful reliever. He's actually had 3 pretty good seasons as a reliever (2013, 2014, 2016; pretty good to me is 1.5+ WAR, I frankly do not know what a good reliever produces in WAR, but I figure anything 1.5 and above, which is considered average, is pretty good for a reliever, who is hardly ever used, relative to hitters and starting pitching, and he had an excellent 2.6 bWAR in 2016). He could really control his pitches, hardly walking anyone. Next is Charlie Culberson at 0.5 bWAR, then Jackson Williams at 0.1 and Dan Runzler at 0.0; the rest were negative.
With all the extra picks (4 in first 32 picks, 6 in the first 51), the probabilities added up to 0.4978, the highest (ultimately) in the Sabean era, for a total of 3.1424, with 59.25% chance of not finding a good player (he hit a grand slammer with this one). With this draft, Sabean basically caught up with the probabilities, with three good players in Cain, Lincecum, and Bumgarner.
2008 Draft
Sabean hit the first round trifecta with this draft, the first under John Barr, whom we stole from the Dodgers (which I saw as a fair trade for Ned Colletti, who I still suspect was responsible for the infamous "I wasn't told about this, else I would have vetoed it" trade for AJP (quote from Peter Magowan). Some say that it was a gimme to pick Buster Posey, but the crowd at MCC was fully in love with Justin Smoak (and some for Gordon Beckham), so no, it was not a consensus that Posey was the obvious choice. I was also mocked in the future by the MCC crowd because in 2007, I was upset that the Orioles picked up Matt Weiters, who I was hoping would fall to us, but I think the importance of having a good catcher was important for a team that was built on pitching justified such histrionics.
In any case, Posey turned out way better than expected. He was considered a good defensive catcher, capable of winning a Gold Glove at some point, and as a good hitter, but with a modicum of power, unlike Weiters, who had the whole package. Ironically, Weiters turned out to be that good hitting with some power, good defensive catcher, and Posey turned out to be that great player, unlike what the pre-draft talk were about the two. It's a lesson that while the draft experts know what they are talking about, in terms of skills and potential, there's still a lot of dark data regarding how each player develops, which none of them has figured out yet.
With Posey's 42.1 bWAR, it was a beyond great draft. With Brandon Crawford's 23.6 bWAR, it was exponentially good, as the Giants had their first good player who was not a first rounder. In total, this draft produced 64.1 bWAR and counting, though both players are on the downside of their careers, so there might be slippage. Juan Perez, with his brief but vital contributions, had 0.4 bWAR. Conor Gillaspie too, with 1.0 bWAR.
With the high first round pick, the probabilities totaled 0.3166 (total of 3.459) with 71.12% chance of ending up with nothing, which works out to roughly 25% chance of finding 1 good player, 4% of finding 2 good players. Sabean is now up to 5 good players vs. the 3.5 he's expected to find.
2009 Draft
The first round streak of good players ended (though still counting, as Zack Wheeler is at 10.2 bWAR and while 30 YO for 2020, has produced 3.9 and 3.5 bWAR over the past two seasons; with 2-3 more great seasons, he could be above 18.0), but the streak continued with Brandon Belt's selection in the 5th round, as he's at 23.2 bWAR right now, but past his peak in hitting, and had his first negative fielding in four seasons (though I believe that was due to his poor LF play, I think he's still good at 1B). Probably time for him to platoon with a RHH, perhaps an RHH OF could get some playing time this way.
The two above made it a great draft, with 33.4 bWAR and counting. It was the fourth best draft in terms of bWAR. Chris Heston added 0.9 and Jake Dunning 0.4, so there were other good value returns.
The probabilities was the same as last season, with roughly the same picks, totaling 0.3166 for the draft, and 3.7756 for all the drafts, with the same 71.12% chance of ending up with nothing. Sabean is now up to 6 good players vs. roughly 4. He's going to need that margin, as the drafts got cold again as we'll see in the next and last in the series of Giants draft analysis, during the Sabean era
Cain Was the First One
With the selection of Cain, the tide turned for Sabean's drafts, as he selected his first good player. Still, as noted above, it took a long time before that could be verified. It was about 10 years after Cain was drafted by Sabean before we knew for certain that he would be categorized as a good player. He was clearly good, early on, but it takes many years of good to great seasons to compile the WAR necessary to reach 18.0, and you never know with pitchers especially, as injuries are endemic to the profession, hence the term TINSTAAPP (There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect, which gets to the point that either he's a pitcher or he isn't, and injuries can blow that prospect out of the waters really quickly, so once he's a pitcher, he should be promoted to the majors).
Judging Drafts Requires a Long Time, Longer Than Most Fans Are Willing to Wait
This is a good illustration of what I've been saying about how you can't judge a GM's record of prospect development over a short period of time, like the time of Evans' run as Giants GM, until many years later. People have been lambasting him for the poor farm system, and yet, just one year after they blasted him, the Giants system has 5 prospects in the Top 100, four of which were obtained with Evans as GM (and the 5th one could have been his pick, as it was Hunter Bishop, the pick he would have controlled had he not been fired; to be clear, I'm happy to have Zaidi as leader and that Evans was removed, as he's made a number of poor trades, but his farm system was starting to turn good when he was let go).
It should be noted here for all the talk about change in the Giants front office, while the scouting director is new, they were still using all the same scouts that they were before, and all three of Sabean, Barr and Tidrow are still here giving their advice and input, and so essentially, the same information pool that they have always used, just a different decision maker.
This reminds me of all the complaints about Sabean during the mid-2000's, and of how wrong Giants fans were back then. Even one year after, the farm system under Evans clearly was going well, it was the decay at the major league level that was and is the great problem. For all the complaints, two of his prospects, Bart and Luciano, are considered Top 20-30 prospects, which are almost sure things when ranked that highly. And Ramos and Corry look good too, but still need to develop more and prove that they should be higher.
It seems like Sabean gets thrown under the bus along with Evans for the past few years of bad baseball. As I'm hoping I'm showing with this examination, you can't judge a GM or President of Baseball Operations' draft record until many years later, about a decade later than his last draft year. So Evans can't be fully evaluated until 2028 probably, and given Ramos' and Corry's youth, it could take longer (see Wheeler, potentially). Yet I see every few articles in The Athletic that there will be someone throwing mud at Evans and/or Sabean leaving the farm system bereft. I'm amazed at the ignorance shown, but been realizing that this is exactly what I went through 2007-2010, just a whole new generation of ignorant, and yet opinionated fans.
You can make gut calls, of course, but most Giants fans guts in the late 2000's were that Sabean was an idiot and didn't know what he was doing, and thus I was the only one happy whenever he got his two-year extensions. In fact, while people were being unhappy then, I was talking about the Giants being the Team of the 2010 Decade. Some gut calls are better than others.
2002 to 2009 Draft
Overall, this draft stretch was the period of dynasty building, starting with the selection of Cain and running all the way down to Brandon Belt. On top of that, there were two punted first round picks to boot, as the cheapskate minority owners got in the way of baseball operations over and over again, until Neukom took over (though they seem to be having input again with Zaidi's reluctance to retain Bumgarner or to even spend for one good free agent player, when there's plenty of money under the CBA penalty threshold). In all, after a horrible start with his first five drafts, getting shut out, from 2002 to 2009, covering 8 drafts, Sabean found 6 good players, and good complementary players like Wilson, Romo, Sanchez. Altogether, the draftees, both bad and good, totaled 218.0 bWAR.
Sabean turned things around 180 degrees with this draft period. He went from being in the bottom 17% of odds, overall, in his first five draft, but after these eight drafts, he's now in the highest 19% (random odds of finding 6 great players in 88 picks overall is 9.8%, with another 9.2% odds of finding 7 or more).
But as we all know, and which I'll cover in the final part of the series, his string of good player finds ended and lingered much like his first five drafts, before things started looking up again, hopefully, with Bart and Ramos, and perhaps Corry. For, as I had discussed above, it takes a number of years for a player to show what category of player he might be, and even then, things can change, as it took about ten years to be sure about Cain (he had elbow issues as 18 YO that foreshadowed his career ending problems with it, it was a time bomb waiting to happen).
For example, Wheeler was looking like he'll only be a mediocre player, at best, but with two great seasons in 2018-19 (age 28-29 YO seasons), he jumped to useful status and if he can continue this pace for at least half of his five year contract, he should reach good player status, which would add another Good player to Sabean's tally, once all is said and done.
I think of this example when pondering about Beede's chances, as his 2019 season is similar to Wheeler's 2017 season, where he pitched about half a season of so-so baseball. Not that they were similar, Wheeler's 2017 season ended badly, after a great 11 start stretch where he had a 3.45 ERA, whereas Beede ended 2019 with a great 15 start stretch with 4.42 ERA, but 74 strikeouts and only 18 walks, in 79.1 IP, portends a much better 2020, if he can reduce his HR from that high rate to a much better 1.0 HR per 9.0 innings rate (FIP of 3.64). Of course, big if, and Wheeler was pitching much better than Beede, and Beede still needs to show he can reduce his HR allowance rate.
Finding Great Players
Like the above, I looked into the odds of finding a great player:
- 2002: 0.0576 expected great player; 94.4% probability not finding a great player
- 2003: 0.1212; 88.5%
- 2004: 0.0351; 96.5%
- 2005: 0.0123; 98.8%
- 2006: 0.1109; 89.3%
- 2007: 0.2040; 81.2%
- 2008: 0.1891; 81.8%
- 2009: 0.1409; 86.4%
Of course, with two great players (for now, both are categorized as great players) found in Bumgarner and Posey, Sabean is slightly above average, for the 13 year period.
Jumping ahead to the end of his era, as a sneak peak, the draft picks sum up to only 2.32 great players, so Sabean is right about average, slightly below here, but not significantly so. Will there be another good player? Of course, I don't know, but I'll discuss the possibilities in the last of the series.
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