The Giants has been contemplating signing QO players like Adames and Burnes this offseason, which would cost draft picks, and with the signing of Adames, they have now lost their second and fifth round picks.
Signing Burnes as well as Adames would tthen cost the team its second, third, fifth and sixth selections, part of the price the Giants paid for exceeding the luxury-tax threshold while finishing 80-82.I thought I would write on the odds of these draft picks ever amounting to a good player, given how much fans worry about losing draft picks. Like I wrote almost 20 years ago when I analyzed the Michael Tucker punted pick, you are losing a lottery ticket with steep odds of winning, while gaining a MLB caliber player.
ogc thoughts
With the lottery selections, the draft picks each team can get (assuming the team does not sign a QO player and lose picks) is set. The Giants 2025 picks (per this MLB article, plus my inserting where they would have been had they not lost their 2nd and 5th round picks by signing Adames):
- 1st: 13th pick overall
- 2nd: would have been 51st pick overall
- 3rd: 85th pick overall
- 4th: 115th pick overall
- 5th: would have been 157th pick overall
- 6th: 175th pick overall
Of course, past the second round, had the Giants NOT forfeited their 2nd pick, the pick number would have been increased by one. Likewise, if they sign another QO free agent, like Burnes, then their forfeited 3rd and 6th round pick would advance their 4th round pick up by one, and picks after the 6th round up by two.
From my draft study, here are the probabilities for each pick (moving the latter picks back 1-2 picks would not have affected the below analysis):
- 2nd: 5.20%
- 3rd: 2.14%
- 5th: 1.29%
- 6th: 1.29%
Adames' Lost Picks Are Like Lottery Tickets That Likely Won't Hit
Thus, the signing of Adames cost the Giants 6.49% chance of finding a good player (based on how often good players were found in that range of picks. So, roughly, 1 out of 16 chances of finding a good player. What this means is that you can do this 16 times, and the odds are that on average, you would be finding only one good player. Meanwhile, you signed 16 pretty good players. So, not very costly.
And losing that 2nd round pick is equivalent to the Sabean move, almost 20 years ago, to sign Michael Tucker (30th pick overall, but same odds of 5.20% of finding a good player). It is not a move you want to do every year, as eventually you will likely have missed out on a good player. But if you only do it a couple of year (like last year and this year), it nets you two premium players in Chapman and Adames, long term, and likely to produce much more than the picks given up in the past two offseasons.
Losing Picks for Another QO Free Agent Even Less Likely to Hit
Similarly for signing another QO free agent, losing thee 3rd and 6th pick only adds up to 3.43%, or roughly 1 out of 30 chances of finding a good player, even lower odds. Again, not very good odds of finding a good player via these draft picks.
Money Can Buy Winning But Can't Buy Championships
Given these low odds, one might wonder: why bother with draft picks if signing a free agent nets you a pretty good player, without the hassles of figuring out who can be good, and developing them to be as good as that free agent? Because even the Yankees do not have enough money to buy themselves a complete enough team to win the championship much more than random dictates.
Look at the likely top four spenders of the 21st Century (2001-2024): Yankees, Dodgers, Phillies, Mets. Between the four of them, they have four championships in those 24 years, which averages to one championship in 24 seasons, which is basically what would randomly happen, which is winning one in 30 years (since there are 30 teams). And I don't consider the 2020 Championship to be a real title because the point of baseball is to beat down the team over the gauntlet of a 162 season, and seeing who survived it the best, and that drops it down to 3 championships in 23 years. Meanwhile, in those 24 seasons, they have spent around $4-5 billion each, just to win that average one championship.
So teams can buy their way to building a winning team. They can buy even a thoroughly dominant team, like the Dodgers since Friedman took over (they were first in RA and RS, in the same season, many times in the past decade), but they cannot build a team that wins multiiple championships without also building from their farm system, like the Giants did to win 3 in 5 or the Yankees to win 4 in 5, drafting Buster Posey and Derek Jeter, respectively, as well as key others like Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Petitte, Posada, Williams, and others.
Free agency can help you complete your team, but you need to build from within via draft picks to build the foundation of the team that can help you win more than your 1 out of 30 random share of championships, like the rich teams have roughly done in this century.
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