Bitching About Pitching: Imporrtance of Finding Ace SP

I've been complaining about Zaidi's strategy so far for preparing for the NextGen Giants.  Our hitters will be matriculating in the next 1-2 years, and as we all know, developing pitchers (or any prospects) usually take about 4-6 years, unless you hit the jackpot, like we did with Lincecum and Bumgarner, even Cainer took 4 years, we drafted him at 18 YO, he made the majors at 20 YO, he had his first full season at 21 YO, his first good season at 22 YO, and was 24 YO when he had his first ace level season.  

Meanwhile, Zaidi drafted only one pitcher in the 2019 draft, and used three of his best four bullets in the 2020 draft on hitters, but at least picked up Kyle Harrison next, which values him in the 26-33 range. And now in 2021, finally drafted pitchers with his first 9 picks, and 14 of the 20 rounds. But is it too late? Because prospects take 3-6 years to develop, so these 2021 draftees won't be reaching the majors until 2024-2027, on average.

So that got me wondering:  how have teams found an ace level pitcher over the years?  So I compiled from Fangraphs the top 30 pitchers. FG ranked by WAR for qualified pitchers, which is what I wanted to examine, pitchers who were not only good but good enough to pitch what is considered a full season.  So I collected all that data, then supplemented by determining which team acquired the pitcher, as well as when and how (draft, IFA, FA, trade), to get a view of how teams have been acquiring these players. 

Then I combined together the ranked pitchers to get a consolidated view of the universe of starting pitchers who ranked among the Top 30 (I used only the Top 30 showing on the first page of Fangraphs leaderboard, there might be pitchers who have the same WAR as #30, but to simplify my data collection, which probably started weeks ago, I went only with who were on the first page), as that's then roughly the ace pitcher each 30 teams could have theoretically had, if they were allowed to draft by top pitchers each season.

This post shares my analysis and conclusions.

And Merry Christmas to all! I wish you all a safe and healthy holiday period!

Is it Drafty in Here? Looking at the 2012 Draft

I had been in a discussion on MCC regarding the Giants draft strategy, or lack thereof, by many commenting in that thread.  One of the strategies that has been discussed in a number of places (including Baseball America) is the punting of high single digit draft picks by selecting seniors who would sign for low bonuses (I read on BA that one was in the 4 figure range, which is pretty low, I'll admit, and they noted this here; Fangraphs had an article on this with charts showing the disparity).

One of the things I learned in researching for this blog post is that every team can over spend by 5% of their budget before the penalties really kick in (start losing draft picks).  So the Giants over slot for Shilo McCall does not necessarily impact any other selection, as his was only about $75,000 over.  And the biggest one, Stratton, was exactly for slot.  And the BA Draft Pool calculator currently says the Giants appears to have signed all of their 22 draft picks for slot so far, except for Shilo, as his deal represents how much they are over right now.  With a 75% penalty, that adds on $55,800 to the cost of signing Shilo, which would mean that the Giants, if they get everyone else for slot, basically paid the same amount for Shilo as they had offered to McCasland.

Giants 2010 Draft Thoughts

A poster on McCovey Chronicles discussed the Giants 2010 pick, analyzing how 24th picks in the past fared (BTW, as reported in Baseball America, the Giants pick 24th in 2010 :^). Below is part of my answer there, regarding signability picks, that I wanted to post here as well:

And I totally agree about making signability picks with not just the #24, but going forward. That's the MLB today and there seems to be more and more of those in recent years, so it wouldn't stick out as unusual. The Giants would be remiss not to budget money for doing that, much like when they signed Ishikawa for nearly $1M in the later rounds. People were upset about not getting Porcello in the Alderson slot but you could not justify to Bumgarner's people paying Porcello $3.5M when you are only giving $2M to Madison. I like Bumgarner more than Porcello, I think Sabean and company made the right decision on who to pick there.

But now, we have no such restraints and it is much more common today to do stuff like that. Hopefully the Giants are keeping (hear this Neukom?) some budget aside for any possible signability selections in the early rounds, so that we can pick up somebody like Casey Kelly that Boston signed, for the picks after a winning season.

Heck, the money we saved this season on payroll and draft (combined, they were much less than in 2008, by $5-10M, plus didn't sign any Latin bonus babies) should just be put aside and fund rainy day signability picks, plus money should be set aside every year for that. If the Giants hope to build a dynasty during the 2010's - and they have a great base to build from - they will need to feed the prospect making machine with talent.

The only consistent ways to get prospect talent is to 1) lose big time, so that you get a Top 10 pick and ideally a Top 5 pick, 2) sign top international free agents, both Latin and abroad, and 3) when you don't have a high pick in the first round, use your first picks to try to sign signability picks. Once you start winning, 1 is no longer an option, so the team needs to keep investing, and that's the key word here, INVESTING, in the future. Not that this rule cannot be bent once in a while to sign a free agent that you need to be competitive that season, because, as shown above, you ain't losing much, but the general guiding priniciple is the need to keep feeding talent into the farm system.

Using business terms that Neukom should understand, consider this to be your R&D budget. The best companies, particularly technology companies like Microsoft, devote a large portion of their budget to R&D, because it is your pipeline of future products/prospects. This was not really possible in the MLB until the past couple of years, because teams were not doing that regularly plus, more importantly, amateurs weren't playing this game much either, so there were not that many falling, but with the Yankees and Red Sox shoving the door wide open on this practice, the leading MLB teams going forward are those who are willing to budget for these signability buys.

Not that throwing $2-3M on a signability pick is going to guarantee you a good prospect - that would be the MBD (Matt Bush Disorder) where you think the guy is good just because you gave him $2-3M - so you must still have good scouting, but if your scouting is good, they should be able to pinpoint a few signability plays for their first pick every season. I have seen picks down to the 4th round (I think it was the Angels and Harvey a couple of years ago) that were based on signability, so the Giants need to be prepared to pull the trigger when the opportunity presents itself.

Reply to John Cormac

I don't have time to put together the long replies I tend to do, so I'm taking this route: I will post the question/statement made by John Cormac in his last comment in this post and give my reply, piecemeal to this post. Thus, this post, unlike other posts, will grow over time as I add my replies to it.

"Handicapped by poor draft position" is a laughable excuse for a guy who supposedly uses metrics to look at these issues. It's a dog-ate-my-homework excuse which is belied by actual events. Sabean hasn't been hamstrung by anything - apart from when they intentionally forfeited their high picks (see the Michael Tucker incident - the analysts still laugh about that one) the Giants have deliberately chosen to use the high draft picks they have for pitching, pitching, and more pitching. This is an admitted fact - when the club was running well Sabean and Colletti would brag about it. Now that the free agent well for field players has run dry, not so much.

People seem to think that I'm this quant guy, and I am to a large extent, but I am also a touchy-feely guy as well, and can travel between the two worlds comfortably. I know enough to blend the two together (which is why they pay me the, um, bucks :^). I also know that if I go too far with the quant stuff, I'm going to lose people, so I've been doing my best to keep things as digestible as I can make them.

Also, I've written a lot over the past 6 years on the Giants, so I realize you probably haven't read all of it, but like you noted to me when I accused you of something (which I showed I was correct in interpreting what you wrote), I can't say I appreciate your labeling of my position as "laughable". What is laughable is you attacked my position without asking for further explaination. I've obviously put a lot of effort into my blog, perhaps I might have something cogent to say.

The analysts laugh because they don't understand. They don't understand that the distribution (which is a very overlooked analytical tool) is horribly skewed towards failure, they only look at the average, and even then they don't look at the average in context with what type of player that represents. When the odds of success in finding anything is low (about 10% for any successful playoff contending team), bypassing it for more immediate needs is a legitimate option.

Given how Tucker paid off for us in 2004 plus we still have Kelvin Pichardo doing well in the system for us, vs. KC's Campbell, who flamed out already (pick they got from us) and Texas's Hurley, who had a big setback to his prospect status in 2008 (some think he was the prototypical pitcher Sabean/Tidrow would like), it looks like we came out way ahead with this move.

One of my main points is that with the odds of finding any good player, whether position or pitching, is very low anyhow, even if you have a Top 5 pick overall (still much under 50%, about 40-45%), and thus by concentrating on pitching, you speed up the rebuild, make it more likely that it will be successful, and, as I've been reporting on lately, acquire the key ingredients for a successful playoff team, which is pitching, pitching and more pitching (plus defense).

And I haven't even gone into depth on that yet, been meaning to write on it, but the gist is that with a two-prong approach to the draft - pitching via a volume approach and defense which is easy to obtain - you cheaply acquire the main ingredients you need to be a successful playoff team, then supplement with whatever available premium hitters you can get on the free agent market to get the offense you need. As I noted in my "Hey Neukom" series, when you have a plus pitching staff, the offense you need to win is exponentially less because of the relationship between runs scored and runs allowed in the Pythagorean formula that Bill James developed.

The key thing to remember when you complain about the lack of position players (and really, you are talking here about good offensive position players) is that they are not crucial ingredients of a successful playoff team. The Hardball Times had an article on that a few years ago and Baseball Prospectus, after that, took another route to analyzing that and discovered the same thing: offense did not factor into why teams won, while pitching, specifically a high-strikeout pitching staff and a very effective closer, and defense did.

DePodesta Blog on the Recent Draft

Amazingly and wonderfully, Paul DePodesta, now with the 'Dres, has a blog called "It Might be Dangerous... You Go First" and he recently blogged on the draft. Here are some interesting bits, plus some comments from me:

• "...a more detailed analysis can greatly inform a team's strategy for a particular draft. As I've mentioned before, due to the fact that baseball's draft does not immediately impact the Major League level, teams don't necessarily have to draft for need. This allows for more flexibility in the process on an annual basis." This makes a lot of sense. Still, when you draft, you still need to field a team in the lower levels, so at some point you do draft by need. But the main point is that when the probability of the prospect drafted is still visible without a microscope, you should draft best player available. So if Posey was gone and Matusz was available, Sabean probably would have pissed off a lot of fans here by drafting Matusz. I'm sure there will be a lot of Giants fans following what Smoak does in his career: a couple of years ago, Baseball America did an early (end of calendar year) rank for the draft next year, and the #10 prospect was Evan Longoria, and I've been following him ever since, even though we had no chance to draft him, and, I would say, did pretty well for ourselves by selecting Lincecum.
• "This year our scouting staff determined that the 2008 draft class was particularly deep in high quality college hitters, thin in college pitching, and a bit disappointing in terms of depth at the high school level. In fact, there seemed to be an unusually high number of high school players who weren't terribly interested in signing (demanding top half of the first round money in order to forego their college experience)." That would explain the Giants drafting so many college hitters, then going for college pitching (where they hopefully have some sort of competitive advantage in identifying talent), and didn't select high schoolers until later, which was quite a contrast to last year's 5 of 6 high school draftees up front.
• "Approximately five days before the draft we started having conversations about the reality of the draft class and began formulating our strategy. What if we didn't take a pitcher the entire first day? Given the class, we decided, we were prepared to do just that. We weren't going to take a pitcher just to seemingly balance our draft. There were pitchers were liked, of course, and we would be prepared to take them. However, there was an unusual number of attractive hitters, so we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and land as many of them as possible. We certainly didn't want to pass on some of these hitters, who in other years may be at the top of the class, in order to take a pitcher who was very similar to pitchers available in the following few rounds (or in any other year). As I've stated many times in this blog, we know we're not going to be right every time, but if we could secure a full group of top hitters, not just one or two, we felt that at least some of them will meet or exceed our expectations." That's a good thing for fans to remember, the quality and depth of each year's draft is not the same. Sometimes one year's 3rd round pick is better in quality than last year's 2nd round pick. My draft study showed a lot of variability with each draft, but I didn't make a point of it, as I don't have that stats ability to prove that, but it is nice to see an outsider confirm what I noticed in my study. And you can take what he said at the end, change it to pitchers instead of hitters, and that has been basically the Giants draft philosophy for many years now.
• "One of the biggest complaints about most drafts is that certain players were "overdrafted". I'll be honest - I don't really believe in that concept. First of all, our knowledge in terms of where players will be selected is imperfect to put it mildly. Remember, it only takes one team out of thirty to step up and take a player, and then he's gone. There are no do-overs. We may really like a guy, think we can get him in the 4th round or so, and then he's gone in the second. It happens all the time. Therefore, I believe that if you like the player and want him in your system, just take him. My litmus test is how I'm going to react when I hear another team call the player's name: a) a grimace with a head bob, b) an audible "Gah!" with a twist of the neck, or c) nauseous. If (c), then take the player if he's available." That is something I had wondered about, just like any other fan, for years, but I have trusted Sabean's judgement on that since I feel that he has shown good judgement in the trades he had made previously and the drafts he made when he ran the Yankee's draft. Free agency, sometimes you have to take what is on the market, because you need it, not because you necessarily think he's really that good, sometimes you just have to roll the dice when the philosophy is to win now with Bonds, much like any other team scratching and clawing to win it all, now. You have to cross your fingers. Back to the point, this is something I've learned from participating in a few fantasy drafts, if you really want a player, you have to select him, i.e. "over-draft him", if you want him on your team. Thus I tried to overdraft no more than a round or two before I thought others would want him (Lincecum :^) because as he wrote, all you need is one team thinking they need him, and he is gone.
• "The first round is always the most difficult, especially when you're picking in the bottom third. It's very difficult to predict the pool of available players, and the 5-tool, can't miss types are generally gone in the top 5 or 10 picks. This year was no different. " This is exactly what my point has been when I write here and at other Giants and baseball blogs about the draft, the best players are gone after 5 to 10 picks, depending on the year. After that, it becomes a much harder exercise of identifying players who might be useful, let alone who might be good players. As he noted above, sometimes you just have to draft a whole bunch of similar players in hopes that one of them will make it.

This is a great firsthand description of what is happening for a MLB team when preparing for and executing the draft. I must give my kudos to DePodesta for being so open and reaching out to the public in this way.

Giants Thoughts

As I wrote long ago, the baseball draft is more of a crapshoot than thought. It is relatively old now, but nobody since has been able to see the point my study tried to make. Most have focused on the fact that there is value and that there is more value early on, but still value later.

I never said that there wasn't value, but that the chance of collecting on that value is very low. In fact, I've kind of assumed that there must be some value, else these baseball execs must be the biggest chumps in the world, running a draft for over 40 years and not getting any value out of it.

What the authors of these other studies and the people who point out these studies to me lack is a clear understanding of how statistics work when you have situations of low probability. Which is something most people lack because they are simply not used to such phenomenon. But anyone who has taken an introductory class on business stats would understand.

It is all about the difference between expected value, which is what all other studies that have duplicated my study has found, and probability. Expected value has to do with what you can expect to receive if you were able to run the same event over and over again, and calculate the average value received.

But that's not the point when you are dealing with reality and you just have that one shot. That's why I used craps and the lottery as examples to illustrate my point. You have that one roll, you have that one ticket, you either win or you lose, do or die, what is the result?

In baseball, in the back of the first round, you have around a 10% chance of finding a good ballplayer (forget about the fact that it would be another 4-6 years before he pays off). So 9 times out of 10, when you skip that back of the first round pick, you just threw away a player who most likely will never ever be a good player, 90% chance of that happening, based on the draft results over a 13 year period.

While the result of past draft picks have no bearing on the future of any particular draft pick you want to examine, it is my assumption that the population feeding into the draft is producing players at approximately the same rate over time. Just like over time there is a certain percentage of, say, left-handed people, and other population characteristics. It may go up, it may go down, other sports probably does siphon off talent, but today, where there are few athletes capable of playing multiple sports at the same level of excellence, they generally are smart enough to figure out which sport will make them the most money relative to the damage their body takes and the joy they get out of playing the sport, and so the level has been relatively about the same for many years now, now that football and basketball have risen to baseball's level - and perhaps surpassed them - in the national stage.

One day I will figure out how to explain it right, but not tonight. Hopefully one day.

Latest Thoughts on Draft

I think ideally, we get someone among Pedro Alvarez, Tim Beckham, and Buster Posey (can you imagine if we had kept Boof, we could have a battery of Boof to Buster, plus Bocock and Burriss up the middle, Bowker at 1B).

Unfortunately, the more I think about it, the more I think they will all get selected before we get to pick. The only way we end up with one of the above is if two of the following happens: 1) Alvarez's money demands push him down to us, 2) one of teams ahead of us decide to draft a pitcher, 3) one of the teams ahead of us decide that Eric Hosmer is worth Boras's (his agent) hype, or 4) one of the teams ahead of us pull someone out of the hat other than these acknowledged top prospects available. Those who might fit that last one include Gordon Beckham, Yonder Alonso, and Kyle Skipworth, plus pitchers Brian Matusz and Aaron Crow.

Best Available Hitter

Right now, I think the best hitter available to us will then be Justin Smoak, and it's no shame in selecting him, but that's probably our position of least need with Bowker for now and Villalona in the future, plus no real prospect (at least a highly rated one) at C, SS, or 3B. Even if there were a pitcher who was clearly the best talent, I don't think that going for a less talented hitter would hurt us much given the hitters available, but it seems pretty clear that the pitching is at best equal to the hitters and probably a little bit behind.

There has been some talk about picking the other Beckham, Gordon, plus there's a rumor that the Giants have an unknown middle-infielder targeted for the pick, but I think we have to go with best available position player, who most probably will be Justin Smoak unless another hitter falls to us. I wonder if this rumored MI is slotted for their next pick.

I have seen some comment that we should not draft a catcher with the pick because they tend to take longer to develop plus get injured more often. What some people haven't noticed is that Buster Posey was a shortstop his first season of college, and as recently as this year he played all nine positions in a game, plus has relieved as well. So even if we select him, we could move him back to SS and let him advance quickly there, much like how the Astros converted Craig Biggio from catcher to 2B and CF. Who knows, maybe he'll be another position player who could come in and pitch to a batter or two in a pinch or even play all positions in a major league game. Versatility like that will be that much more valuable going forward.

Sabean Scouting Pick 5 Possibles

Andy Baggarly of the Merc a week or so ago noted that Sabean is out scouting the usual suspects for our number 5 overall draft pick and so I wrote this post. I think it still holds up so I'm posting it.

Sabean is/was scouting all the top prospects. These names are familiar to any prospect hound looking at the draft:

• Pedro Alvarez, 3B, Vanderbilt (Boras is agent)
• Gordon Beckham, SS, Georgia
• Justin Smoak, 1B, South Carolina
• Buster Posey, C, Florida State
• Yonder Alonso, 1B, Miami-Florida
• Tim Beckham, SS, HS (Georgia), no relation to Gordon
• Eric Hosmer, 1B, HS (Florida) (Boras is agent)
• Brian Matusz, LHP, University of San Diego
• Aaron Crow, RHP, Missouri

He quoted Sabean:

You don't stop at five or six because you never know what can happen with injuries or you get a (high school) player who won't sign. Plus you get a better comparison when you go deeper.

Sabean hopes to personally scout the top players multiple times, as well. He mentioned that he was going to look at the top dozen or so, which means there are three other players to add to the list above. In addition, he noted that Boras is not necessarily a deterrent either, at least not this early in the process: as noted above, Alvarez and Hosmer are Boras clients.

Draft Budget: Just Do It

Baggarly notes that it "remains to be seen whether the Giants will augment their draft budget to draft premium players later. He also noted that the Giants are at $87M for their major league payroll, much below last year's mid-$90M budget. What he did not note in that article (he did later in his blog), was that Sabean had at the start of the last off-season said that he Giants would be in the mid-$90M range again. So there is an extra $5-10M leftover from what the major league payroll was budgeted for last fall.

Now, its possible that they reduced it when the sales of season tickets came in shorter than expected, but there is still that $6-7M they were willing to spend on Greg Maddux a few years back, so either way, the Giants should use the money to draft these premium players. There were a number of them who fell as far back as the fourth round and the Giants have picks in Round 1, 3, and 4 plus a supplemental 1st round pick for losing Feliz (they had lost Round 2 for signing Rowand).

That's what the Tigers did last year to get Porcello late in the first round, and the D-backs got Stephen Drew in the mid-first round (both Boras clients). There were also a couple in the 2nd and 3rd rounds who were drafted but were unsigned because they wanted too much. But if the Giants are going to defy the slots, they may as well get it all out in one draft and go over slot multiple times early on, where there is more talent.

With such a big cushion of cash, they should be able to do it with their top 4-5 picks, unless, that is, Alvarez falls to them (doubtful, but then Lincecum fell to us too) as his hefty demands could soak up all that money and more.

Still, doing it with the later picks would still only cost a couple or three more millions, very little when compared to the opportunity cost of losing another year of Cain/Lincecum pairing up to prop up a poor offense.

Giants and Their Plans for #5 Pick

There was a nice article on this in the Chron here. Here are some key bits of info:

• Magowan: "The last few years we have been changing direction. Four of the first six guys we drafted last year were position players. We hope to get a position player this time."
• Dick Tidrow, the Giants vice president of player personnel has been an advocate for drafting pitching, particularly when the Giants were winning and did not get to pick until the end of the first round. By then, Tidrow said, the remaining hitters were not as good as the pitchers still available.
• Magowan: "We did not do as good a job as we should have done in our farm system. Everybody knows it. I'm not confessing to a crime that everybody doesn't agree was committed. I'm part of that. We should have seen it probably sooner than we did."

They also listed some of the usual suspects, Alvarez, Posey, and Smoak.

Giants Thoughts

Spilled milk and all. Now that he's officially leaving, I guess he felt like he could be more critical of his tenure here. Frankly, I like the job the farm system has done overall, the pitching staff has been totally revamped and recharged and we have two who look like Aces in Cain and Lincecum, one who looks like he can be in Sanchez, three good starters among Lowry, Correia, and Misch (injuries notwithstanding) and a good closer in Wilson.

Sure, I would love to see another key hitter or two. However, we have two in Lewis and Bowker who are looking better over time plus one who should be coming in with the #5 pick and, of course, there is still Villalona (though he is struggling horribly in Augusta). Let's see how the Giants look like after the season. Things can change by the end of any season for any team's farm system evaluation.

Even then, you still don't know, though. As a relatively new fan long ago, I was totally into Larry Herndon after his great first season, only to see him fade into averageness. Then you would have thought I would have learned by then, after failures like Rich Murray, David Green, and so on, but then I thought for sure that Dan Gladden was going to do it. So many prospects under the bridge and nothing. So I guess I'm a bit jaded, like any long-time fan would be.

Still, now that I can research this info, I do think that Bowker can be a useful contributor going forward. He really outhit the other prospects in AA last season, even with the Dodd Stadium depressant on his stats (his road stats were stellar, leading the league by a mile type of stats), so I think he can adjust and do something for us here in the majors. I realize that it was only one season, but he did it all season long and, if I recall right, he even improved as the season went on.
Lewis I am waiting and seeing. Bowker at least had a great full season in AA, and it led the league when looking only at his road stats, while Lewis had not done really well in any league until last season, and at that, he only did it in a partial season, which means he could have just been hot while he was down in AAA.

The encouraging thing is that he handled his first stint in the majors hitting around average for a corner OF in 2007, which even a lot of hot shot prospects (see the D-backs) could not do in their first try up in the majors, and has continued to not only be average, but he's been doing very well this season. But, again, it is and could be very small samples. And even then, so many players have had a good to great first season, I would need to see Lewis start out 2009 well before I will start to concede that he might be the real deal.

About Magowan's comments, I still wish they had selected a position player in last season's draft. Yes, Madison Bumgarner has been a great pick, he's been doing very well, but we had a chance to pick up hitters like Matt Dominguez, Beau Mills, Jason Heyward.

I can understand Mills, because DH might be his eventual position, plus with Heyward, him being a Georgia kid, he might have decided to hold out for more in order to be with the Braves, since that is their practice, to draft local, plus we have OF galore, so I can maybe see that. But we had no real depth at 3B/SS other than Villalona and I don't see how anyone looking at him don't see that 1B was his eventual position, plus even if he stuck at 3B, you could eventually move one to 1B anyway, or even LF, so I'm not sure why they didn't go for Dominguez other than they didn't like him as much as Madison.

Was he that much worse talent-wise than Bumgarner? He did do terribly as a pro last season and he hasn't even been placed on a regular season minor league team this season, so he's probably in some sort of instructional league, like Wendell Fairley is right now, whereas Bumgarner is already in A-ball and doing well there. Still, we don't have anyone great at 3B right now in the system, though the Giants liked Rohlinger enough to consider bringing him to the majors until they snagged Castillo off the waiver wire.

Still, better late than never, and as he noted, we did select 4 position players out of the first 6 (though none in the first two, again, I love both Bumgarner and Alderson, but couldn't we have gotten at least one position player among the two?). And Noonan has looked great so far, though not doing so great this season.

Though I guess I should heed my first words written: spilled milk. :^)

Drafting Pitchers Could Be A Good Strategy

As any Giants fan knows, Sabean loves to draft pitchers. This makes sense from a variety of perspectives, which I've covered before. First, every team always needs pitching, so why not keep a steady supply coming. Second, a pitching prospect who proves himself can take almost any of the 11-12 pitching spots in your 25-man roster, whereas a position prospect can only improve maybe one or two positions on your roster. Third, along the same vein, every team always can use better pitching, so you can trade with almost anyone in the league, even if they are not currently looking for pitching, if that particular team has the position player you need. Fourth, as I reported on recently, Baseball Prospectus research found that two pitching stats (out of three stats that showed significance) are tied to playoff success: strikeout rate and a very effective closer.

So for these, and other reasons I've gone over in past posts, focusing on drafting pitching can be a good strategy. Here is the latest reason I've uncovered: pitching is easier to identify than hitting.

Good Pitching Easier to Identify

A recent article in SI that I found the other day (published in early June 2007) made the very interesting point that evaluating young hitters is tougher than pitchers. A number of experts supported this point in the article. Baseball America's Jim Callis noted for the article:

I ask guys the hardest things to scout. The hardest thing to scout is whether a guy can hit. Pitchers are probably riskier than hitters as a whole but that's more because of the injury factor. A lot of times it's easier to project a pitcher. You can see how much arm speed a guy has, how much life there is on the fastball and if he can throw strikes. ... It's not like you're going to take a high school kid who has had a bad curveball and give him a plus curvevall through instruction."

Dodger scouting director Logan White also noted in the article:

We usually can predict guys who can hit the fastball - that's bat speed. When I see kids having trouble making the transition to the big leagues, they can't hit offspeed pitches. They get out in front, they can't stay back, they try to hook balls. And that's a tough one to predict, how well they're going to adjust to 98 and then an 87 mile-per-hour changeup and then (other pitches).

With high school kids, you might only see him swing a bat four times (in a game). You might only see him swing twice if he walks a couple of times. A pitcher, even if throws an inning or two, you're going to get to see him do his thing 20-30 times. You get a better feeling for his mechanics... You don't get a feeling for hitting mechanics at a game as much.

So two experts on prospects says that it is much easier to figure out how well a pitcher will do - based on seeing more of what he can do plus knowing that what he can do will translate to the majors much easier. Thus a team that focuses on pitching in prospecting will find that a volume business will return more than a niche draft selection which mixes in position players in equal portions to the make up of a major league roster, basically 1:1 today (13 position players, 12 pitchers).

Living is Easy in the Minors

Even AAA hitting success doesn't provide much of a clue for MLB success. This is because there are few pitchers there who can throw hard or have a special curveball (or breaking ball). If they are capable of either or both, they are moved up quickly to the majors. Thus the better hitters can live off a feast of fastballs and mistakes over the plate.

However, in the majors are pitchers who have a wide assortment of pitches. As Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus noted in the article:

It's the inability to recognize good curves, sliders, and changeups. They don't see enough really good ones."

The author, Jon Weisman then quoted Jim Callis, who noted similarly:

If you watch the big leagues, you can be down 3-1 in the count, and the guy might be able to put a fastball on the outside corner for strike two. You're not going to get the cripple pitches as much (in the minors). You just see fewer mistakes in the big leagues. A lot of guys in AAA can throw 95, (but) maybe not 95 and put it on the corner or 95 and get much life on it."

These two was then quoted on two examples of hitters who flamed out despite good prospects. Callis gave Sean Burroughs as his example. "The guy was such a good hitter, always very young for his league." Goldstein gave Matt Bush as his example. "He was still a legitimate top-10 talent." Yet, unable to hit in the minors, even in rookie ball, Bush recently announced he was going to try to make it as a pitcher.

What we learn here is that while the mechanics of pitching success can be seen from almost the get-go with good scouting, the mechanics of hitting success is something that can still go awry even with success at the highest levels of the minors. Hitters rarely face major league quality pitching in any parts of the minors, and even when they do, these pitchers tend to get promoted fast, allowing hitters to get fatter stats at the expense of lesser pitchers. Which is a luxury these hitters don't get in the majors.

Drafting Hitters a Challenging Task

The article ends noting that while teams usually have a pretty good assessment of who are the best prep and college hitters in the country, however, they have at best only an educated guess about how these skills will translate at the major league level.

Goldstein is quoted:

Anytime you're picking, you're still betting on a guy and putting a certain amount of money on him. You hope you have some confidence before you give a million dollars... That first round pick is going to get a fifth of your whole (draft) budget.

But sometimes unexpected issues crop up and aren't ever solved. Logan White stated:

One of the things that can happen - kids' mechanics can change. You have a car that has brand new tires and axles and it runs great. Let's say the axle breaks on the car - its not going to run as good. ... Sometimes kids, especially when they are young, they get into bad habits, and sometimes their mechanics can change from what they were.

White has the right attitude - "no excuses" - but clearly there are a number of challenging issues involved with evaluating hitters that is much harder to judge than when evaluating pitchers.

Giants Thoughts

As I have been making the case for, over the past few years, Sabean's apparent strategy of focusing on pitching via the draft has a number of advantages that accrue over time as that strategy comes to fruition. I've seen a lot of Giants fans then jump to the knee-jerk reaction that the Giants must trade somebody NOW and get position prospects ASAP. These people show that they don't understand what a strategy is by their reaction - a strategy does not unfold immediately or even after a year or two, it takes many years.

They like to point to teams like the Brewers and Tigers and think that they did all that just like that. No, it was a painfully long process, extending over a decade of losing (horrible losing in some cases), with changes of strategy (and GMs) along the way, before finding their way. The key point is not that Sabean has had 10 years to implement this strategy, the key point to me is that we are reaching the boiling point soon with the strategy.

We have the makings of a great rotation, with Lincecum, Cain, Lowry, and Zito, plus Misch and Correia apparently ready to move up and Sanchez perhaps a spring training away from being rotation ready as well. The bullpen, while not great, has a number of good parts in it, with Wilson appearing to be the missing piece - the overpowering closer. We do not need to have great pitching throughout the bullpen, we only need a few key parts doing well - closer, a couple of setups - to have a good season. Hennessey, while not great, has been good at keeping inherited runners from scoring, so he could be the setup guy to go with Wilson. Then we just need another guy to do well, plus a LOOGY (Kline? Taschner?) and we should be set.

With the major league roster pretty full for the pitching staff, that means that any pitchers moving up will then create a nice dilemma for the Giants: promote the guy but first trade the pitcher he replaces, or trade the guy himself. Right now, there's not a lot, but a playoff team does not need to have a rotation of 4 starters who can pitch well enough to be a #2 starter (or better) as the Giants appear to have with the four, so if Misch and Correia continue to impress as starters, it could free the Giants to trade off one of the four. Obviously, no one's taking Zito, so that basically means trading Lowry, as both Lincecum and Cain delivers on strikeouts. But that's only if it looks like Misch, Correia, and Sanchez can take over two of the starting spots in 2008.

The same works with the bullpen. As new guys move up, the experienced relievers will have a record of success (hopefully) that would allow the Giants to trade them at opportune times to get an average to good position player, then bring up the new guy. I don't think we are at that point yet in the bullpen evolution, but in a year or two, that should be generating tradeable chips as well.

But what Giants fans need now is patience. As much as some think it is easy to change things around fast, it takes a much longer time than they think for the other teams who have rebuilt to do what they have done. They must exhibit a similar patience with the Giants, as changing management now would probably only screw up that strategy and put us back at square one with that new GM's strategy. I want to see where this leads us first, and it should only take 1-2 years to see if it is really working.

{Editted 8/26: I should have also ended with some thoughts on the article I linked to, Doh!

The author and the experts make a good case that it is much easier to identify pitching skills that are translatable to the majors than it is to identify hitting skills.

This is not to say that hitting skills are impossible to ID, but just that there are more hidden icebergs of difficulties that can happen with hitters, whereas pitchers pretty much are what they are. What you see when you draft them, that's what they will have if they reach the majors, perhaps they might learn another pitch, but at minimum, you see what they got already and can project how they do in the majors based on that.

So while it is risker to draft pitchers because of the injury factor, it is easier to identify pitchers. And if you focus more on pitching, you can make up in volume what injury takes away. That will provide a steady supply of pitching prospects coming up the system, whereas hitters can be more variable (hit and miss) because it is hard to project how they will do in the majors against really good pitching until they are up here. }

Giants Won't Skimp With So Many Draft Picks

The SJ Mercury reported in the sports recently (sorry, thought I had posted this already) that the Giants will be picking the best option on the board when they pick, regardless of whether it is a Boras client or top high school player who plans to leverage his college scholoarship.

General Manager Brian Sabean said the club wouldn't limit itself to cheap,signable players when the draft begins June 7. The Giants plan to be aggressive, even if the player they like happens to be a Scott Boras client or a top high school player who plans to leverage his college scholarship.

This was the strategy that the Giants espoused last year and which I had been expecting them to follow again this year. So it is good to know, rather than to wonder.

The paper reported that the picks the Giants have this year early - 3 in first round, picks 10, 22, 29, and 3 in supplemental first round, picks 32, 43, 51 - signed for a total of $6.975M in last year's draft. This far exceeded what the Giants have spent in any draft before according to the report.

I would note here that with the $2.1M spent to sign Villalona last year (was not counted by reporter since not part of the draft) and $2.0M to sign Lincecum, the Giants still spent around $6.3M last year, so it would not be a huge leap to spend that much on bonuses this year versus last. Plus they overpaid Lincecum $200,000 over what one might expect based on the bonuses that had been paid already at the time of his signing, though toeing the line with the amount paid in 2005 for the #10 pick, so the Giants are not shy in giving out more money to keep the talent happy. Within reason, of course.

Giants Have Not Been Cheap, Just Different

The article also noted that the last time the Giants had multiple first-round picks was in 2001, when they selected Brad Hennessey with the 21st pick and Noah Lowry with the 30th pick. The picks were criticized at the time because neither were hard throwers plus the picks were viewed as financially motivated, the article added.

But as I showed in my post here, the Giants did not underpay them relative to the bonuses paid to the players selected right after them. For Hennessey, he got 11% more than the 5 picks right after him. For Lowry, he got 16% more than the 5 picks right after him. The Giants might have selected players that observers thought should have been picked lower but they weren't paying them like that. Their bonuses were in line with what the prospects picked afterward were getting.

Some critics of the Giants think the Giants are being cheap because they often select players were the critics are surprised that the player was picked so high, or was just surprised by the name itself, like Nate Schierholtz, when he was selected. I also did another study (sorry, can't find easily) where I examined how players were ranked pre-draft, and then comparing them to where the Giants picked them in the draft. In general, most of the picks, covering the first 3-5 rounds, were selected before where they were ranked, which can't be helped sometimes because your next pick often comes around in another 30 picks, but there were a lot of picks where the Giants selected the prospect more than 30 picks ahead of where they were ranked pre-draft.

While the Giants clearly march to their own drummer in terms of drafting (as noted already, Nate Schierholtz pick drew a lot of "huhs" and head scratching, though perhaps not today), and go their own way in terms of talent drafted, their bonuses still hew to the going market rates given other picks and are rarely under the bonuses paid to propects selected after them.

So the Giants have not been cheap with their talent, for the most part, but rather has followed a different path with their drafting strategy than the prevailing opinions, much like how Bill Walsh used to do all his scouting separate from the Combine and would surprise people with his draft picks. I think the Giants' rebuilt pitching staff, with mostly farm system developed players, shows the efficacy of his strategy thus far.

LinceComing Down the Fast Lane

I was surfing, as I am wont to do, and ran across a very interesting article examing Daisuke Matsuzaka's mechanics on The Hardball Times. There were videos there clicking off frame by frame his pitching motion and I was struck by how similar Dice-K's pitching motion was to Lincecum's. So I e-mailed the author, Carlos Gomez, to, ahem, suggest perhaps he should take a similar look at Lincecum in an article.

Carlos, a very nice, down to earth guy, replied back to me and pointed me to a post he did at Baseball Think Factory where he evaluated the 2006 Draft, and here is his comments on Tim Lincecum:

#10 - San Francisco Giants - P Tim Lincecum

Really goes after it. Check out how his front leg, just before landing, seems to step over an imaginary object and then land? This helps the hips turn faster. He couples it with a late hand break and a very quick arm. At 10, he’s a steal. THIS is how you use your body to throw. Straight over the top release point in which he is forced to yank his head out of the way. Might scare some, doesn’t scare me.....certainly not when you’re this efficient with your body.

This is my #1 pick, hands down.

Grade: A+

The bolded italics are mine. "This is my #1 pick, hands down." Wow, one of the best evaluations I have read about Lincecum.

Anyway, he noted that he had to laugh because the next two pitchers he was planning on writing about were Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum. He will do a Matt Cain article for The Hardball Times and then a Tim Lincecum article for Baseball Think Factory (he writes there for a blog, Bullpen Mechanics). I will be sure to link to those two articles when they come out (probably within a week), but you all can check there if you can't wait.

Give Sabean More Time

Not to beat the drum too hard, but to all the Sabean haters out there: Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum, the future of the Giants. There have been a number of articles recently in the newspapers talking about how Sabean's contract is up this season and how Magowan noted that everyone is accountable, implying that Sabean's job could be in trouble with another bad season. Most of the articles were negatively oriented towards Sabean, from what I gathered from the articles. I think that it would be premature to let him go without allowing him to see this transition through, he should get at least 2 more years and perhaps 3-4.

I would say that he has been successful thus far with his mini-rebuilding, staying relatively competitive while remaking the entire pitching staff. Some scoffers note that he was forced to do that, use younger players, because of injuries and lack of performance, but the main point to me is that when he needed to reach into the minors, those pitchers were there. Now he needs a few years to see how his postion players work out, because building from within takes time, normally.

Rebuilding takes time, especially if you want to it successfully. If you look at Detroit (2001-2005), Atlanta (1985-1990), Twins (1993-2000), even the A's (1993-1998), these teams who are considered successful today took about 5-8 years of re-building and dealing with crappy teams - with some particularly bad teams along the way, Detroit 2002-3, Atlanta 1988-1990, Twins 1993, 1995, 1997-2000, A's 1993 and 1997 - before becoming successful again. I think the Giants should be competitive this year and, if they are, Sabean would have duplicated his 1997 successful rebuilding that followed one really bad year and two bad years.

The amazing thing is that Sabean has done most of it without getting the advantages of the above teams. Most of them greatly benefited from woeful records that earned them a Top 5 pick multiple times, which is as close to a sure thing as there is in baseball for prospects - Sabean had a 10th pick last season and will have a 10th pick this season, else he has had to deal with picks in the 20-something range for every year except for his first, when he made the mistake of picking Jason Grilli #4 in 1997 (missing out on Vernon Wells #5, but it's not all roses there, only 5 of the Top 10 that year turned out to be very good, and one shouldn't count since JD Drew didn't sign with the Phillies, and perhaps another, as Jon Garland never did much for his drafting team, the Cubs, plus Cuddyer would be considered not that good until last season, almost 10 years after he was picked). Even then, in 2005 and 2006, the Giants were only 5-6 games away from the .500 mark and contention in the West, and thus it should not take much to switch the fortunes of the past two years around and I think the Giants can do that this season.

Here are various early 1st round picks by the above teams during their re-building periods:

• Tigers: Justin Verlander, Cameron Maybin, Andrew Miller
• Braves: Chipper Jones, Steve Avery, Kent Mercker
• Twins: Joe Mauer, Michael Cuddyer, Mark Redman, Todd Walker
• A's: Barry Zito, Mark Mulder, Eric Chavez, Ariel Prieto, Ben Grieve

Atlanta benefited from being able to sign international players like Andruw Jones, while the Giants in the late 90's or so had that unfortunate problem with their director being involved in some sordid scandal which I assumed critically injured most of their efforts in the Carribean, or seemingly so, until the Villalona signing, which they did with their new director. Not that they didn't have any signings in that region, but certainly no big money prospect like Villalona, as there was no money for that for most of those years.

A First Round Draft Pick Is Not The Same For a Winning Team

Speaking of Villalona, on the BTF comments after a separate article that was on the signing of Villalona, someone noted that this was odd for someone (Sabean) who essentially traded away a first round draft pick to sign Michael Tucker. Again, people seem to think a first round draft pick is the same as any other first round draft pick. As I have researched and wrote on, this is wildly untrue.

That might have been closer to being true when there were only 16 teams in the majors, but with nearly double the teams today, it is clearly not. As I had showed previously, there is a chasm in the likelihood of finding a good player between the first 10 picks versus the last 10 picks of the first round. When you are a winning team, particularly a division winner, or as they used to advertise Sabean, only had 5-10 days (now much more I assume) where his team was eliminated from playoff contention, you are going to draft in the 21-30 range, and mainly in the 26-30 range for the top teams, and the odds are bad there, about 9% chance of drafting a good player.

I will take another stab at presenting this data in a way that's understandable to the masses, but I feel like Don Quixote sometimes regarding this data. Of course, it didn't help that one of the well-known baseball gathering holes took my report and shreded it without 1) inviting me over to explain my research or my work, or 2) even presenting anything that directly refute my findings. They just mainly posted snarky comments and basked in the glow of their amassed intelligence.

I think someone pointed out the Baseball Prospectus study, at some point, but BP also missed the point too, which is that while there might be a high average player value for those picks, when the odds are greatly against finding a good player (as I noted above, roughly 11 to 1 against you or 9% odds of drafting a good player in the late 1st round), it will not cost you much in expected value to pass on a late first round draft pick once, twice, maybe even three times, which I think is the point where it starts to hurt you.

This risk of missing out on the next hot young prospect is pretty low when picking from that range, in general, about 1 in 11 as I noted. And if, as I had read somewhere, the Giants reportedly felt that the depth of prospective draftees was not that deep that season, it would make it all the more sense to pass on the pick and sign a major leaguer for the same price. It is not like each year has the same depth of talent, so maybe, in their opinion, that was a low tide year, not worth getting.

Giants Drafting Strategy: Bonuses On Par

{First a note: I'm on vacation for the last two weeks of the year, so postings will be sporadic, depending on what I'm doing. I had planned to do more this week but unfortunately my wife caught the flu, right when we got sitters for the kids so that we could have some quiet time together for our anniversary. Best laid plans yadda yadda... So I haven't been, and I'll probably not be, checking my e-mail for comments posted and won't be replying until after the New Year. I had a number of posts in various stages of completion and will try to get them out before the year ends. But just in case: Happy Holidays to everyone and a Happy New Year!}

I have seen some fans complain that the Giants tend to draft "down" in order to pay less in bonuses to the draftees, and thus save money. In other words, they draft a lesser player - say, 5th round talent in the 3rd round - in order to save money in bonuses for that player by pre-arranging the bonus amount, a lesser amount, with the player ahead of time.

From the times I had seen the numbers, I never got that impression but it's not like I systematically looked at each bonus and determined "yea" or "nay". So I decided to check things out, like I am wont to do.

Methodology

So I checked the data that I had collected before on bonuses for the Giants and calculated the ratio of the bonus paid the player against the average bonus paid the next five paid draftees, then subtracted 100% to get the difference between the Giants bonus and the average bonus for the next five draftees. If the Giants were really paying that much less, the ratio should be under 100%. I chose the next five average because then people cannot accuse me of picking and chosing the data to fit one hypothesis or another, if I say the data say above or under paid. If the theory of under-drafting held, then the bonus should be clearly below the bonuses paid for the average of the bonuses for the five draftees after the Giants pick.

Now, there were some exceptions because sometimes there would be a high school draftee that another team would overpay for because they wanted him to sign. First off, out of the five draftees ahead of the Giants pick and the five draftees after the Giants pick, that is, of those 10 picks, the highest bonus was automatically excluded from the data. That tended to get rid of these high school draftee exceptions.

Next, if any of the next five draftees got paid a bonus that was higher than the bonus of half of the five draftees ahead of the Giants pick plus the Giants pick (i.e. 3 of these 6 picks), that bonus was deemed to be an exception bonus and was not included in the average. This covered any other draftees that also got a high bonus, obviously it is not within the average range if a back 5 draftee got a bonus that is higher than the bonuses for a majority of the front 5 plus the Giants pick.

Similarly, if any of the next five draftees got a bonus that was half that of the Giants bonus, that would be taken out of the average as well. That would bring down the average greatly and make it seem like the Giants are more generous with their bonus than they really were. And if the amount was half that of the others, then clearly that team was probably drafting higher to save money as well.

I only covered the first five rounds as that's when the bonuses get pretty small, relatively, and underpaying won't really save much. As I found out, I probably could have cut it off at the 3rd round, but since I did the work, I thought I would present it anyhow. Besides, for some of the drafts, I only had data up to the 3rd round anyhow.

Giants Bonuses for First Five Rounds from 2001 to 2006

2001: Data for first three rounds showed that the Giants did not underpay anyone except for one. 3 were paid over 10% more than the average back five draftees and the 1 was underpaid about 5%. While I will count this as an underpaid, I believe that this was an exception because it was Todd Linden who was underpaid.

What happened for him, for those who don't recall the details, his first agent dickered around with the Giants and for some reason Linden didn't realize what was happening. Finally Linden fired the agent but I can't remember if he got another agent or started negotiating himself. Either way, Linden really wanted to sign and by then the Giants had more of the leverage (or perhaps had spent their money elsewhere already) and offered him less than what picks around him was getting. He accepted because he wanted to start his professional career. He did not get the lowest bonus of the 11 picks, though, there were 3 lower bonuses paid, once I took out the exceptions and took in more picks.

So for 2001, only 1 out of 4 were underpaid.

2002: Only had data for three picks and all 3 were paid above the average, about 5% above the back five picks. Thus far, the Giants appear to overpay more for 1st round picks, but that could just be something every team does.

2003: OK, this is the year that apparently seared into people's minds that the Giants are cheap. Out of seven picks that I had data for in the first five rounds, four were underpaid, though again, the first round picks got paid within range, about 7% above the back five picks. After that, four of the next five picks got underpaid, with only Schierholtz getting 5% above the average. I point him out because I had noticed that someone had pointed out Schierholtz as a player we drafted ahead in order to save money, probably because he was an "out of the blue" pick that no one expected, I don't think he was on anyone's draft list of top amateur prospects.

Still, if look at the underpayments, the only two who were really underpaid were the round 3 and round 4 picks, who got 44% and 55% less than the average for the next five picks. The other two underpaids were just barely under, at -2.7% and -1.5%. So there were really only two who appeared to be paid as if from a latter round. The other two were really within range but I will count them as underpaids.

2004: Had data for four picks and the first three were paid about 10% above the average for the next five, while the fourth was paid at about the same rate, up by only 0.8%. So all four were paid over the average for the next five.

2005: Only had data for two rounds as the Giants had lost most of their early round picks by signing free agents. Both were paid above average, about 7% more.

2006: I had data for five draft picks. All were paid above the average for the next five draft picks, most were in the 7-8% range, with one low and the other much above.

Findings

Out of 24 draft picks , the Giants underpaid 5 of them, or 21% of them. However, as I noted, Linden was a unique situation, plus 2 of the others were barely paid under the average. Only 2 was truly paid significantly lower than the other draftees around that pick.

The average bonus paid by the Giants was 2.4% higher than the five picks after average. If you summed up all the bonuses and divided by the sum of the averages, the Giants paid 9.1% higher than the average for the five picks after their pick.

This reflects the bias in the Giants payment for first round picks (not that other teams don't have the same bias; that would be another study) and/or their first picks. There were four draftees who got more than 10% more. Lincecum (R1; first pick) got 27% more bonus than the five picks afterward averaged. Lowry (R1; second pick) got 16% more. EME (R2; first pick) got 12% more. And Hennessey (R1; first pick) got 11% more. There were also a few more who got in the 9% range: Bowker (R3; second pick), Cain (R1; first pick), Foppert (R2; fourth pick). And four more who got in the 8% range: Timpner (R4; third pick, Griffin (R5; second pick), Burriss (R1S; second pick), and Synder (R4; fourth pick).

Giants Thoughts

So, overall, I would not say that the Giants have ever really pre-arranged lower bonuses in order to save money, except in two specific situations in the 2003 draft. In addition, if you will recall, that is the infamous year that the Giants, in the offseason after the 2003 season, purposefully signed Michael Tucker just before the deadline in order to punt their draft pick to the Royals and instead use that money to have a major league RF starting for them, instead of having no viable alternative if a prospect was used.

If there were any systematic underpayment, it was in the 2003 draft, when four of the instances where the Giants paid under the average bonus of the five following draftees. The only other instance where the Giants paid under was the unusual circumstances where the Giants had an eager and desperate Linden wanting to become professional and he had waited until the Giants probably didn't have much money left to sign him anyhow.

There were also three that appeared to be borderline, possible underpayment. In those instances, the Giants paid above the average only 0.8%, 2.3%, and 3.5%. Even if you add these to the four, that would only be 7 out of 24 picks, or 29% who were underpaid.

Given all this, I would say that the Giants, as was my impression, did not regularly "over draft" prospects with pre-arranged, much reduced bonuses in order to save money. In particular, regarding their first round and early picks, the Giants generally paid much over average, relative to the five picks signed afterward and relative to their picks overall. In particular, the Giants seemed to know when to be relatively generous, as they paid Lincecum, Lowry, EME, Hennessey, Bowker, Cain, and Foppert more over the average than their other picks.

Add to that, if the Giants were really as cheap as some fans think, they would have never paid Ishikawa nearly $1M, the highest bonus ever given for such a late pick (21st round), nor would they have pursued Draft and Follow draftees like Marcus Sanders, and they certainly would not have paid over $2M to sign Angel Villalona recently. These fans want to paint the Giants management as cheap and just want to believe what they want to believe, but bonuses and "over drafting" was not an area where the Giants were being cheap in, just as I showed that giving up the first round draft pick, when it is in the latter part of the draft, is not necessarily always a bad thing to do either, it is not a matter of being cheap, but of chosing your battles and risks.