Giants Draft Analysis: 2025 Update of the End of the Sabean Era Drafts (fourth in a series)

In early 2020, I was finishing up my series of draft analysis articles, using my updated draft odds results in analyzing Sabean's performance up to the 2019 season.  Now that the 2025 Season is over, I thought I would review which players can be updated to be good or great players, or dropped off the possibility list.

You can read what I wrote in the link above, but the players I reviewed were:

• Joey Bart
• Heliot Ramos
• Tyler Beede
• Seth Corry
• Connor Menez
• Logan Webb
• Bryan Reynolds
• Zack Wheeler (he was mentioned in the second article)

As you can see, most have dropped off, but Ramos, Webb, Reynolds, and Wheeler have looked like good players who either reached or potentially should reach, if he continues to play as well.  

Giants Long Wait for All-Star Outfielder Was a Feature, Not a Bug

This post was created in response to discussion about the Giants 40 years and counting wait for an All Star Outfielder, which might end soon anyway the way Heliot Ramos has been on fire. It was pulled from some comments I shared on The Athletic, and, of course, I then added more, as usual. 

ogc thoughts 

Many haters of Sabean and/or Zaidi love to bring up the fact that the Giants haven't produced an All Star caliber outfielder since Chili Davis.  It's like producing Will Clark, Matt Williams, Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, Madison Bumgarner, and Buster Posey with first round picks wasn't good enough for them.  We want outfielders!!!

The thing is, waiting for an OF is understandable when you consider that during the Rosen era, he used his best first round picks to get Will Clark and Matt Williams, then during Sabean’s era, which encompassed most of the rest of those 40 years, he spend almost every first round pick he had on pitchers, selecting Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, and Wheeler, and, of course, there was his front office’s rare position pick, arguably his best, Buster Posey.

As well, looking at Zaidi's drafts should not be done with any finality yet because even his first draft, the 2019 draft, has had only three full pro seasons to play (equal to his 2020 draft), because they lost one in the pandemic, and it takes 4 to 6 seasons to get an accurate assessment of how well or poorly that draft went. It takes time for prospects to develop, and as we learned painfully over the years, even good prospects fizzle out, even after a good MLB season (Jerome!), and don't amount to much.

Sabean not only spent most of his first round picks on pitching, but even though rosters then were comprised of more hitters than pitchers (13/12), Sabean’s front office always drafted and signed more pitchers than hitters. They were all in on pitching! Zaidi has been similar overall, but differently, going all in on pitching for his 2021 and 2022 drafts.

Thus, if you thought nothing of Clark, Williams, Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey, and especially 3 in 5, then keep on pointing out this lack of producing outfielders as that was the sacrifice made to get these players. No outfielders is a feature, not a bug.  And, ironically, this "streak" may end soon if Ramos makes the All Star game this season, he's on the ballot, and currently leads all outfielders in bWAR, so it seems likely that he (and likely Webb) will end up the Giants All Star representatives, assuming he can continue hitting well enough.

Analysis of Sabean First Round Picks

I thought it would be interesting to see how skewed Sabean was for pitching, by looking at who he picked in the first round, and with which picks. To be clear, when I am talking first round picks, I am talking the proper first round picks, not any supplemental players like McKinley or Crick. So just the first 30 picks of the first round.

That brings me to 24 picks within the first 30 picks for Sabean. Here’s that breakdown:

• 2 catchers
• 3 infielders
• 4 outfielders
• 15 pitchers (63%) 

As regular readers know, I once analyzed the first 50 years of the draft (and wrote a blog post) and calculated the odds of finding a good (18+ bWAR) player, and if you add the odds up by these positions, that is the number of good players one can expect on average from Sabean’s various first round picks (through simple addition of the odds; for example, if the odds of finding a certain player is 5% or 0.05, and you have four of those picks, you can expect to find that player 0.20 of the time or 0.2 players).

On average, based on Sabean's first round picks, he would have found:

•  0.46 catchers
•  0.21 infielders
•  0.21 outfielders
•  1.72 pitchers 

Why do it this way? It shows not only what position he picked but also the quality of the pick used for them.

Based on these averages, Sabean needed to have almost 5 times as many similar sets of first round draft picks (another 120 years of drafts, basically) in order to find one good outfielder or infielder with a first round draft pick, because he did not spend a ton of draft bullets on outfielders (19, 24, 29, 29) or infielders (19, 25, 29).

This is unlike catchers (2, 5) or LHP (10,30) or RHP (4, 6, 10, 14, 18, and eight picks, 20-25), where Sabean spent all his best draft picks. Sabean spent way more picks on pitching (almost 4 times as many as on OF, 5 times as many on IF) as well as quality of picks (8 times as much). Even adding up all the position players (0.88) is still roughly half that of pitchers (1.72).

This illustrates what I was talking about, he rarely spent any of his best draft picks on outfielders, because he was using more of them on pitchers, as well as more of the best picks (not one better than 19, whereas six picks from 4-18 we’re used on pitching), and thus the odds were tremendously against him in finding an outfielder while focusing so much on pitching. Similarly for IF in the first round.

Why don’t I look at the other rounds? Picks at the end of the first round became good players about 5% of the time, then it dropped to 2% by the middle of the third round, and 1% by the end of the fourth round. When compared to 1.72 pitchers, they don’t make a lot of difference, 20 drafts of the 5th round adds 0.20 (20 times 1%). Plus, as noted, Sabean spent more picks on pitching than hitters in the draft anyway, so whatever you add in the later rounds for the position players, it would be matched likely by a pitcher selected in the later rounds. The disparity of the first round picks is so great that the position players cannot catch up in odds after the first round.

Sabean Was a Good Drafter

Obviously Sabean did much better than average, which I covered in a series of posts after publishing the draft study linked above. He found a great (certainly HOF caliber) catcher in Posey, and four good to great pitchers in Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner (he likely would have been HOF caliber if not for his bike accident), and Wheeler. That’s 5 good and better players when the odds expected 2.6 good players in total, or almost double as much. Add in Belt, Crawford, and Reynolds (hmmm, Reynolds has in fact done veery well, I should revisit that analysis and update it) from the other rounds, and he’s doing exceptionally well, and Webb (also doing very well), Rogers, and Ramos (out of the possibles for reaching 18 bWAR) are still on the clock for his drafts.

To show how good that is, Sabean would have to have another 20 or so first round picks that fizzle in order for him to fall back down to average in terms of first round pick success.  That almost doubles his number of first round picks, and that would only bring him to average.  He was clearly very good at drafting in the first round.  

The "Actual" First Round Further Accentuates Sabean's Pitching Focus

Thinking further about this, I realized that the first round is an artifice based on how many teams are in the MLB.  When there were only 16 teams, the first round was only 16 picks, for example.  So I then connected that to the fact that there is a tier of picks, 15-23, which has odds of 10.8%, then the next tier is 24-76, which has odds of 5.2%.  So let's take a look at the distribution of Sabean picks for the first 23 picks (the best picks) of the first round:

• 2 catchers (13%)
• 1 outfielder
• 1 infielder
• 11 pitchers (73%)

Now it is nearly three quarters of his best picks were used on pitchers, nearly 4 times as much as the other three categories combined.  

And by total bonuses:

• Catchers: $13.2M (34%)
• Outfielders: $3.1M (incidentally, the pick of Heliot Ramos)
• Infielders:  $1.1M 
• Pitchers:  $21.3M (55%)

Here, now we see the prominence placed on catchers and pitchers, and both catchers (Posey and Bart) were considered good to great defensive catchers, which is key for a team focused on pitching.

And while I'm at it, if we do it by bWAR:

• Catchers: 46.2 bWAR (24%)
• Outfielders: 1.9 bWAR
• Infielders:  7.1 bWAR
• Pitchers:  135.3 bWAR (71%)

Again, pitchers far outweighted the position players, and catchers (really, just Posey) had a significant portion as well.  And together comprised 95% of the bWAR produced.

Zaidi Drafts

Complain about no outfielders if you want (and many Sabean and Zaidi haters want), but that was the plan for the most part, until recently, when Zaidi drafted Hunter Bishop and, recently, Bryce Eldridge, as OF, with first round picks. To compare, Zaidi has had five drafts so far, and selected outfielders with two of the five. In 24 drafts, Sabean selected three outfielders out of his 24 selections, a wide disparity.

Still, Zaidi has been focused on pitching. He moved heaven and earth to save up enough bonus money in the 2020 draft in order to draft Kyle Harrison in the 3rd round. This was made that much harder because this draft was only 5 rounds, instead of the usual 10 rounds, and thus less rounds to carve out bonus from. Despite this, he still found a Gold Glove caliber starting catcher in Bailey and possibly the 3B of the future in Schmitt.

Then in the 2021 and 2022 drafts, he used 17 of the 20 picks, that he had out of the first 10 rounds picks that he had in each draft, on pitching, and still found interesting prospects in Vaun Brown and Wade Meckler.

As I noted above, it does not make sense to try to judge Zaidi's drafts negatively yet.  Prospects regularly take 4 to 6 years to become good players.  And this makes sense as future major leaguers often take at least a season for each level, and there are five levels:  A, Advanced A, AA, AAA, and MLB.  Sometimes a prospect needs to repeat a level.  And his 2019 and 2020 drafts have only had three full pro seasons so far.

Still, despite this, he has already found a Gold Glove caliber catcher in Bailey who should be the starter for the rest of the decade, at least, and an ace in training pitcher in Harrison, who has done ace type stuff at each level, including the MLB last season, with 9.1 K/9, 2.9 BB/9, and 3.14 K/BB, which only the best pitchers accomplish.  As well, Whisenhunt and Eldridge have both made Top 100 prospect lists, and Crawford has zoomed up to AAA and might pitch in the majors this season, health permitting.  Meckler and Schmitt have also made the majors, and Schmitt is hitting about league average, while playing 3B at an elite level last season.

Lack of Outfielders is a Feature, Not a Bug

Thus, as we can see above, the Giants have not spent a ton of picks, and really, not many (or really, any) good picks, on outfielders over the years, especially after Sabean took over as GM.  They have mostly devoted their top picks on pitchers and catchers, and have done rather well there, Sabean found a lot of pitchers who contributed (five pitchers in total with 10+ bWAR, four good pitchers with 19+ bWAR) plus Posey (and potentially Ramos as well, and now I realize I should add Reynolds into this conversation), and Zaidi has already found a Gold Glove caliber catcher in Bailey, as well as a good starting pitcher in Harrison, health permitting.  

And finding Bailey is amazing because Posey is HOF caliber, so I expected to not be so lucky with our next starting catcher, figuring the new guy won't even be close to what Posey was originally envisioned, a great defensive catcher who can hit, and maybe develop some power eventually (they projected he would eventually get into the 20 homer range eventually, but he got there right away).  Even that is a lofty performance to match, but Bailey has been doing it so far.

So the lack of outfielder development is a feature of Sabean's and Zaidi's draft strategies (didn't bother to look at Rosen's, it was so short and so long ago, it is what it is).  Both have focused a large amount of their picks on pitching and catching.  Zaidi has actually spent two first round picks on outfielders, out of five drafts, but Bishop has been constantly injured and only this season reached AAA (drafted in 2019) and Eldridge not only was drafted last year, but he has also been moved to 1B, and currently not a two-way OF/pitcher, as originally drafted, so he won't be a starting OF unless he changes position again.  

In any case, the outfield of the future looks filled with Matos, Lee, and Ramos, so Zaidi does not look like he needs to develop any outfielders in the near future, at least.  And Ramos has been playing so well, for so long, that he could possibly break that streak by making the All Star game this season.

Giants Draft Analysis: The Sabean Era Drafts Overall (fourth and last in a series)

In this series, I broke up the Sabean era into three distinct periods - basically pre-Dynasty, Dynasty Building, and post-Dynasty - and analyzed each one based on the probabilities for finding Good and Great players, that I came up with in my recent study of the first 50 years of the draft.  It examined the odds of ending up with nothing in any particular draft and the cumulative probabilities of how many good and great players a baseball operations leader would have in a random draft (that is, if the leader has an average clue, as good as the average GM, as to which player is good, and thus is randomly choosing these prospects in the draft, based on this average expertise, randomly based on past history).

In this final blog post in this series, I look at the entirety of the Sabean era, see what the odds are of where the results are now, and where he could be if some of the current top prospects end up being good players.  As I've noted, it could take a decade or more for players to retire before we know the final results of any GM's draft results, if there are any players still playing and look like they could reach Good status.

And while this is the last of this series, I'm probably going to be updating this particular post after every season or two, see where he is, based on progress or decline of the remaining remnants of his drafts.  Obviously, there will be declines where we can say that a player won't be making it most probably, and there will be breakout seasons where he puts himself back into play.

Giants Draft Analysis: The End of the Sabean Era Drafts (third in a series)

This analysis of the Giants drafts covers Sabean's final years as leader of the Giants front office, 2010-2018, using the data I collected on the picks up to 200th overall, from Gary Brown to Joey Bart.  His string of successes ended, but amidst all the complaints I see continually of the decay of the farm system, and how Zaidi has made it better, it is Ramos, Bart and Corry who are bringing up the farm ranking, and they should continue to rise, and perhaps make the ending all the more sweeter and brighter.

Giants Draft Analysis: Building A Dynasty (second in a series)

This analysis of the Giants drafts covers Sabean's dynastic years as GM, 2002 to 2009, using the data I collected on the picks up to 200th overall, from Cain to Belt.  Things turned around in a huge way, though it was still not looking good until his great trifecta of Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey.

Giants Draft Analysis: Early Dry Sabean Years

I've decided to work on the Giants drafts first, covering Sabean's early years as GM, 1997 to 2001, and the picks up to 200.

A feat few remember is that Sabean turned around turned around the 1996 94 loss team to a 90 win team in 1997, which won the NL West, but then they unfortunately lost to the wild card Marlins in the LDS.  So while he got a good pick in his first draft in 1997, once you start winning, you get a lot of picks with poor odds of finding a good player, which continued until the Giants started losing in 2005.  My contention over the years, because of my first draft study, was that it was very hard for a team to rebuild via the draft, because the odds were against it.

Sidenote:  I've decided to create a separate blog where I'll be posting my R baseball analyses (when I'm able, still learning, part of my New Year's Resolution to get proficient in using R), probably starting with my draft database collected from baseball-reference.com, a great resource for anyone who wants to analyze baseball.

Drafting is Hard, Then It Becomes Near Impossible

I'm stealing Shankbone's favorite phrase (Drafting is Hard) for the title of this post.

Below is the response I gave to someone talking about the Giants poor draft record, plus changes...

The Difficulties Finding Good Players in the First Round of the Draft

I keep on seeing the comments about the Sabean era Giants being unable to evaluate talent.

So the below post is a comment I made and then added more.  I started it before Zaidi was hired, then just finished it up, since the point is moot now that Farhan and his new hires are in charge of the draft.

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.

Belying the Lie: Giants Are Not Cheap in the Draft

The funny thing about us humans is that we all look at the facts that affirm your impression of the situation, just to reinforce that "we are right".  I'm as guilty of it as anyone, that's why I try harder to get beyond that and test my beliefs.  That is what led me to research the draft, because I too, like every other Giants fan, thought "what's wrong with the Giants drafting, why are they so lousy?"  Turned out that winning and being one of the best teams in the majors greatly reduces your success rate developing players.

That brings me to today's grab bag of fun facts.  Baseball America graciously make a number of their content available for free and one is their Ask BA column, to which I link here.   In this one, they list (essentially) the final total for draft expenditures by club for 2008 and 2007.  It is the total spending by each team for bonuses.  

Now, most comments I've seen lately, after "the Neukom Way" was announced in his press conference, is that "finally" the Giants are focusing on player development, a feeling they have held onto, hard, since the Giants signed Michael Tucker to avoid a draft pick and use the money more productively in the short-term. 

Giants Been Big Spenders

So it might surprise these hardy souls that the Giants have been among the biggest spenders on bonuses the past two drafts.  In the 2008 draft, the Giants spent a little over $9M on bonuses, which would have been a record spend in the 2007 draft where $8M was the high bar.  They were beat out by three of the teams who drafted ahead of them, Royals, Rays, and Pirates, and by the Red Sox, who shelled out Top 5-10 type money to draft picks later in the draft.  The Giants were 5th overall in spending on bonuses, and could have been higher as they were pursuing hard a couple of prospects who ended up not signing, who were highly rated but fell for whatever reasons.

In the 2007 draft, with all their extra picks, they ended up 6th in spending with $7.4M spent.   The teams ahead were the Rays, Orioles, Yankees, Nationals, and Tigers (not in that order, though all were roughly right around $8M spent, about $100K apart). 

Over the two years, the Giants were third in spending on the draft, with $16.5M spent on bonuses for draft picks.   The Rays were first with $17.9M and the Royals were second with $17.8M.  The Red Sox took 4th with $15.4M spent.  This all before the end of the Bonds era, all before the Giants Way.

Myth of Giants Cheapness  

The Giants have never been cheap, either, the way some have described them.  Some observers have said that the Giants "draft down", i.e. select prospects who they can sign for a cheaper amount, just because they have been in the habit of selecting players that other teams and the draft experts think should be drafted lower.  

The biggest example of this I can think of was the selection of Nate Schierholtz.   Experts were surprised he was drafted so high.  Yet, he's the only one to make the majors out of the picks in the 2nd round after him and between him and the next Giants pick of Brian Buscher, the only ones to make more of an impact in the majors are Chris Ray and Ryan Garko, the other 27 have either not made the majors or not done much in the majors, either in AB or OPS.   So the Giants appear to have made the right choice here.

In addition, I had researched this previously and the only year the Giants truly were cheap was in 2003 when they had two who were very underpaid relative to the draftees around him, and two who were slightly underpaid.  Still, Schierholtz was paid over the amount paid to those following him, which is as expected.    

And there were no first round pick who received a bonus that was lower than the average of what the guys behind him got.   In fact, for both Lincecum and Bumgarner, they received bonuses that were above slot, and obviously Posey got way above slot.   The Giants have been anything but cheap with their first round draft picks, particularly in the past few years.