from Amazon
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Career WAR based on draft pick
Sky tells us to simply do: 20/SQRT(pickSlot)
That is, the 100th player selected is expected to get TWO career wins above replacement. In his career! The first player selected is expected to get 20 wins in his career.
The first 30 picks will average 6.4 career WAR. If we presume that about half of that comes in a player’s first 6 years, then we can see that the typical first round draft pick is worth about 3 wins pre-free agency.
If the average first round pick signs for $2MM, and gets another $1MM in his first six years in MLB total (on average, remembering that a bunch of them won’t even be called up, much less hit arbitration), teams are paying $3MM for 3 wins, a far cry from the 14MM or so they should be paying. That’s 20 cents on the dollar.