THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I emailed the link to a hocken-fan friend and he mentioned he didn’t think it was fair to DET since DET often picked near the end of the 1st round.  The author doesn’t seem to adjust for the spot that the teams picked.  If DET always picked last (on average), then even if they were equally talented at picking players, we’d expect them to perform the worst due to their position.  It also seemed like DET missed a lot of 1st rounders...I’m guessing these were traded away.  The author seems to “punish” DET for trading them away without adjusting for the talent they received on the other end of the trade.  Maybe DET lost overall in those trades, but maybe the value they got for the (late) 1st rounders was well worth it.

Just a few comments about Detroit:
1. Throughout the period in question Detroit had very strong teams, so it was hard for rookies to get playing time, for example, Kyle Quincy, whom Detroit lost on waivers at the beginning of this season, would have already had 150 - 200 games played in almost any other organization.
2. Prospects are usually brought up at least a year after they would be in most organizations.
3. Until the lockout, Detroit filled lineup spots with FA’s.
4. Detroit drafted some of the best prospects (Datsyuk, Zetteberg and Erickson) so low because they were almost certain that nobody else knew about them, so why waste higher picks?
5. looking at the results, Detroit seems to be great at getting unheralded Europeans, and not so good with Canadians/Americans (presumably because they are well scouted by all the organizations).