Who wields MLB Draft "Power?"

by Chieeef on Aug 27, 2025 2:34 PM EDT

It has become pretty obvious over the last half decade that no other teams are on the same level as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox in terms of their ability to wield financial muscle to draft and sign intriguing and useful prospects year after year, in the early, late, and supplemental rounds.

So if we call NYY/BOS "Tier A" then which teams are Tier B? The Tigers seem to have strong drafts. Are they a Tier B+? Or are Arizona and Oakland, who had deep drafts this year, just as likely to have a strong draft as Detroit or any other team?

What about teams like Kansas City and Pittsburgh, who have underutilized their drafts for years, but now seem to be reprioritizing, and going in the right direction. Will they be able to redirect enough funds over the long haul to compete?

How would you rank the MLB teams into "Draft Power Tiers?" (for lack of a better term.)

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Arizona, LA Angels and Detroit

All seem to be fairly aggressive in going after signability-issue picks.

Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com

by RoyalsRetro on Aug 27, 2025 2:39 PM EDT reply reply 0 recs

Aside from the Yanks and Sox

I don’t think any other team spends a ton of money in the draft with any consistency. It was only this past year with Iona and the draft that Oakland uncharacteristically decided to shell out some money in the prospect pool.

I think the trend of seeing players with big asking prices like Porcello, Matt Harvey, etc drop to the bottom and out of the first round will continue with the same frequency as it has for the past 2 years.

But I will say that there seems to be a pretty solid correlation between the teams with the highest major league payroll and the teams with the highest signing bonus payout.

by sagecoll on Aug 27, 2025 2:42 PM EDT reply reply 0 recs

Tigers

under Dombrowski have been consistently aggressive spenders.

by alskor on Aug 27, 2025 6:00 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

The General Perception

Baseball Scouting is almost as old the game itself. The methods of finding a good baseball player have seemingly stayed pretty consistent over the years until the new millennium. For about a century, the credentials for being a scout would be to have “An eye” for a good baseball player. That hasn’t changed much. Many of us still use our gut to find a good player. It may be a good feeling about watching someone in person, or that a performance looked particularly impressive on a scouting report or a stat sheet, but the whole method of “going with your gut” is certainly not dead.

Moneyball disturbed this tradition in baseball of using your gut by negatively labeling those who don’t use numbers as their means of scouting. It made people pay a lot more attention to the numbers on the right side of the stat sheet such as OBP/Slugging. It made people consider things such as park factors and league adjustments.

Yet despite this shift towards using stats as the sole means of scouting, it certainly has not proved to be the principal way in evaluating talent. The term “tools” is still thrown around which is almost completely independent of numbers, and there is also plenty of weight still put on scouting reports in the baseball community—especially towards young players in low levels.

It seems as if, in general, there’s a very eclectic view of scouting. Sure people will look at the OBP or Slug or WHIP or K/9 but they will also check out the scouting report. I don’t think many people would be completely in favor of someone with an 86mph fastball regardless of performance in AA.

So I turn this to you, my fellow prospectors and baseball fans. What would you consider to be your means of evaluating talent/skill in baseball?

by sagecoll on Aug 27, 2025 2:57 PM EDT reply reply 0 recs

Whoops

whoops my bad

by sagecoll on Aug 27, 2025 2:58 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

sagecoll

That seems to be a subject for another FanPost altogether. I think you might want to delete your comments and start an entirely new FanPost with the same body of text.

by Chieeef on Aug 27, 2025 3:01 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

I don't buy the premise

The teams who spend the most on draft/international players changes annually. It’s not consistently the Saux and the Yanks. Hell, look at what the As did in the international market this year.

It’s not a “big market/small market” thing; it’s just a matter of how much management is willing to devote to the draft.

by mraver on Aug 27, 2025 5:13 PM EDT reply reply 0 recs

Sorry, you're flat wrong

It is consistently the Sox and the Yanks.

Go look it up. Spending (other than on first-round picks, which are highly dependent on where you’re picking and how many 1st rounders you have) from year to year is extremely consistent. Some teams are cheap, some are extravagant, and some are average.

It’s not a perfect correlation to market size, but by and large the teams break down into two groups— the teams that spend on amateur players, which is a combination of big markets and smart teams, and the rest of the teams, who are owned and/or managed (sadly, it usually only takes one or the other) by dolts. The A’s sudden bump in spending on amateur players this season was practically an unheard-of development.

The slot system is falling apart as we speak. Within about 5 years, the draft will have deteriorated to the point that players are effectively free agents, which will make it basically impossible for small-market teams to field a competitive roster. Given the slowness with which MLB operates and its easy willingness to abandon the pretense that teams like Pittsburgh are anything but punching bags for the handful of “real” franchises, I doubt that competitive balance will be fixed before 2020 at the earliest. It may never be fixed at all. It would be a shame if that happened, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

As an A’s fan, I really hope that their current rebuilding plan is a success and produces some good teams in the next several years, because I think that by 2015 it will have become impossible for the franchise to compete on any level. And that’s even with the new ballpark.

Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.

by PaulThomas on Aug 27, 2025 8:38 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

This certainly wasnt the case

under Dan Duquette and John Harrington/the Yawkey Trust. BUT it is the case with the Henry ownership group. Its a fairly new turn of events for the Sox, at least.

by alskor on Aug 27, 2025 11:19 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

Who cares

Who cares if it wasn’t going on in the 1980’s and 1990’s, because obviously the organization recovered, it is going on now, and it isn’t going to end in the foreseeable future. Who cares what happened in previous decades when it has zero bearing on the now and on the future.

by Chieeef on Aug 28, 2025 2:40 AM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

Well, when someone is arguing

that it has consistently been two teams and theyre wrong, that would matter a great deal. As for the future, you wouldnt have predicted the Sox would be this big a spender on player development ten years ago, so although it looks like a safe bet, you clearly never know. Look at the Royals in the 80’s. Teams go up for a decade and then down. Nothing is assured.

by alskor on Aug 28, 2025 1:42 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

BOS vs. KC?

Right, based on their markets and revenue streams you could certainly make a case that Boston’s future might look similar to Kansas City’s. [/sarc]

WOW!

by Chieeef on Sep 3, 2025 2:03 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

Nonetheless

the markets were the same in the 80’s and KC had some great ballclubs. KC isnt in that bad a shape. They just have a terrible owner who pockets the revenue sharing.

by alskor on Sep 3, 2025 3:51 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

But

that’s both new ownership and new management. Henry and Epstein “get it.” They know that if they spend tons of money on the draft, they present small-market teams with an impossible dilemma— spend more themselves, thus raising the price of everyone in the draft and hurting them relative to the big boys when it comes to payroll, or stick to slot and watch the Sox pile up all the talent.

It’s counterintuitive, but grotesque overpayment of prospects (and also of pre-free agency MLB players) is actually a winning strategy for the Red Sox and Yankees, because the way baseball salaries are structured, those overpayments force everyone else to overpay too.

Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.

by PaulThomas on Aug 28, 2025 4:29 AM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

Well

you could also say the Sox NEED to do what they do to stay with the Yanks.

Do you know that the greatest difference, both in terms of raw dollars and IN TERMS OF PERCENTAGE!, between the top payroll in any division and the second greatest payroll is between the Sox and Yankees? No other division has such a disparity in payroll. And while the Sox have access to great resources, they arent exactly far beyond the Orioles and Jays - two other teams who ALSO had great player development machines and spent tons on players in recent memory!

by alskor on Aug 28, 2025 1:46 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

[breaks out his tiny, tiny violin]

In addition to your facts being misstated (boy, that Orioles farm system… it’s sure been churning out the prospects lately), they’re irrelevant. The Red Sox do what they do because it works, not because of some inferiority complex. The fact that those tactics are allowed to work is a fundamental flaw in the rules of MLB from a competitiveness standpoint.

MLB is structured to give advantages to large-market teams because those teams have more fans and more revenue. This is not rocket science, it’s simply a reflection of the values of the league— specifically, that fairness is less important than profit maximization. Whether those are good values is a point which can be argued. That the league holds those values is not arguable.

Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.

by PaulThomas on Aug 28, 2025 3:57 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

A willingness to spend money is not a "tactic"

I think you have no further to look than the ownership of your respective team.

LIFE is structured to give advantages to those with money. My point was that the teams that spend and that are strong are not always the same teams. Hell, the Yankees were terrible in the 80s and then again from 2008 to whatever… :)

What I was saying was the both the Orioles and Jays have been the big spenders and dominated baseball in the last 30-40 years for periods, while the Sox and Yanks were down for long periods…

by alskor on Aug 28, 2025 4:09 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

I understand your point that richer teams

have advantages over poorer teams. I understand your point that wealthier teams can capitalize on that wealth by spending money on everything, including the draft. Where I don’t follow your argument is your belief that less-wealthy teams will allow themselves to be bluffed off of the field.

I’d be interested in seeing the data you mention about team spending on drafts because I couldn’t find any. What I could find was reports that the Red Sox spent $10 million, but was outspent by the Royals. The Giants and the Pirates (well, question mark there) also spent 6 million apiece on their 1st round pick. The Orioles spent a similar amount last year on Wieters. The Tigers have made a point of picking high-priced players with late picks. That in of itself is a pretty decent range of the smaller market teams, all of which seem to have decided that whatever their financial limitations, the draft is not the place to skimp. Your own As didn’t spend a lot of money on their 1st round pick (and might have been one of the few teams to choose their first player significantly because of his cost), but did set the record of the highest bonus for a 7th round pick (over a million), and spent 4.25 million dollars on a single int’l prospect (Inoa). They don’t seem to have a problem competing for the best amateur talent either. It may not be wise to spend this much money on amateur players, but which teams do you feel are being forced out of the draft?

www.loftylantern.com

by OldProspects on Aug 28, 2025 6:48 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

Bad math

The Red Sox slot figures were about $3-4 million less than the Royals. The fact that they spent less gross does not, at all, indicate that they exercised less financial muscle. As for the rest of the list, the Giants, Orioles and Tigers are nobody’s idea of small spenders. The Royals and Pirates are, but their decision to go big on the first round pick could be read as PR as much as tactical decisionmaking. In fairness to them, both have relatively new management and may have changed tactics.

Bottom line: Right now, any team can buy up bundles of extra prospects through paying over slot. But the prices are rising, because they’re being pushed up by the Yankees, Red Sox, and a few others. The cartel to hold down the prices of amateurs is collapsing, because teams realize that holding to it is a sucker’s game, and once it collapses fully amateur players will be paid essentially what they are worth. Once players are being paid equal to their value, there’s no space for a small market club to extract surplus value. Right now, that’s most of what allows them to compete.

Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.

by PaulThomas on Aug 29, 2025 12:41 AM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

That their slot figures were higher

is irrelevant because we’re dealing with players who get bonuses above slots. Your original point was that the destruction of the slot system would lead to small market teams not spending the money on top amateur players needed to compete. If so, present the evidence: what small market team is not been spending the money to get the best amateur players?

Re:“surplus value”. Behind your overly academic language is the absurd assumption that a player’s value is known. Particularly with prospects signing 6 year contracts, there being a free agent market or not doesn’t stop “surplus value” from existing. If you find Albert Pujols or Ryan Braun, you’ll have surplus value. Find Travis Lee or Ben Grieve, no surplus value. If your point is that it will get harder for poorer teams, I agree with you - it was always and is always hard for poorer teams. If your point is that it’s impossible, that’s incorrect.

www.loftylantern.com

by OldProspects on Aug 29, 2025 9:20 AM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

The Twins have cheaped out on hitters for some time

Result: they haven’t produced a decent one since Morneau and Mauer.

The A’s decision (or more accurately, Schott and Hoffman’s decision) to cheap out on the “Moneyball” draft led to a bunch of guys getting overdrafted in the sandwich round that year, who then did little in MLB.

There’s no better correlator with draft success than the money you spend on it. Not the number of first round picks you have, not prior success, nothing. It’s ironic but true that the phrase “you get what you pay for” applies far more consistently to amateurs than to MLB free agents…

In any event, if this situation becomes pervasive, and everyone but the elite start having to overdraft weaker players in order to afford them, it won’t be long before that starts having a major effect on the field in MLB.

Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.

by PaulThomas on Aug 29, 2025 7:45 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

Two things

I’m not JUST talking about the draft. International signings count, too, and there’s plenty of teams that spend their resources there instead of the draft. Also, I said:

It’s not a "big market/small market" thing; it’s just a matter of how much management is willing to devote to the draft.

Then you said

Sorry, you’re flat wrong…
by and large the teams break down into two groups— the teams that spend on amateur players, which is a combination of big markets and smart teams, and the rest of the teams, who are owned and/or managed (sadly, it usually only takes one or the other) by dolts.

So basically, the big market teams have smart management and spend money on amature players. It seems to me like we basically agree. And the Yanks and Saux may spend more money, but they’re not lapping the field or anything. Players in the draft know that those teams especially are willing to pay more and so they hold out longer when they get drafted by one.

Look, smart, well-managed teams spend money on international scouting and the draft. Dumb, poorly managed ones don’t. That’s all there is here.

You want to know my idea set up? Complete revenue sharing, mandated annual spending minimum and maximums (if you don’t spend it on players, the league takes it from you) that increase with league revenue inflation so that players and management split profits 50/50, and a tax on losing teams. Or something like that.

by mraver on Aug 29, 2025 12:42 AM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

That should say "ideal set up"....

by mraver on Aug 29, 2025 12:45 AM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

Premise

It is a valid response that the premise doesn’t hold water. Although I think it does, because if the A’s are pumping money into their international free agents and their tough-to-sign draftees, then that is detracting from the money they can put into their on-the-field product. Beane and his Front Office are definitely competent enough to make up for it with precise payroll management, but still that money is coming from somewhere, and that somewhere is a revenue stream that is dwarfed by Boston and New York. So while in the past it may have changed from year to year, and for the most part it still will, I really doubt we will ever see a year again where the Yankees and Sox don’t sign at least a handful of guys who drop to the later rounds.

by Chieeef on Aug 27, 2025 6:22 PM EDT reply reply 0 recs

I know

The Rangers have been right up there in terms of money spent in the amatuer markets the last two to three years. Last year’s draft being case and point, they’ve done a really nice job of signing their top 4 or five picks every year and shelled out a Million to sign Marcus Lemon in the late rounds a couple years ago. Also were the highest bidder for Inoa but got beaten to the punch by the As who had him commit to them b4 the deadline.

Dont know the exact figures but in terms of money spent in the Draft they’ve been up there.

by blalock84 on Aug 27, 2025 7:27 PM EDT reply reply 0 recs

I'd put Anaheim in the 'A' Tier

Over the past 5 years or so, they’ve probably signed just as many over-slot guys as the Yankees or Red Sox, once you account for the difference in the number of compensation picks they’ve received.

Vogt early, Vogt often.

by Brickhaus on Aug 28, 2025 9:24 AM EDT reply reply 0 recs

agreed

Jered Weaver was the most unsignable guy in his draft, him or SDrew at least; Adenhart was going to be a top 5-10 overall guy but blew out his arm in HS and teams thought that would make him go to UNC but the Angel’s didn’t back off and signed him. They gave Stephen Marek almost a million as a draft/follow. They offered alot of money, but evidently not quite enough, to Matt Harvey (first round type player) last year to sign and I know there are several cases I’m leaving out.

by nms on Aug 28, 2025 2:12 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

What about the Tigers?

Porcello, etc

www.loftylantern.com

by OldProspects on Aug 28, 2025 6:49 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

Other than last year

How many late round big money picks have they signed and/or made big offers to? I know they did it quite a bit last year, but I don’t remember them having a strong history of this. I’d put the Diamondbacks over the Tigers, as they’ve had a consistent history of signing multiple over-slot players, especially since Mike Rizzo came aboard.

Vogt early, Vogt often.

by Brickhaus on Aug 29, 2025 11:25 AM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

Verlander

Maybin
Miller
Porcello

I see a pattern there.

Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.

by PaulThomas on Aug 29, 2025 7:37 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

+1

They started the recent over slot problems.

The Yanks and Sox followed suit, and this year the other big hitters followed.

Blame Dombrowski.

by alskor on Aug 29, 2025 10:44 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

Not anymore

The last couplafew years they have been really cheaping out. Of all thirty teams this year, the Angels spent the least on their top ten picks, according to BA.

by aCone419 on Aug 28, 2025 9:34 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

Response

Hard to get on them too much for Matt Harvey turning down their huge offer in 2007, which was something in the area of $2.5-2.7 million if I remember right.

by mrkupe on Aug 28, 2025 11:14 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

You can blame the GM for that, not the scouting department

They gave away their first round pick two years in a row. That has a huge impact on a team’s expected spending.

Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.

by PaulThomas on Aug 29, 2025 12:41 AM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

you don't have to spend a ton every year

to be successful. If you can’t sign guys for what you feel would be a prudent amount, or get the chance to draft the guys you want, in a given year there is nothing wrong with holding back a year and spendin the money else where (next years draft pool, free agents, paying arb raises, intl market).

What is important is being willing to spend alot to sign guys when you feel they would be a good deal at the price, and being aggressive in pursuing the opportunity to draft hard-to-sign but highly talented guys.

You don’t ALWAYS need to spend a lot to draft well, just be able to do it when you should

by nms on Aug 29, 2025 2:10 AM EDT up reply reply 0 recs

That's all well and good

But I responding to the idea that the Angels make as many over slot signings over the last few years as the Red Sox and Yankees, which is not the case. They haven’t done much in that particular realm the past couple years, even though there may be extenuating circumstances.

by aCone419 on Aug 29, 2025 11:36 AM EDT up reply reply 0 recs