woops.

https://twitter.com/williamnyy23/sta...32975725395970

Technology is hard. Seems like the folks who run the HOF web site spoiled the results due to incompetence. Looks like its only Griffey and Piazza this year.

edit: there's now a Tim Raines page. So, maybe they hadn't finished his yet. Still nothing for Bagwell.

If comp picks are valued at 10M and we paid Gordon 72M, our actual cost is 82M. Because we gave up the comp pick someone else was going to pay us.

are you the Go Chiefs version of the royals?

He's right.

The market consensus right now is that a 1st round pick has a value of about $8-10 million. When you look at the outlay on a contract, that cost or opportunity cost has to be factored in.

If I'm the Royals, I give that up without blinking because ultimately the familiarity makes it worth surrendering the pick. That being said, the pick they would have had (probably in the 33/34 range) has a value and by re-signing Gordon, they lost that value. It's fair to include it in the conversation.

You can bet your ass that Moore did.

What are your thoughts on comp picks? I don't follow the draft one bit, but it sure seems like that avg value is so driven by the few big hits, watering down any real "mean value". Sure seems like KC has gotten a bunch of Mike Montgomery/Sam Selman types and nothing good. I'm not sure I believe 8-10M.

Comp picks are like any other pick... They carry extreme risk of failure.

Manaea, and Montgomery are comp picks who added value through their trade worth. They haven't really nailed one, but a lot of talent gets taken at those spots.

Mike Stanton was drafted right around where the Royals pick would have been had Gordon walked, to give you one example.

You're absolutely right.

But realize, if you nail one, the value of that one hit could easily exceed $100 million.

Stephen Piscotty was a Cardinals comp pick for losing Albert Pujols and the Cardinals seem content with letting him play RF for the foreseeable future. If he's a solid regular over the next 6 years, he'll probably be worth about 15-18 WAR up and through his prime seasons. That kind of player on the market will cost you in excess of $100 million over that period of time as a FA. With cost control he's unlikely to clear $25 million over that span. Hell, if nothing else, he was already instrumental in the Cardinals even making the playoffs last year. Without him they probably end up in the wild card game and would've gone one and done (maybe not even at Busch; he was that good for us). At that point you're talking about 2 games of lost gate if nothing else - that alone has a marginal value of a couple million given that it's 'free' gate.

The point being that the benefits are so enormous that you don't have to hit on many of them to make a huge impact. The Cardinals have had 10 comp picks over the last 10 years and while most of those have washed out, 3 of them have been Lance Lynn, Michael Wacha and now Stephen Piscotty; guys that will yield massive surplus value to the Cardinals.

Rob Kaminsky was another and he was traded for Moss (a bad trade, but an asset nonetheless). Clay Mortenson was one and he was the #2 piece in the trade for Matt Holliday. Chris Perez was another and he was sent in the deal for DeRosa. DeRosa was a bust but at the time the Indians also liked Jason Motte. So while DeRosa wasn't worthwhile, the ability to include Perez instead of Motte was important in keeping an asset in-house that was eventually ENORMOUS in the 2011 WS run.

If nothing else it makes your draft pool larger so you can be a lot more aggressive with a few other draft picks. Sure, maybe you don't use your comp pick on a player that makes a direct impact, but it maybe you used it on an easy to sign college senior, saved yourself $800K in bonus money and then used that to lure a HS kid out of a college commitment who you took with your 4th rounder and THAT guy turns out to be a big time hit for you.

The draft picks matter. I think it depends largely on where you are in the competitive cycle, but I also don't feel like $10 million is a bad guesstimate. In the end, I would never give up my pick for a player that I don't feel will be a legitimate asset for 3 years or more. So I wouldn't give it up for a short term signing (nor would I re-sign my own guy w/ a QO for a short term deal) nor would I have given it up for someone like Zobrist that I think only has 2 good years left in him.

$10,000,000 seems way too high between the bust rate and the amount of time it takes to realize the benefit of the pick. Even if you hit, there's a 3 year wait until you start to see a return. 3 years in baseball is an eternity.

So maybe we should use the median here. Let's suppose it's 2-3M. Seems like a much better application to this.

To clarify, if you don't follow the draft you probably don't get that last point I made.

MLB draft rules give you a 'slot' amount for each pick you have. So getting an additional pick gives you that much more in total 'slot' money to put towards draft picks. College seniors have no eligibility left so they're often taken earlier and signed to pittance deals well below the 'slot' for that draft pick, so that money then becomes surplus that can be put towards tougher signs; draft eligible juniors and high school players being the most common.

No dice because we have at least one real world example of how teams value draft picks.

Touiki Toussaint was the 16th overall pick for Arizona in the 2014 draft. In 2015 the Braves gave up nothing to acquire him and Bronson Arroyo. Arroyo was rehabbing from TJ surgery at the time and the Braves had no expectation of pitching him.

Instead they took on the remaining $10 million contractual obligation owed to Arroyo by the D-Backs in order to get Toussaint. And the industry savaged the D-Backs for it, BTW. It was largely seen as a steal, even though some were openly questioning if Toussaint had shown the ability to develop a 3rd pitch.

The Braves essentially traded $10 million for a first rounder when they assumed Arroyo's deal to get Toussaint.

I think $8-10 million is spot on.

That's why I said it depends on where you are in the competitive cycle.

Honestly, 3 years in baseball is a relative blink of an eye. Hell, you get the guys essentially free of charge for 3+ seasons when you call them up. And a mediocre reliever can have an 8-10 yr career pretty easily.

Even an average turnaround job takes 5 years.

3 years is an eternity in football; it's nothing in baseball. But again, if you're in the middle of an up cycle, then you give up the pick and worry about the repercussions later. Just don't pass those picks off as not having substantial value.

The context of my "eternity" comment was more about salaries.

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