Cardinals Among MLB's Best at Drafting

Looking at Major League contribution by those selected in the amateur drafts from 1995 to the present illustrates the Cardinals' draft results have been among the best in all of MLB, debunking a major complaint against the team's current management.

1. Overview

A frequent discussion point among Cardinal fans (and likely fans of any team) is the productivity of their farm system.

Many analysts, such as Baseball America or John Sickels, rate the quality of a team’s prospects and/or the organization as a whole—as do a number of fans on internet boards.

Judging prospects in the pipeline is a subjective process. While minor league performance does tend to predict major league performance—as Bill James noted about 20 years ago—it is still a subjective process. “Can’t miss” prospects miss and 13th round draft picks become among the best in baseball.

With the benefit of time, the drafting performance of teams can be objectively judged—by looking at the players a team drafted and the eventual success (or lack thereof) in the major leagues.

The web site baseball-reference.com has pages with the amateur drafts of each of the 30 teams, showing players which have played in the majors by a certain time frame (in this case, by the end of the 2005 season). The page lists the draftees by year, the year they debuted in the major leagues, and summary career statistics; hits, home runs, batting average, on-base plus slugging, and stolen bases for batters, and won-loss, earned run average, walks and hits per inning pitched, and saves for pitchers.

Using the 30 web pages, I built a database of the players drafted by each team from 1995 forward, segregated into batters and pitchers. This article is based on that database.

The drafting performance of teams can then be judged by comparing the summary stats of the teams; which teams produced the players with the greatest summary statistics, say hits, home runs, at bats (which I estimated from hits and batting average) or wins and losses.

So instead of opinions as to which team has done the best in the draft, by adding the results, you can obtain an objective ranking of teams. This is a relatively simple approach; other approaches using Win Shares or WARP would perhaps provide a different ranking of teams, with a fair amount of additional effort.

There is one significant limitation to this approach; the time lag from the time a player is drafted until they reach the major leagues, and the subsequent time to compile the counting stats such as hits, at bats, wins, losses, etc. On average, the “gestation period” (as I like to call it) for players can be four, five, and six years. For example, most players drafted in 2002 are just breaking into the majors in 2005 or 2006; there were only 24 players drafted in 2003 in the majors by the end of 2005, six from the 2004 draft, and only three from the 2005 draft.

Accordingly, this approach is useful to measure the 1995 to 2000 drafts, and less so for the subsequent drafts. The later drafts can only be judged in this fashion several years down the road.

2. The Cardinal Drafts, 1995 to Present

Walt Jocketty made his reputation as the Farm Director of the Oakland A’s from 1980 to 1993. He moved to Colorado in 1994, and became the Cardinals' GM in late 1994. The 1995 draft was his first; thus I selected 1995 as the beginning point of my database. My question was, how have the Cardinals done compared to the other major league teams since Jocketty took over the Cardinals?

First, let’s examine the significant batters and pitchers the Cardinals have drafted.

Table 1 presents the batters drafted by the Cards from 1995 onward that compiled at least 100 hits in the majors by the end of 2005, along with the totals for all of the players drafted:

Table 1
Draft Year	Round	Player	Debut	AB	H	HR	BA	OPS	SB
1995	19	C. Richard	2000	880	227	34	0.258	0.777	18
1995	34	K. Robinson	1998	670	179	3	0.267	0.644	35
1996	3	B. Butler	2001	552	137	11	0.248	0.664	4
1997	1  (20)	A. Kennedy	1999	2,982	838	48	0.281	0.733	107
1998	1  (  5)	J.D. Drew	1998	2,666	765	142	0.287	0.907	72
1998	9	J. Wilson	2001	2,719	715	35	0.263	0.672	26
1999	7	C. Crisp	2002	1,627	467	35	0.287	0.756	54
1999	13	A. Pujols	2001	2,958	982	201	0.332	1.037	29
2000	4	Y. Molina	2004	520	133	10	0.256	0.662	2
Totals for all draftees				16,067	4,570	530	0.284		355

Table 2 shows the pitchers with at least ten decisions by the end of 2005, along with the totals for all of the pitchers drafted:

Table 2
Draft Year	Round	Player	Debut	W	L	ERA	WHIP	Saves
1995	1 (12)	M. Morris	1997	101	62	3.61	1.27	4
1995	17	B. Reames	2000	7	13	5.13	1.56	-
1995	54	C. Politte	1998	20	21	4.06	1.32	15
1996	1 ( 3)	B. Looper	1998	25	29	3.57	1.38	103
1997	2	R. Ankiel	1999	13	10	3.90	1.36	1
1998	4	B. Smith	2001	7	8	4.95	1.45	-
2001	2	D. Haren	2003	20	22	4.13	1.29	-
Totals for all draftees				202	174

3. Major League Team Draft Performance, 1995 to Present

How do the players the Cards have drafted, in total, compare to the other 30 major league teams?

Let’s start with the batters.

Table 3 shows the top five and bottom five teams for the period, ranked by at bats:

Table 3
Top Five Teams
Team	AB	H	BA	HR	SB
Toronto	20,921	5,667	0.271	658	333
St. Louis	16,067	4,570	0.284	530	355
Philadelphia	14,957	3,973	0.266	423	325
Colorado	14,795	4,457	0.301	448	474
Texas	14,677	3,901	0.266	615	94
Bottom Five Teams
Team	AB	H	BA	HR	SB
LA Dodgers	5,575	1,322	0.237	95	109
San Diego	5,547	1,411	0.254	119	54
Pittsburgh	5,221	1,326	0.254	134	100
NY Mets	5,023	1,300	0.259	135	116
San Francisco	3,269	807	0.247	59	61

So while the perception among many is that the Cards have had underperforming drafts, the opposite is true—only the Blue Jays have done better in drafting batters, when ranked by at bats (the Blue Jays have drafted 13 batters with greater than 100 hits, Craig Wilson, Ryan Freel, Brent Abernathy, Casey Blake, Josh Phelps, Vernon Wells, Michael Young, Orlando Hudson, Felipe Lopez, Jay Gibbons, Alexis Rios, Reed Johnson, and Russ Adams).

And the other argument is, of course, if the Cards have actually done well, it’s just because of Albert why the Cards have done well. First of all, the Cards did draft him, “luck” or not. However, if you excluded Albert from the Cards totals, they would still rank sixth in MLB by ABs. So the assumption that Albert is the cause of the Card’s high ranking is as false as the perception the Cards have underperformed in the draft.

At the other end of the spectrum is San Francisco, which in the past couple of years has often disdained the draft. Over the time period, the Giants only drafted two players with over 100 hits; Mike Caruso, with 294 hits and a .641 OPS, and Chris Magruder 119 hits with a .629 OPS). The next time that Mike Shannon talks about the Giants being able to draft hitters, just remind yourself that he’s at least a decade out of date.

But what about the pitchers?

Well, the Cardinals didn’t do so well there; they were 8th in the majors (measured by pitcher wins).

Table 4 shows the top eight teams, ranked by pitcher wins, and the bottom five:

Table 4
Top Eight Teams
Team	W	L	%	Saves
Oakland	425	310	0.578	27
Cubs	341	296	0.535	21
White Sox	306	317	0.491	61
San Francisco	281	223	0.558	90
Houston	246	183	0.573	73
Anaheim	219	205	0.517	22
Texas	213	255	0.455	116
St. Louis	202	174	0.537	124
Bottom Five Teams
Team	W	L	%	Saves
NY Mets	106	128	0.453	32
Florida	101	111	0.476	6
Washington	99	97	0.505	87
Milwaukee	78	105	0.426	1
LA Dodgers	77	80	0.490	1

Oakland being at the top of the list is probably not a surprise to most baseball fans, given the big three of Hudson, Mulder, and Zito.

Most however would be surprised that the Dodgers were at the bottom. For the 1970’s and 1980’s, the Dodgers were among the best teams in MLB in producing pitchers.

Looking at the bottom five in both drafting pitchers and batters, and noting each of those teams are National League teams, is there any cause and effect to the current perception of the American League being the much stronger league?

4. Draft Rankings, 1995 to present

By assigning a ranking to each team for their relative batting and pitching performance, and adding those two ranks together, we can assess how the 30 teams have done, in simple terms.

Table 5 shows the ranking for each team for batters and pitchers, along with the total of the two. This is presenting in ascending order; like golf, low score wins.

Table 5
Rankings of draft performance
Ranks	AB	Wins	Total
Oakland	6	1	7
St. Louis	2	8	10
Philadelphia	3	9	12
Texas	5	7	12
Toronto	1	12	13
Colorado	4	10	14
Anaheim	12	6	18
Houston	16	5	21
Kansas City	10	11	21
White Sox	22	3	25
Cubs	24	2	26
Arizona	15	12	27
Boston	13	14	27
Minnesota	7	24	31
Cincinnati	18	14	32
Tampa Bay	11	22	33
San Francisco	30	4	34
Baltimore	9	25	34
Cleveland	20	16	36
Washington	8	28	36
Detroit	17	20	37
Seattle	19	19	38
Florida	14	27	41
Atlanta	23	20	43
Pittsburgh	28	17	45
Yankees	25	18	43
San Diego	27	23	50
Milwaukee	21	29	50
NY Mets	29	26	55
LA Dodgers	26	30	56

With a #2 ranking in batter at bats, and #8 in pitcher wins, the Cards’ “score” is ten, second only in the majors to Oakland (6 in at bats, 1 in wins).

The perception that the Cards’ production from their drafts has been inferior, is, based on the above, patently false. It has been one of the best.

One final thought.

The team at the top of the list is the team that employed Walt Jocketty as director of its farm systems for 13 years, ending in 1993. In that role, Jocketty would have hired or supervised many of the scouts and established the drafting infrastructure.

Yes, it could be coincidence that the top two teams in these rankings were the teams that employed Walt Jocketty for 24 of the last 25 years.

Or maybe not.