Somehow Fangraphs got a copy of our draft results and has already informed a breathlessly waiting world who won the draft.
Now I know some of you might not think of the draft as a competition. You think of it more as a cooperative game — how can we EFLers extract the most talent from the major leagues? Or as a social time, spent with friends, solving a mutual puzzle. Unfortunately, the media are not interested in the bonding aspects of a draft. They will twist everything to make it seem like there were winners and losers. I’m sorry — this is how the world is. There’s nothing I can do about it.
So — here is how they see it. Altogether we spent $194,000,000 adding 44 players who are expected to add 68.9 wins above replacement to our teams’ performance this season. That’s a cost of $4,409.09 per player, and $2,815.67 per win. The average player we drafted is going to produce 1.57 WAR.
In terms of how many Wins Above Replacement we added to our teams, Fangraphs ranks us as follows:
Haviland: 13.7
Cottage: 13.6
Old Detroit: 8.0
Kaline: 6.8
Pittsburgh: 6.5
Portland: 6.1
D.C: 5.0
Flint Hill: 4.8
Peshastin: 4.4
Canberra: 4.3
That looks like eight of us were totally dominated by Haviland and Cottage — that they were mopping the floor with us. But here’s how it looks if you consider how much each team spent per win added:
Old Detroit: $2,343,750
Peshastin: $2,386,360
Flint Hill: $2,500,000
Haviland: $2,700,730
Pittsburgh: $2,730,770
D.C.: $2,800,000
Kaline: $2,867,650
Cottage: $3,161,760
Canberra: $3,313,950
Portland: $3,524,590
Taking into account our widely varying resources and needs, this strikes me as a pretty tight distribution of economic efficiency. This evidence suggests we are not sortable into sharks and chumps.
Alas, there is other evidence, and we will come to it in just a bit.
Before we get to that, note how Haviland and Cottage did not go outside the normal range of per-win expenditures. This is, of course, a grave disappointment. The rest of us were counting on those two behemoths to bid each other into oblivion. They did not. This was crucial, but I’m afraid the opportunity has passed.
Mike Trout (8.2 wins) only cost Cottage $3,048,780.50 a projected win this year. He said after the draft he’d have bid 40% higher. But the Dragons did not bid him up. They rolled over like kittens, instead. The world would be a better place had they been a little scalier this morning. Cottage ended up paying exactly what he should have paid, in this draft, for the best player in the game.
Chris Archer (4.2 wins), tied for the second most expensive player of the day at $13,000,000, cost the Cheese $3,095,283.10 per win — almost exactly the same. You couldn’t get it closer than that bidding at $250,000 intervals. Whoever was bidding the Cheese up stopped at exactly the same spot.
The other biggest ticket items went like this:
Anthony Rizzo: $13,000,00 for 4.6 wins, or $2,826,087 per win (Haviland).
Paul Goldschmidt: $12,000,000 for 4.4 wins, or $2,727,272.72 per win (Portland).
Jose Altuve: $11,500,000 for 4.3 wins, or $2,674,418.6 per win (Pittsburgh).
Carlos Carrasco: $10,000,000 for 4.4 wins, or $2,272,727.27 per win (Peshastin).
Matt Moore: $9,250,000 for 2.3 wins, or $4,021,739.10 per win (Old Detroit).
Huh.
Obviously one of two things happened in the bidding on Matt Moore. Either you people are all giant meanies taking advantage of a poor, innumerate old man. Or Fangraphs has seriously underestimated Matt Moore’s coming performance. Rather than having you massive carry loads of guilt for the next 5 years, let’s blame Fangraphs.
My pre-draft budget called for me to stop bidding on Moore at $7,000,000 for 4 years. That would have been $3,043,478.26 per win this year, smack dab on top of the rate Dave paid for Trout. So maybe innumeracy isn’t the problem.