Thanks to everyone for making last night’s draft so much fun. I say this even though, as I will demonstrate below, the Wolverines probably didn’t do all that well in the draft.
First, a little housekeeping:
- We haven’t settled when to close the Free Agent list, nor when to have the FA draft. Our unsettledness is a faint echo of MLB’s except we aren’t villainous like those other owners are, and our players loyal to their fans and content with their pay, and we always remember the needs of players early in their careers, and especially the minor leaguers who, when we know their names, get contracts through 2099!
- I will use the one-text negotiating procedure outlined in Fisher & Ury, Getting To Yes, starting on page 112. I will send you a description of a plan, and invite your feedback, and revise the plan to meet as many interests as possible, and repeat the process. Probably forever, unless MLB settles its labor dispute sooner.
- Dave Votaw donated to the league the Alphabat poster he can’t fit into his new abode. I propose making it a traveling award, loaned to deserving recipients on a rotating basis, with the requirement that they must put the poster up someplace where other people can see it until we recognize someone else. There are wrinkles to this idea (eg, what happens if the recipient lives on the remote fringes of the country, or in the depths of our nation’s interior?). So let’s one-text this right now: please send me suggestions for improving the idea of using the poster to promote camaraderie and selective embarrassment in the league. Like, what should we give the award for? Should we name it something, like The Cheese Lament Memorial, or something? (Now that the Cheese have been evolved, pokemon-style, into Sephardim. Or Seraphim, I forget which. )
OK — what you came here for: How did we do in the Rookie Draft?
- Who drafted the most rookies?
- It was a tie. Canberra and Haviland each drafted 7. Altogether we drafted 47 rookies, for an average of 4.273 each. Bellingham and Flint Hill each only drafted 2.
- Who spent the most money?
- Once again we were shocked and awed by the Pears, who led the way with $30,750,000. But they were not all alone. Here are the next four teams’ total spending:
- Haviland ($29,500,000)
- Canberra ($28,750,000)
- Pittsburgh ($27,250,000)
- Kaline ($26,500,000)
- The average team spent $21,136,363.64. The Seraphim –who changed their name to rise above the rest of us, while simultaneously moving to the bottom of the league alphabetically, will be dismayed to discover they have not escaped the middle after all. They spent $21,000,000, just edging out the Wolverines i($20,500,000) in this measure of mediocrity.
- I just realized we can’t have the Cheese for lunch anymore. If only there was some other foodstuff in the league.
- Once again we were shocked and awed by the Pears, who led the way with $30,750,000. But they were not all alone. Here are the next four teams’ total spending:
- Who added the most wins to their team?
- I used FanGraphs depth chart projections for WAR for each player we drafted, except that in the two occasions when the player projected for slightly negative WAR I entered them as 0 WAR to avoid embarrassing the owners in question.
- One team stood out from all the others, the team you would expect if you examined our trophy, the team which has won the championship more often than any other (7 times), including a run of four straight back in the day. Pittsburgh added 6.1 wins to the Allegheny roster, 3.3 of them in the person of Oneil Cruz, the best player taken by an EFL team (according to fWAR).
- The next best teams were the Kangaroos (3.8 wins), the Dragons (3.7), and the Rosebuds (3.5).
- Keep in mind, these are raw wins. If the new wins are blocked by better players already on the roster, or barely edge out some almost-as-good players, a raw number of wins might not mean much in reality.
- The average EFL team added 2.86 wins. The Balk and the Wolverines are the average EFL teams in this view, both having added 2.6 wins.
- Who got the biggest bang per buck?
- The COMPUTER, of course. Before we could even get a pick in, the computer had drafted 22.4 wins, including the best two players in the draft (according to 2022 projected fWAR): Wander Franco (5.1 wins) and Jonathan India (3.7). The computer’s first 12 pics averaged 1.87 fWAR.
- Our picks averaged 0.67 fWAR per person.
- The EFL team with the most WAR per person picked was Flint Hill, with 1.05 WAR per player. Fortunately, he only picked two players, so the rest of us still have a chance in the pennant race. Or, we would, if it weren’t for the Alleghenys who got 1.02 wins per pick — spread over 6 picks.
- The Alleghenys also did very well , compared to the rest of us, at getting their wins economically. Whereas the average cost for a 1 fWAR boost in the draft was $7,381,000 ($232,500,000 divided by 31.5 fWAR), the Alleghenys spent only $4,467,200 per win. The Balk, however, did slightly better: spending just $4,135,000 per win for the 2.6 wins they acquired in the draft.
- HOWEVER, the most efficient team on a per-win basis was the Tornados. They prepared the way for regaining the trophy stolen by the adorable, Hobbit-like Wolverines by spending just $2,262,000 per win for the 2.1 wins they added to their roster. Yes, beware the Tornados, who are only feigning weakness. They know how to acquire wins at only half the cost of their closest competitors.
- Just so you know you can trust me not to be feigning weakness, consider the poor Wolverine record in this regard. Remember, the average cost of a win for the league was $7,381,000. The Kangaroos were closest to that average ($7,566,000 per win), but the Wolverines were right beside them ($7,884,600), just a little bit worse.
In conclusion, here are our fWAR projected standings after the Rookie Draft, if we were to play the season with our current rosters with identical luck and/or skill at managing our player’s positions and playing time:
If we assume a team composed 100% of replacement players would usually win 47 games, and pretend the 2022 season will have 162 games, then the 2022 standings are projected to come out something like this:
DC: 98 – 64
OD: 97 – 65
SS: 95 – 67
HD: 92 – 70
CK: 86 – 76
PP: 82 – 80
PR: 82 – 80
PA: 77 – 85
KD: 77 – 85
BC: 74 – 88
FH: 73- 89.
This does not account for our FA draft, or good debs we can grab during the season. On the other hand, it doesn’t account for WAR wasted by having a good player stuck behind an even better one.
And — who can forget it? — at about this time last year, everyone knew the Dodgers and the Padres would duke it out for the NL West, and one of them probably would win the World Series. And at least one projection method had the Wolverines ending up 70 games out of first place.