Comments on: A Look Back: The 2004 MLB Draft

By: Lou Schuler

Lou Schuler — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 16:04:51 +0000

Beau, over the years we’ve sparred on message boards, you’ve viewed baseball through more obsessions — and more screen aliases — than I could or would want to recall.

I hope you had a nice Christmas and that you and yours enjoy a happy and prosperous New Year.

By: Some Christmas Eve links « Play a Hard Nine

Some Christmas Eve links « Play a Hard Nine — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 16:50:17 +0000

[...] related prospect note, Future Redbirds is doing some cool draft retrospective stuff. Check is out. Here is an [...]

By: rydeshelby

rydeshelby — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 13:40:49 +0000

Lou, you view baseball through an obsession about steroids. If Ferris were hopped up on steroids to hit well in spring 2004 for Miami of Ohio, he did not lose his strength just a couple of months later. You can’t have it both ways.
Ferris only excelled his 3rd season, in a mediocre college conference. Its very hard to hit well enough to become a ML 1B. Ferris was not good enough.

By: Lou Schuler

Lou Schuler — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 12:06:41 +0000

Good point, Grunt. The same was said of the 2000 draft.

Still, the Cards got the worst of both bad drafts, with nothing to show for ’04 and only Yadi to show for ’00. 2001 yielded Haren (who was then punted away to Oakland) and ’02 was another disaster. 2003 wasn’t a disaster, but wasn’t great by any means.

So as an organization, we had only one all-star — Yadi — to show for all the drafts from 2000-2004. We traded away Haren, the best player from those drafts, and Barton, the third-best player. Ryan might be the fourth-best player, but at least we got some value out of him before sending him off.

And now we complain about the ’06 draft for not producing any above-average talent despite the extra picks. But 8 of those guys have already appeared in the majors, and a couple others still have a shot. A complete reversal of this wretched run.

By: Lou Schuler

Lou Schuler — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 11:56:42 +0000

This was a transitional draft class. The Cardinals were in the middle of a complete reorganization of scouting. They had barely scouted most of these players, and didn’t yet have a statistical analysis method in place.

Ferris, in particular, was an incredible miss. One Cards official — maybe Mo — was quoted after the draft as saying that Ferris was the equivalent of a first-rounder.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see what the problem was. I flagged it almost immediately. Here are the opening sentences of his write-up in the 2005 BA Prospect Handbook:

“Ferris wasn’t drafted coming out of high school in Cincinnati, and he hit .226 at Kentucky as a freshman before transferring to Miami (Ohio). He hit .360 with 5 homers as a sophomore, THEN ADDED 20 POUNDS OF MUSCLE and batted .361-21-62 to earn first-team All-America honors as a junior last spring.”

For further comic effect, his swing was compared to Rafael Palmeiro’s.

After some unexpected delays in taking his physical (for retrospectively obvious reasons), Ferris signed and played 41 games in the NY-P, where he hit .199 with matching .295 OBP and SLG. His vaunted batting eye was good for 19 BB and 44 K in 41 games. His “raw power” produced 5 doubles, 3 HR, and 14 RBI.

By: Gruntosaurus

Gruntosaurus — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 03:30:46 +0000

This draft was terrible, no two ways about it, but at the same time, it has to be viewed in context. 2004 was a LOUSY draft class. Several other teams have received negative WAR from their draftees so far, and only Oakland (with Street, Suzuki, Braden — 11 members of this class reached the majors!) has really obtained value in depth, rather than from one isolated success (Verlander, Pedroia, Gallardo, none of whom are really superstars yet, although they might get there). A similar bombout in 2005, when there was a great deal more talent available to be drafted, would have been unforgivable. Here it was just a below-average selection of a below-average pool.

By: easy

easy — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:05:05 +0000

That is just a remarkably painful thing to read. For all of our complaints about recent drafting strategies we have come a long way since ’04.

By: Cards Lover in Chitown

Cards Lover in Chitown — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 21:00:53 +0000

Wow, after reading these the last few weeks, this is by far and away our worst draft ever. Out of all of those guys, how the heck did one of them at least turn into something…. That makes me feel like our developing at that time was more of the problem than the actual drafting??