This is oldish news (from Friday) – but Matthew Leach the (soon to be ex – don’t leave us Mr. Leach!) beatwriter for the Cardinals on MLB.com sat down with Kantrovitz to talk about his history and his philosophies. Read the whole thing, it is a good look, but be still my beating heart:
MLB.com: If it’s possible to sum up in a few sentences, what general philosophies and strategies underline your view of drafting amateur players?
Kantrovitz: From a scouting standpoint, we will focus on players with a high ceiling who have a chance to make an impact in the Major Leagues…
His answer continues on to even more territory that would make even the most hard-hearted HPGF member reach for the paper bag. Read the whole interview it is good insight to the man who will be calling the shots during the amateur draft.
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It’s encouraging to see this position from Our Man Dan; that’s the way to get big-time stars out of a system, although of course there will be significant attrition on the way. I do hope, though, that he doesn’t go exclusively for high-ceiling types, but leavens the drafts with a few guys who are farther along the development path. A good balance between high ceilings and polished performers might be something like a 2/1 ratio in the first few rounds of the draft. I think that’s what you see in a lot of the good systems.
Speaking of good systems, it was gratifying to see John Sickels rank ours the #5 system in the business this year. He doesn’t like numerical rankings, and cautions against interpreting them as anything more than approximations, but still, there’s no way a ranking this high can be a bad thing.
Good point. I agree that balance is the bes approach. I like your ratio, but only with multiple picks (like 2005). If the cards are limited in their selection and their picks, a more conservative approach is best.
Also agree to a more balanced approach overall for the draft. But a polished player taken early would have to pass the litmus test of having starting quality tools, otherwise I would rather roll the dice with a riskier/higher upside player imo. Also hope we can continue our trend of finding quality players in the teen rounds as well, our new scouting director seems very intelligent and I think he has a good chance to keep this system going strong for years to come.
In addition, the flipside is that polished players also are no guarantee to make the majors as well. The percentage of “safe” picks making the majors isn’t very high, either, and in my view, whatever you gain in less risk for a polished player, you lose in opportunity of future contribution. A high ceiling player has more developmental room to work with than a polished player; while a high-ceiling player who doesn’t reach his full potential could still contribute as a major leaguer, a polished player who doesn’t reach his full potential most likely will not make it out of the minors.
On the other hand, the whole point of a more polished player is that he is more likely to reach his full potential than a toolshed who may or may not ever acquire the necessary polish. The probability isn’t 100%, but it’s higher; that’s what being a polished player is all about.
Part of the decision as to where to strike the balance, in all likelihood, has to do with the current and projected state of the major-league roster. When the roster has something like the “MV3″ of the mid-aughts, you may want to stress safe picks more heavily, since you don’t have to gamble as much, and you want to maximize the number of cheap contributors so you can afford to keep Pujols, Rolen and Edmonds or their equivalents around. With a more balanced roster, rolling the dice on high-ceiling prospects in the hopes of finding the next Pujols makes more sense, since you need such a guy and you don’t have to look for adequate-but-cheap talent at most positions to keep the budget balanced.
Going forward from here, the Cardinals seem to be more in that second situation, although the presence of Holliday and Carpenter amounts to about two thirds of an MV3 roster. It therefore seems prudent to go more aggressively after high-ceiling toolsheds, as Our Man Dan says he wants to do, than if three expensive superstars were still around. I still wouldn’t want that to be the only thing recruited, however; too much chance of not getting anything at all. High-ceiling guys with very high probabilities of making the majors aren’t available to be drafted in the 22 slot; they’ll go in the top five, long before the Cardinals can draft them. The price of success?
I agree with your first paragraph.
However, I disagree with the second paragrapth.
Your current major league roster really has no impact on the draft. A draft isn’t instantanious. It takes years to develop. Its impossible to see what the potential is needed 4 years down the road.
Ah, but you’re missing the point that highly valuable players command long-term contracts. It isn’t that the impact of the farm system will be felt immediately. It’s that the Pujolses (to the extent there are any more) and Hollidays will still be around, and having major fiscal impact, when the prospects ripen. This is the regard in which the Cardinals have made a fundamental change in composition compared to MV3 days. It’s a change they would rather not have made, but it happened.
If they’d succeeded in locking up AP last year, there definitely would have been impacts on the 2011 draft. They’d have been much better positioned to look for “polished” players to provide upgrades on Schumaker, Westbrook, etc., and furthermore, would have had a financial need to do so, which is really the point. That wasn’t because of what the 2012 roster would look like; it was because Pujols would still be around in 2014, when the draftees arrive. And he would have been hideously expensive, driving a need for cheap young talent at the other positions.
I’m pretty sure, from what I’ve read in some places, that Mo had a suspicion already by draft time that they weren’t going to be able to keep Pujols. That made the need for high-ceiling guys all the greater. They drafted accordingly, with the caveat that there weren’t any REALLY high-ceiling guys left on the board by the time they picked.
However, my point is that “more likely to reach his full potential” is not high enough to really matter, or to justify always eshewing a high-risk, high-ceiling player when you have a low number of draft picks.
Also, during the MV3 era, the drafting was affected by the organizational tendency to pick safe prospects who were “signable,” which helped lead to the decision to draft Kozma over Porcello with the 18th overall pick. Such a philosophy, along with the tendency to trade prospects for contributors, led to a quick and steep decline of the Cardinals system. When you draft safe and cheap prospects all the time, you’re going to wind up with a lot of depth that’s not capable of playing in the majors, which is exactly what happened.
Also, polished players with very high probabilities to make the majors also aren’t usually available in the 22-30 slot, Kolten Wong notwithstanding (who’s draft position had a lot to do with the fact that he had mostly been a utility player without a strong-enough position until his most recent season).
But, then, I don’t really miss Porcello or his contract.
What do you mean, he was mostly a utility player? He was a freshman all-American at Hawaii, and MVP of the Cape Cod League the summer after his sophomore year. How is that a utility player?
If it was because he played second instead of short, I think the fact he spent his first 2 years in the same infield with Greg Garcia explains that.
If your point is that a player that advanced isn’t usually available at #19, I think we all agree that the 2011 draft was exceptionally deep. That’s how we got a first-round-quality player like Tilson in the second round.
and 2007 was exceptionally weak.
I kind of agree and kind of disagree.
I agree that that cards went the safer approach, but things changed under Lunhow. I think with Lunhow, the cards were more confident in investing in the higher ceiling guys (Miller, Jenkins) much more than they were at the end of Jocketty’s term which produced disspointing results with high ceiling guys.
It will be interesting to see what happens going forward.
Also, you can’t site Kozma/Porecello as the rule. That was more of an admonality under Lunhow than the ruel. For one, the 2007 draft was generally considered (before and after) to be a bad draft year. And I beleive the cards infested heavily in the International market that year. So “going safe and cheap” might have been the prudent move that year. Looking back, the cards really didn’t miss anybody. People like to point out how dissapointing Kozma has been. That is great, but everyone else drafted after him has been dissapointing as well.
Also, Porcello was not a signing issue. It was a roster management issue. The kid wanted (and got) placement on the ML roster. It’s never a smart move to put a 18 year old pitcher on an ML roster.
2007 was just too unuasual to draw too many conclusions.
I agree that that college players late in the 1st round do not have high ceiling talent. But you act as if that has no value. These Bullpen guys and 4th starters, utility guys, 4th outfield do have alot of value and often suprise on their ability.
Nobody is saying always go conservative. We are saying a balance.
Right.
It’s important to have reasonable expectations. The expected return on someone drafted after the top 10 or so isn’t all that high. A quick check suggests that over the life of the draft, only 10% of the guys drafted into the slots from 40th overall to 50th amassed major-league careers amounting to 5 WAR or greater. The fraction for slots 30 to 40 is higher, but not by much. (So, slightly, is the fraction for 50 to 60, curiously.) It’s just very hard to find guys that late in the draft who have high ceilings and reach those ceilings, and the “high ceilings” don’t have to be all that high for the statement to be true.
On the other hand, a guy who accumulates 2 WAR over a five-year career can still help a team for those five years. Open question: who’s more likely to reach that more modest “career” level, a high-ceiling guy or one who starts with polish and moves fast?
I think we are losoing site.
Higher floor does not have to mean lower ceiling.
Lance Lynn is a good example…but so is Jess Todd. It seems we are assuming these guys have no high ceiling ability.