After careful study as well as a few painful trial and errors, This GM has come to a important conclusion. The value of the draft towards ensuring a franchise's long term success can be summed up in just one word... crucial.
- Main Entry:
- cru·cial
- Pronunciation:
- \ˈkrü-shəl\
- Function: adjective
- Etymology: French, from Latin cruc-, crux cross
- Date: 1706
One word but key to a truly successful franchise. Not just in a figurative sense but in a literal one as well.
If you can draft well and i don't mean simply having a top 5 pick and landing a stud player.
You have to poor money into scouting, sink time into ranking your prospects & make sure they are signable. A wasted pick can be more harmful than one might think.
The first 5 draft choices you make in every draft will determine your ability to either make trades to improve the club in the present or hold onto the talent so that you can have a vast number of choices for your ML club in the future.
Why are the first 5 draft picks so important you ask? Because it shows your ability to not only scout talent but to mine it out of the later rounds. What good will it do a franchise to have the #1 pick in every round if they draft a stud in the first round and completely drop the ball in the next 24-25(depending upon compensation picks) That would mean that the club had roughly picks number 1, 43, 75, 107 & 139.
Wasting a top 75 pick is beyond foolish to begin with. A high second round draft choice is sometimes just as valuable as a first round selection in the early to mid 20's.
Not every team sees the same draft pool due to scouting budgets, also not every team ranks the pool the same way. 10 GM's might see the exact same pool with the same projections but 10 people will likely always have 10 different opinions upon how to ascertain the value of a player.
Some seek the closest to becoming a major leaguer, others prefer taking a stab at selecting the player with the highest ceiling. With so many unknowns it is vital that a GM does his homework in the draft. It could be the difference between a disappointing season or a world series championship.
Let us also not forget that philosophy plays a huge role in the draft rankings as well.
There are some GM's who's stance is that a closer should never be your first round pick, other who are in the NL and refuse to draft a DH type because they could never be used in a ML capacity and there are others still who have even more variations of "non draftable".
There is simply too much talent floating around every season in the draft to haphazardly give away compensation picks for "so-so" and fringe players.
I have even taken a close look at my own draft history and sure enough when i have had a strong first 5 picks and mined that talent out it has allowed me to pull off trades, allow them to develop and become a part of my ML squad and has simply made the franchise more valuable.
It's alot better to be bugged constantly about your nice prospects sitting in the minors than it is to go to make a trade and to be told "i'm not seeing much there, sorry" .
What you do is up to you but this GM plans to take the draft much more seriously in the future.
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