Schad wrote:Skin Blues wrote:The first study is from a 2015 trade in which the pick in question was after the first round, not after the second round. And the second study concludes that a pick in the 26-30 range would be worth around $8.1M. That's before the first comp round, let alone the second comp round. Extrapolate it out and it comes in at around the $3M mark.
The THT extends to the 60th pick, and the curve certainly doesn't suggest that it'd be $3m by pick 75.
Read to the end of the article. The graph you're looking at doesn't tell the full story in terms of present day dollar value on the surplus WAR. To quote:
"a pick in the 26-30 range (like the one the Braves gave up for Ervin Santana) appears to be worth around $16.6 million in today’s dollars. However, when you account for the fact that the pick won’t produce any value for years to come, the value drops more than 50 percent to $8.1 million."
So, $8.1M for what on that graph is shown as 2.2 surplus WAR. The 75th pick is worth about half of that if you use the formula on the chart. So, sure, the chart suggests maybe $4M. But almost all data points for picks >25 are well below the curve, suggesting the model over-values later draft picks. And of course, we have two real-life trades of cash for draft picks that are identical to the one we'd have got for Donaldson that says it's worth $3M. So we have a very good idea what the market actually values them at.
Schad wrote:Skin Blues wrote:A simple way to look at this is: if second round comp picks were worth $7M, why was nobody willing to give even half of that amount for the two that the Orioles traded away in 2015 and 2016?
Because the Orioles are cheap, stupid and have never understood the value of player development?
Yeah, I'm not gonna buy that it happened twice in a row like that. As stupid as they are, chances of them selling a pick for less than 50% of market value once are slim. Selling nearly the same pick again, for less than half market value again, is practically impossible. It requires prolonged stupidity from all 29 other teams that didn't even make an offer or send a text saying "wtf I'd give you double" after the first time.