Atlanta Braves should dump that draft-pick for a starting pitcher

Valuing the next Atlanta Braves second-round pick

Instead of attempting to do something others can do better than me, it seemed reasonable to find someone who did the work and published it.

In April, Craig Edwards, writing for Fangraphs, penned An Update on How to Value Draft Picks. He based his estimates of the future-value draft-picks on the production of picks from in past years.

". . . For picks in rounds 11-20, a team can expect an average player every two or three seasons. The same is true for rounds three and four combined. It’s hard to find good players in the draft after the first round. There’s as much value in the first 100 picks as in the entire rest of the draft . . ."

Edwards work breaks down picks by round, but rounds are long, and there are those pesky comp picks scattered here and there randomly. It’s more realistic to look at the player’s overall pick number than the round the team selected him.

Using the overall pick number, an average player comes from overall selections 61 through 120, every two or three seasons.

Since the draft structure changed in 2013, round two selections began as low as # 36 and ended as high as #73.

Data from Baseball-Reference’s draft query page.

Now we have the first part of the data needed to decide if the value of the Atlanta Braves second-round selection next June, is greater than the value of signing a free agent with QO attached. Next, we need to know the draft order and the general area where the second-round pick falls in the draft.

What’s your number?

For the record… From mlb.com:

"• A team that neither exceeded the luxury tax in the preceding season nor receives revenue sharing will lose its second-highest selection in the following year’s Draft as well as $500,000 from its international bonus pool. If it signs two such players, it will also forfeit its third-highest remaining pick. The 13 clubs that fall into this category during the 2019-20 offseason are the Angels, Astros, Blue Jays, Braves, Cardinals, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Mets, Nationals, Phillies, Rangers and White Sox."

The Braves will have some monies to spend in their International bonus pool – half of a normal allotment, so that’s slightly relevant.

Fox Sports reports that the Atlanta Braves will draft at position #25 in 2020, after the Rays and ahead of the Athletics. Given the varying number of compensation picks each year, the Braves’ second-round pick falls somewhere between 66 and 72.  More from Edwards’ post:

"Teams signing free agents who have received a qualifying offer generally lose their second pick, and that pick is worth somewhere between $4 million and $10 million depending on where in the draft the team is picking."

He also provided a chart that shows his third-round picks (numbers 60 through 90) are worth $3.8M, making $4M a safe guess at the value of the Atlanta Braves 2020 second-round pick.

The value of the draft pick is based on projected production over six seasons of team control. If the Braves sign a QO player, that player needs only to outperform his contract by $4M – roughly 0.4 fWAR over the life of his deal – to replace the lost production for that draft pick.

If a team doesn’t believe a player will provide excess value over the life of his contract, why would they sign him?