12

Amateur Draft

Everybody thinks they can be a GM or president of baseball operations. It comes with the territory.—THEO EPSTEIN, baseball executive

After several ill-fated attempts to curtail huge bonuses given to amateur players, at the 1964 winter meetings baseball owners agreed to create an amateur draft, officially the Rule 4 Draft but usually called the “first-year player draft.” In the succeeding five decades, the amateur draft has been the primary mechanism for Major League teams to acquire high school and college players from the United States, U.S. territories (such as Puerto Rico as of 1989), and Canada (as of 1991). Originally, there were three drafts: the largest one in June and others in August (for players who played American Legion ball) and January (for players who finished high school or college in the fall). As of 1987 there has been a single June draft.

The purpose of the draft was obvious: owners were tired of giving out large bonuses to amateur players and had been unable to stop even in the face of rules that essentially penalized themselves for doing so. In June 1964 the Los Angeles Angels gave more than $200,000 to twenty-one-year-old University of Wisconsin outfielder Rick Reichardt, and soon after Kansas City owner Charlie Finley disclosed that he had disbursed $634,000 to eighty players that year.1 When the two leagues responded by finally approving the draft, they were taking a step already embraced by both the National Football League (in 1936) and the Basketball Association of America, a forerunner to the National Basketball Association (in 1947).

The draft dramatically changed the way teams brought players into their organizations. Gone were the days when a wealthy team could outbid the competition for top talent. The Angels were able to sign Reichardt not because they had outscouted the other nineteen teams—everyone was well aware of Reichardt’s talent—but because the Angels ponied up the most money. Had the draft been in place in 1964, Reichardt might very well have been the first selection by either the Mets or the Senators (the two last-place teams in 1963).

Moreover, because a team was limited by its draft position, its scouts could no longer sign as many top prospects as the ownership would afford or they could hustle. Finley or Buzzie Bavasi could no longer replenish their systems by pursuing a large class of amateurs all at once. And traditional winners like the Yankees could no longer lure a prospect with the Yankee mystique and the promise of World Series riches down the line.

Nevertheless, once one got past the first handful of players—the blue-chip prospects that everyone generally agreed on—the draft still afforded an advantage to teams that could identify future regulars and stars and develop them. As an illustration: In the first thirty drafts (through 1994) Major League teams drafted eighty-six players, just fewer than three per draft, who would go on to earn fifty or more WAR in their careers.2 Although twenty-three of these were selected within the first ten picks in their draft year, another twenty-eight were drafted after the fourth round. There is an unmistakable advantage to getting one of the top picks, but there is still plenty of room for good scouting to make a difference. In the very first draft, in June 1965, there were no fifty-WAR players taken in the first round, but Johnny Bench went in the second (the 36th overall pick) and Nolan Ryan in the twelfth (the 295th pick).

As a way to study the history of the draft, we created a database of every Major League player who has played since 1965, noted how they first entered organized baseball, and recorded their yearly “wins above replacement” totals. When using WAR at the team level, the reader should keep in mind that a team whose players accumulate 0 WAR in a season would be expected to have a record of around 47-115. In order to compete for a division title or a playoff berth, a team would need its players to accumulate somewhere around 40–45 WAR.

We first calculated how much on-field Major League talent, year to year, originally came into organized baseball via the draft. Chart 4 illustrates for the forty-six seasons from 1965 to 2010 the percentage of WAR accounted for by players who were drafted and ultimately signed.

Chart 4. MLB WAR from drafted players

Source: Database owned and maintained by the authors.

It took a few years for the talent from the early drafts to make an impact, but by 1971 fully 20 percent of Major League talent had come from the draft and more than half by 1975. It generally takes a few years for drafted players to reach the Major Leagues and perhaps six to eight years for the best players to reach their peak value. In the past twenty years the draft has become slightly less important (though still dominant) because of the influx of non-American players who have been either signed as amateurs or acquired from non-U.S. leagues.

Although teams can find talent in other countries or acquire developed talent from other teams through trading or midcareer free-agent signings, history has shown that they can put themselves at a big advantage by drafting astutely and developing these draftees.

In the history of the draft a typical team in a typical year drafts players who, collectively, are destined to produce 25 to 30 future WAR. In 1965 the Reds drafted 122 future WAR (mostly Bench), and then followed that up in succeeding years with 18, 6, 13, 63, and 32. No team has figured out how to find a superstar every year; most team histories are a mix of good drafts and bad drafts. Teams that can put a few good drafts together in a short window usually have contending teams several years later when these players develop.

In June 1965 the Kansas City Athletics, with the first pick in the first draft, selected Arizona State outfielder Rick Monday. By picking Sal Bando and Gene Tenace the same year, the Athletics put together a draft class (141 WAR) that still ranks as the eighth best in history. They built on this the next two years with two drafts that are in the top 10 percent of all drafts, nabbing Reggie Jackson in 1966 and then Darrell Evans and Vida Blue in 1967. Though they lost Evans in the Rule 5 Draft a year later (because he was not placed on their forty-man roster), the A’s (relocated to Oakland) built upon these three excellent draft classes, made a few astute trades, and won three World Series in the early 1970s.

The greatest single draft class was that of the 1968 Los Angeles Dodgers, who selected and signed 234 future WAR. This group included Ron Cey, Dave Lopes, Steve Garvey, Doyle Alexander, Joe Ferguson, Geoff Zahn, and Bill Buckner. The Dodgers’ top pick that year—Bobby Valentine—had a promising career snuffed out by an injury, but the depth of this draft remains unprecedented even decades later. The Dodgers had drafted Bill Russell, Charlie Hough, and Steve Yeager over the previous two years, and most of this group stayed together to help win four pennants and a World Series over an eight-year period. The nature of scouting had changed, but the Dodgers, led by their brilliant scouting director Al Campanis, could still find tremendous value where other teams had not.

In the previous chapter we discussed three American League teams—the Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, and Baltimore Orioles—that won pennants in the late 1960s and began competing with each other in the new AL East in 1969. The talent-acquisition revolution caused by the draft played a large role in determining how these teams, and all other teams, performed on the field in the 1970s.

The Boston Red Sox won the pennant in 1967 with an extremely young team. Their best players were Carl Yastrzemski (twenty-seven), Jim Lonborg (twenty-five), Rico Petrocelli (twenty-four), Joe Foy (twenty-four), George Scott (twenty-three), Mike Andrews (twenty-three), Tony Conigliaro (twenty-two), and Reggie Smith (twenty-two). Their oldest important contributors were midseason pickups Gary Bell and Jerry Adair (each thirty).

That said, this core of players met with quite a bit of misfortune. Conigliaro’s beaning cost him more than a season, and he had just two full years left in his once-promising career. Lonborg never attained the heights of 1967 after his skiing accident. Foy, so promising in 1966, never repeated that season and was out of baseball by 1971. Scott had a gruesome 1968 and several inconsistent years thereafter. Only Yastrzemski, Petrocelli, and Smith stayed on track, helping the club into the 1970s.

Although GM Dick O’Connell could not have known this at the time, his team was going to need reinforcements much sooner than the ages of their stars would otherwise have indicated. The Minor League system that had produced the great bounty in the middle 1960s was going to have to keep supplying it, only this time via the amateur draft. Remarkably, the system delivered. Table 8 lists players selected and signed by the Red Sox in the first nine drafts who became All-Stars. The table lists their future WAR and their number of All-Star selections.

Table 8. Red Sox All-Star draftees

Year	Player	WAR	ASG
1965	Amos Otis	43	5
1966	Ken Brett	17	1
1967	Carlton Fisk	69	11
1968	Cecil Cooper	36	6
1968	Ben Oglivie	26	3
1968	Bill Lee	22	1
1968	Lynn McGlothlen	15	1
1969	Dwight Evans	69	3
1970	Rick Burleson	23	4
1971	Jim Rice	47	8
1972	Don Aase	15	1
1972	Ernie Whitt	18	1
1973	Fred Lynn	50	9

Source: http://BaseballReference.com.

The Red Sox lost Otis to the Mets in a Minor League draft after just two years, but the best of the rest joined the Major League club two or three years after they were drafted. Not surprisingly, this was enough to keep the club contending for another decade, winning a pennant in 1975 and nearly winning a few others.

Looking at table 8, one might reasonably ask why the team did not perform even better than they did in the 1970s. One problem is that the talent the Red Sox produced in the 1960s and 1970s was not evenly distributed; the team was generally loaded with outfielders and first basemen but did not have enough good pitchers or infielders. O’Connell was tasked with the job of making trades to balance the team, and he did not trade particularly well. Beginning in 1969 he dealt Ken Harrelson, Conigliaro, Scott, Smith, Ben Oglivie, and Cecil Cooper, all outfielders and first basemen, and did not recoup nearly the equivalent value. The latter four all had multiple All-Star seasons ahead of them, while the best of the acquired players (pitchers Sonny Siebert, Marty Pattin, and Rick Wise) had a handful of good seasons in the rotation.

O’Connell’s worst sequence of deals involved the first base position. After the 1971 season O’Connell packaged the frustrating Scott and Lonborg (who, it turned out, was finally about to turn things around) in a deal with the Brewers mainly to get more pitching (Pattin) and speed (Tommy Harper). Of the ten players in the deal, Scott had the best future, putting together five good years with the Brewers, winning a home run title and five Gold Gloves. The Red Sox hoped to give the vacated first base job to Cooper, a top prospect, but when manager Eddie Kasko determined he was not ready in the spring of 1972, O’Connell dealt pitcher Sparky Lyle to the Yankees for veteran first baseman Danny Cater. Lyle became a star in New York, Cater was awful, and the Red Sox moved Yastrzemski to first while they waited for Cooper to develop.

Meanwhile, the club kept developing outfielders, keeping Yastrzemski in the infield and seriously delaying the career of Cooper, who played part-time for a few years and showed promise. After the 1976 season O’Connell, unaware of what he had, traded Cooper and Bernie Carbo, another good-hitting outfielder, to the Brewers to get Scott back. Scott was now thirty-three and had just one decent season left, while Cooper went on to star in Milwaukee for a decade. All told, these few decisions cost Boston the prime years of Scott, Cooper, and Lyle, with little to show for any of it.

O’Connell got away with these poor trades because the club drafted and developed so well. In 1977 the homegrown club had an outfield of Yastrzemski, Lynn, and Evans (who missed time with a knee injury), with Rice serving as the designated hitter (DH) and Scott having his last good year. The team did not miss Smith, Cooper, and Oglivie directly, at least not yet, and remained competitive for several more seasons.

The Baltimore Orioles, made up mainly of predraft players signed and developed in their organization, burst through to dominate the AL East from 1969 to 1971, winning three AL pennants and the 1970 World Series. The Orioles had also made some great trades, acquiring Frank Robinson in 1965, Don Buford in 1967, and Mike Cuellar in 1968. Harry Dalton also dealt for Pat Dobson in 1971, and the right-hander teamed with Cuellar, Dave McNally, and Jim Palmer to give the club four twenty-game winners. It was a tremendous team, well balanced and filled with stars.

The Orioles did not select as well as the Red Sox did in the early drafts, but they found a few gems, as table 9 shows.

Table 9. Orioles All-Star draftees

Year	Player	WAR	ASG
1967	Bobby Grich	71	6
1967	Don Baylor	28	1
1968	Al Bumbry	24	1
1970	Doug DeCinces	42	1
1973	Eddie Murray	68	8
1973	Mike Flanagan	26	1

Source: http://BaseballReference.com.

During this period the Orioles added on average just over thirty future WAR through the draft, scarcely more than the overall average. When factoring in that the Orioles’ success on the field meant they rarely had a high draft pick, their drafting results appear more impressive.

After the Orioles lost the 1971 World Series, Dalton left Baltimore to take a job with the lowly California Angels. Dalton had played a large role in building this great team, but now itched for the challenge of starting from scratch and assumed the reins of a team that had struggled on and off the field for several years. Frank Cashen, the Orioles’ president and Dalton’s boss, took over the general manager duties himself.

On October 19, just two days after losing the final game of the 1971 World Series to the Pirates, Dalton prepared a memorandum for Cashen outlining his “thoughts on possible trades.” Many of these involved strengthening the bullpen and upgrading the bench, but the most important item stressed making room on the club for Minor League stars such as Baylor and Grich. In particular, Dalton suggested trading the face of the team, star outfielder Frank Robinson. “I might even consider a good prospect and some cash or a young Major League player who has potential but has not matured yet,” wrote Dalton. “It will be tough to get much else for him, but I now feel it is absolutely essential to trade him if we can, and I would like to trade him to a club which pleases him. This would probably be the Dodgers, a New York club, and maybe any of the other clubs in California.”3

Whether this influenced Cashen is not known, but on December 2 he traded Robinson to the Dodgers for four prospects, one of whom, Doyle Alexander, won 194 games over nineteen big-league seasons. The trade shocked the Oriole players and fans, many of whom blamed this deal for the club’s dreadful offensive performance in 1972, when they dropped from a league-leading 4.7 runs per game to an eighth-best 3.4 and consequently to third place.

This proved to be an aberration, as the team regrouped to win division titles the next two seasons and won 90 or more games in nine of the next eleven years. Cashen made several outstanding trades in the 1973 and 1974 off-seasons, acquiring pitchers Ross Grimsley and Mike Torrez, first baseman Lee May, and outfielder Ken Singleton without losing a single player the Orioles needed. These deals, along with the draft picks noted in table 9, were enough to keep the Orioles near the top in the mid-1970s. Within a few years the team had different ownership and management, and the organization gradually began to lose some of its shine. After eighteen winning years, the club finally finished under .500 in 1986.

The 1968 Tigers, consisting almost entirely of players signed by their scouts and developed in their system, won 103 games and the World Series. The heart of this team was mainly in its prime: only three regulars (Al Kaline, Norm Cash, and Earl Wilson) were over thirty, and many of their best players were in their midtwenties. But other than a fluky title in a weak division in 1972, these Tigers never contended again and were in last place by 1974. What happened? The answer is simple: the Tigers drafted miserably in the first several drafts and were unable to replace their 1968 core as it aged.

In 1965 the Tigers selected and signed three players who would eventually play in the Major Leagues: Gene Lamont (with the thirteenth overall pick), Gary Taylor, and Bill Butler. This turned out to be one of their better early drafts. In fact, the Tigers did not land an impact Major Leaguer until 1974 when they selected catcher Lance Parrish. By that time, when nearly half of the WAR in the Major Leagues was generated by players who had come through the first nine drafts (1965–73), the best Tiger draftees had been Elliott Maddox, Vern Ruhle, and Leon Roberts. It is no wonder that the Tigers fell to last place. When their roster began sprouting the inevitable holes, the Tigers lacked qualified replacements down on the farm.

In fact, the Tigers of this era had the most stable roster in baseball history. Nine Tigers—Gates Brown, Norm Cash, Bill Freehan, Willie Horton, Al Kaline, Mickey Lolich, Dick McAuliffe, Jim Northrup, and Mickey Stanley—were together for the entire decade of 1964 to 1973, easily a record. John Hiller just missed this list, joining the club in 1965 and staying on for fifteen years. Loyalty of this sort has its merits, but by the early 1970s several of these players were barely contributing and the team was alarmingly old. Brown, certainly capable of holding down a regular job somewhere in these years, spent thirteen seasons with the Tigers competing for playing time with the same four outfielders. The Tigers inexplicably chose to hang on to Brown rather than using him as trade bait to acquire an infielder and giving him a chance for a more rewarding career.

Tigers GM Jim Campbell chose to allow his team to age while he waited for the fruits of his farm system, help that had arrived so impressively throughout the 1960s. When reinforcements failed to arrive, his aging regulars had no competition for jobs, and Campbell had little to offer other teams in trade. Ultimately, the Tigers would have to wait until the late 1970s, when Lance Parrish, Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, and Kirk Gibson, all astute Tiger draft picks, helped usher in another great period of Tiger baseball.

How teams adapt to changing circumstances can affect their fortunes for years to come. The Red Sox, Orioles, and Tigers, dormant franchises in the 1950s, all successfully revamped their front offices and became regular contenders by the late 1960s. The three clearly diverged, however, when the first-year player draft became the principal means of acquiring amateur talent. Some of the most important skills of the predraft era—money, hustle, and the ability to sell the benefits of one’s Major League franchise—no longer mattered to the same degree. The remaining skill—talent evaluation—was all that mattered now, and teams needed to adapt to the new reality.