ralphwiggum774

Ralph made this in excel all by myself! Yeah!

My personal $0.02 is that it this long drought of developing position players was brought about by front office philosophy. For the longest time, the Cubs organization was governed by old-school baseball thought. Their drafts emphasized power for position players above everything else (think - Ryan Harvey). Thankfully over the last 2 years the Cubs have actually become more statistically oriented in their draft (although not even to be considered a sabermetric team). I think their 2007 draft was the begining. Take a look at their first 10 draft picks with their walk rate per plate appearance: 1. HS Vitters, 3B (n/a) 1. COL Donaldson, C (15%!) 3. COL Thomas, 2B (14%) 4. COL Barney, SS (11%) 5. COL Guyer, OF (8%) 6. Pitcher 7. COL Wright, OF (8%) 8. COL Smith, 3B (11%) 9. COL Hardman, OF (4%) 10. COL Johnson, OF (11%) There's only 1 pitcher in the top ten picks and only 1 high school bat! 8 polished college bats were taken and most of them had nice walk rates. Baseballprospectus called this the TTNSTAAPP draft. (There is no such thing as a pitching prospect draft.) In truth, the Cubs are learning. Polished college bats are available and it is inexcusable for a team to not develop position players today since their outcomes are so much easier to predict than pitchers. It's fun (and painful) to look in retrospect what the Cubs failures include in the drafts: 2003 - with the 6th overall pick, our beloved organization chose Ryan Harvey who was predicted to have 40HR power in his peak if he could learn not to strikeout and take a walk - something alien to him. Today he has not learned to solve this problem and contrinues to strike out in 33% of his at bats and walk in less than 4% of his plate appearances. (In fairness to him, he is off to an OK start in AA.) Taken next was the great Nick Markakis, a junior college player who had demolished the competition at a higher level and who was known to have a patient eye and controlled bat to limit strikeouts and still hit 30HRs a year in his peak. I believe Ryan Harvey signed for $4 million while Markakis signed for less than half that. 2004 - N/A 2005 - the greatest draft in recent memory. Our wondrous organization selected HS LHP Mark Pawelek as the 20th pick ahead of Jacoby Ellsbury, Colby Rasmus, Travis Buck, Jed Lowrie, Chase Headley, and Yunel Escobar among other players who are raking in AA and AAA right now. Pawelek has played for 3 seasons now in rookie ball and short season ball and the highest he has ever gotten is low A ball where he pitched only 4 innings. 2006 - not a bad idea to take a proven college player in Tyler Colvin. Not a bad pick at all considering he is a superior defender, bats lefty, shows good power, was a full year younger than most juniors in college, and had a low strikeout rate. The bad was that he had a low walk rate. He won't be ready to contribute until late 2009 or 2010 if he can pass the AA test this year. Maybe his projection looks like .275/.325/.475. He won't take a walk but that line isn't bad at all for a CF. Although he may have a long growth curve before he gets to that level because his worth is completely determined by his batting average which can be influenced by luck and dips in the majors because of better defenders. A player who might turn out to be better than Colvin was received from the San Diego Padres and he was drafted in the supplemental first round - Kyler Burke. A lefty OF with power and a beautiful walk rate. He is 20-years old and in low A right now. A big sleeper. He can be big but he's the kind of player the Cubs need. I'm very excited to see the 2008 Cubs draft. I believe they have an extra pick because of Jason Kendall's loss to the Brewers. Their 2007 draft showed a mixture of sabermetrics (all those polished and college bats early, trading for Burke from SD) and traditional scouting (Vitters). The Cubs seem to be improving their game, slowly albeit improving.