An observation

this means our draft guys did a great job of evaluating where guys would fall in the draft, and i am glad we ended up with all three. beavan would not have been there at 24, and main would not have been there at 35.

You have no room to talk..

You were the biggest Borbon hater on this site, no doubt…

You were pissed that he was taken at 35…

You hate speed guys…

Borbon….. Barea…… just to mention a couple…

here

First off, you draft based on what you know at the time. Every time I see someone say “Look at how well so-and-so turned out, we should have taken him in 1999!” I sigh. Every player is associated with a probability of failure and a probability of success. Just because in retrospect you see one do better than another doesn’t mean he was the better option at the time.

Secondly, drafting is about quantifying the risks of passing on a guy. Do you take Beavan with a 25% chance of getting Borbon at #35? Or do you take Borbon with a 0% chance of getting Beavan later? Obviously JD understands this type of logic, but I don’t think many do.

I think many people fundamentally misunderstand the draft. People think of it black and white – every player can be a good or bad pick depending on where they are taken. They didn’t understand that even though Borbon was a bad idea at #17 he was a great snag at #35. And even if Beavan fails completely and Borbon becomes a star, I’ll stand by that original analysis.

insurance for Borbon?

Community rankings = wrong in this respect

people trying to analyze baseball maneuvers and trades, it’s the crime of After-The-Fact Reasoning.

And even if Beavan fails completely and Borbon becomes a star, I’ll stand by that original analysis.

I think this is what you mean JBlmaknee.

Remember how glad we were that Julio Borbon wasn’t taken by the Rangers at #17 in 2007…that he was an okay pick, maybe, at #35, but #17 would be way too high?

You realize that, in the community rankings, Borbon is 3 slots ahead of Blake Beavan, who was taken at #17?

Does that mean that, in fact, taking him at #17 instead of Beavan would have been the right move?

You can do better thinking than this. According to your logic, we should have taken Derek Holland in the 1st round.

I guess the way I look at the draft and, similarly, prospect rankings is the same way I look at March Madness sheets. When you fill them out, you’ve got to put down a winner in the first round’s 1st vs. 16th and 8th vs.9th games. You don’t get to put down how likely you think your pick is going to win (>99.99% for the 1 in the former and something like 52% for your choice in the latter).

Same principle applies in baseball drafts and prospect rankings. In the early selections (something like the top 5-7 in the draft or for a prospect list), distinguishing between what prospects will become isn’t necessarily that difficult. But I bet if you went through Basball America’s Rankings of each team’s Top 30 from several years back, you’ll probably find that a player ranked as a team’s #20 prospect is about as likely to be better than a prospect ranked #17 as the other way around.

we now know Borbon would have fallen to #35. during that draft, we weren’t even sure Beavan was going to fall to #17. does anyone thing Beavan would’ve fallen another 18 spots? the picks might have been backwards, but it was probably the only way we would’ve wound up with both guys.