I have been intrigued and have been closely following the Tigers drafts over the past 4 years. I decided to try and quantify how well the Tigers did in the 2018-2021 drafts, and if they were successful or not and how they compared to the other teams in MLB over these four years.

I decided on a number of metrics to quantify all this.

1.) How large were each team's aggregate bonus pools.

2.) How much actual money did each team spend relative to their designated bonus pool.

3.) How much aggregate value did each team acquire through the draft.

4.) How much "surplus value" each team was able to get in the drafts. Surplus value would be defined as the value of the player taken versus the value of the bonus slot.

5.) How efficient MLB teams were with their overall bonus pool in drafting the players they drafted.

How To Measure This

The bonus pools and how much each team spent is a very easy number to calculate as these numbers are readily available at Baseball Reference, and the bonus pools are fixed amounts.

The more difficult measurement was the issue of how to measure the quality of all the players selected. Since we are looking at 2018-2021, very few of the players drafted have made a major league roster, and if they have had their MLB debut the value they will provide will likely be in the future, not in the very recent past. Because of this I decided to develop a value for each player at the time of the draft.

To determine this "Player Value" I decided to use the publicly available Pre-Draft rankings from what I would consider to be reliable sources. These sources are;

1.) MLB Pipeline

2.) FanGraphs

3.) Baseball America

4.) Prospects Live

5.) Prospects 1500

Advantages of this approach

1.) The pre-rank values are all pre-draft so there is no bias that can creep in after players are already drafted.

2.) These are all independent sites, with no particular team bias.

3.) All the sites have a history of player evaluation, and generally they have a fairly large number of players that they rank, so this becomes more comprehensive list.

Disadvantages of this approach

1.) The sites do not rank a consistent or comprehensive list of players.

For instance, in 2021 FanGraphs only ranked 78 Players, MLB Pipeline ranked 250, Prospects Live ranked 500, and Prospects 1500 ranked 350, and I was not able to access Baseball America.

For 2018 Baseball America ranked 500, MLB Pipeline ranked 200, FanGraphs ranked 130, and I was unable to access a list from either Prospects Live or Prospect 1500.

2.) These sites all have limited scouting resources, particularly compared to MLB clubs. The result is that there are many quality players that are not rated at all, not necessarily because the said players are not of draft quality, but because they do not play at schools that will be scouted by these services. This means that many players get drafted by MLB teams, and likely deserve to be drafted, but are not rated very highly when using these sites as a proxy for determining value.

How large were each teams aggregate bonus pools?

Here is the list of all 30 MLB teams, and their Bonus Pool amount for each year, and the total bonus pool allotted to each team over that time frame.

The values above are the cumulative slot value for all players in Round 1 through 10 only, as those are the only draft slots that have a slot value. All draft picks starting in Round 11 are given the same slot value, and that slot value is not included in the aggregate bonus pool. For this time period, the Tigers have had the largest aggregate bonus pool with the Royals second and the Astros had the smallest bonus pool. It is not surprising that the Tigers have had the largest bonus pool as they have been the worst team in MLB during that time, winning only 198 games in the four-year span.

It is not surprising that the Astros had the smallest as they won the World Series in 2017 resulting in the 28th pick in the first round in 2018, and the 32nd pick in the 1st round in 2019, and they lost their 1st and 2nd round picks in 2021, and their first-round pick in 2020.

The Tigers had the most money to spend, so the big question is, did they take advantage of this opportunity at drafting highly ranked players in each draft?

How much aggregate value did each team acquire through the draft?

The results here for the top two and the bottom team in the list does not change; Tigers, Royals and Astros. The Tigers had the most money to spend and they acquired the greatest aggregate amount of talent, $50,396,800 to spend and $50,179,100 acquired. The Royals had $49,378,900 to spend and they acquired $44,390,264 in value.

One point I want to make at this point, because of the methodology it is very difficult to acquire more talent than your bonus pool would indicate. There are several reasons for this:

1. The pre-ranked list of players is developed pre-draft and this means that many high school players will be pre-ranked, but they will inform teams that they intend on attending college, and as a result they are not drafted. This means that these un-drafted HS players will suck up some of the pre-ranked value that cannot be recovered by MLB teams, which will mean in aggregate all the teams will have a drafted value that is less than the pre-ranked value.
2. Similarly, a few college juniors and sophomores on that list do not like their draft slot and choose not to sign. This will again suck up pre-ranked value.
3. Because the pre-ranked list is not a comprehensive list, some players are not on the list and they are assigned a pre-ranked value not exactly the minimum slot amount, but something close to that.

To recap this the Tigers had the most money to spend and they were able to draft the greatest amount of aggregate talent, according to pre-draft rankings, for the four drafts in question.

How much "surplus value" was each team able to get in the drafts?

Surplus value would be defined as the value of the player taken based upon that players pre-rank as determined by the scouting publications rankings, versus the value of the bonus slot of where they were actually drafted. Again, it is important to recognize that in aggregate the surplus value for all 30 teams will necessarily be negative. Remember that MLB pipeline only rates 200 to 250 players, but there are about 315-320 players drafted in the first 10 rounds, meaning that the Pre-Rank value for the extra players will be substantially less than the slot value of where they were picked.

In aggregate over the past 4 years the Tigers have been the second most efficient team in getting surplus value. The Tigers had a bonus pool of $50,396,800, and drafted talent with a Pre-Rank value of $50,179,100, giving a surplus value of ($217,700). The only team with a better surplus value was the Washington Nationals, who had a Bonus Pool $27,001,100 and acquired talent valued at $27,111,828, for a surplus value $110,728. Here is a recap of each of the 4 Tiger drafts;

2018

In 2018 the Tigers drafted Casey Mize, which was the fourth year in a row the Tigers selected a pitcher with their first pick. Casey Mize was the unanimous #1 ranked prospect by all the services. It was not possible to get surplus value for Casey Mize as he was pre-ranked one and drafted 1, so a surplus value of $0.

Parker Meadows was taken 44th by the Tigers, and was rated 46th by FanGraphs, 42nd by MLB Pipeline, and 56th by Baseball America.

Cody Clemens was taken 79th by the Tigers, and he was not rated in the top 130 by FanGraphs, was rated 179 by MLB Pipeline, and 208 by Baseball America.

Tarik Skubal was not rated by FanGraphs, MLB Pipeline, or Baseball America (Eric De La Rosa, and Jeremiah Burks were also not rated). As a result, he has a negative surplus value, but even though he was taken in the ninth round the Tigers paid him fifth round money

2019

For the first time in four years the Tigers selected a position player with their first pick, in Riley Greene, and did not take a pitcher until Zack Hess in the seventh round.

Riley Greene was taken fifth in the draft, and was pre-ranked by FanGraphs at #6, MLB Pipeline and #6, and Prospects live at #4.

Nick Quintana was taken 47th by the Tigers, was pre-ranked by FanGraphs at 42nd, MLB Pipeline at 77th and Prospects Live at 84th.

Ryan Kriedler was taken 112th by the Tigers and was rated 115th by FanGraphs, 200th by MLB Pipeline, and unranked by Prospects Live.

Jack Kenley was the player that provided the greatest amount of surplus value in the draft, as he was taken 232nd by the Tigers, but was pre-rated 81st by FanGraphs and unrated by the other two. Kenley is no longer in the Tigers organization, and he is playing in the Atlantic League.

Zack Hess was the only pitcher taken within the top 8 picks for 2019 and 2020. He was taken 202 overall, and was pre-ranked as a fourth round pick (95th by MLB Pipeline, 91st by prospects live and 188th by FanGraphs).

2020

In 2020 the Tigers selected Spencer Torkelson, and he was the consensus #1 player in the pre-draft rankings.

The Tigers were able to get significant surplus value for their second pick Dillon Dingler. The Tigers took Dingler 38th, and he was ranked, 23rd, 24th, 29th, and 36th by the various publications.

With their third, fifth and sixth picks, the Tigers were able to get $1.57 million of surplus value. The only pick with negative surplus value was Trei Cruz. The Tigers were able to sign Workman to well over slot based almost completely based upon the fact that they had the largest bonus pool, meaning these could exceed their bonus pool by just over $740,000 before incurring stiff penalties, and much of that overage went to paying Workman.

2021

When drafting there are three basic strategies a team can deploy;

1. Take the highest rated player on your board on every pick and take the risk that at some point you will not be able to sign a player because the bonus you offer does not match what they expected to be offered.
2. Take a lower rated player that you like and will likely select later, early in the draft, and sign that player for a below slot bonus, and use that savings later to draft and sign players that slide in the draft.
3. Take the highest rated players on your board through the top 100 picks, and use one or two picks in rounds 4-8 to take a player you like, several rounds earlier than you anticipated. Sign them below slot, and use the slot savings to sweeten your bonus offers to your top 100 selections.

In the 2021 draft the Tigers deployed the third approach. The Tigers got three players with significant surplus value in Ty Madden, Izaac Pacheco, and Dylan Smith, and to pay for those three the Tigers used some of the savings from Jackson Jobe, plus savings from Tyler Mattison and Tanner Kohlhepp.

Mattison is from Bryant University, which plays in a lower end conference in New England. He was not pre-ranked by any of the publications, likely because he was not scouted by any of them. Bryant University has a very good baseball program, they are clearly the big fish in that small pond. To put that into perspective, Mattison is the 22nd player drafted out of Bryant since 2009. There are no scouting reports on him, so I will scout his stat line, and he had some very nice college stats. It is clear the Tigers were looking to draft him somewhere around the 6th to the 8th round. The Tigers drafted him in the 4th round and paid him 6th round money, and the Tigers used that savings on Pacheco. Kohlhepp is a similar situation, a hard throwing single innings relief pitcher that was likely to be taken in the 6th to the 8th round he was paid 6th round money, and the Tigers used that savings to help pay Pacheco.

In the first round the Tigers took Jackson Jobe, and he was clearly the highest rated player on their board. This was not a case of selecting a player you thought you could get later, because the Tigers knew he would not be available at their next pick #34. There was a lot of debate about taking Marcelo Meyer, but I felt the Tigers needed to take pitching in this draft.

The Tigers went pitching heavy in 2015-2018 taking 8 pitchers with their highest picks, and trading for Joey Wentz (first round 2016), Alex Lange (first round 2017), Paul Richan (second round 2018), Reece Olsen (2018 draft) and Franklin Perez (2014 international free agent).

After picking Mize in the first round in 2018, the next three picks were position players. The top six picks in 2019 were position players and all the picks in 2020 were position players. In addition to this the Tigers international signings with bonuses in excess of $500,000 were;

Of the 13 players on this list, only one is a pitcher. Since drafting Casey Mize, the Tigers have taken 26 position players with their highest draft picks and international signings, and only a single pitcher. In addition, the Tigers have had three talented young pitchers undergo Tommy John surgery, plus Paul Richan has been out since mid-June and Franklin Perez had surgery on his shoulder earlier this season.

The upshot of all this is the Tigers needed to focus on pitching in this draft, and since the Tigers had Jobe as the top pitcher on their board, when their turn arrived, Jackson Jobe made sense. The fact that the Tigers were able to sign him below slot and use those savings on Ty Madden made even more sense.

Recap

Over the last four years the Tigers have been suffering through a long and arduous rebuild, and they have accumulated a record of 198 wins and 345 losses. All the losing has resulted in getting the four top-five picks in the draft, as well as competitive balance picks in the first and second rounds. After suffering through four dreadful years and hoping the Tigers make their enhanced draft spots count, it seems now is a good time to evaluate the overall performance in making draft decisions over the years.

Attempting to evaluate drafts is something that takes a very long time. Most players spend 3-6 years in the minors, and usually don’t hit their major league peak for several years after that. Realistically you cannot evaluate a draft until 6-8 years after the draft, so I wanted to look at what some "experts" thought of the players at the time of the draft.

For the period of 2018-2021 the Tigers have had the most money to spend, with an aggregate bonus pool of $50.4 million. For this period, the Tigers drafted an aggregate amount of talent of $50.2 million, which is far and away the most talent accumulated by any team. There were only two other organizations that accumulated at least $40 million in aggregate talent. Most of the aggregate value in the draft comes from the picks in the Top-100 picks; nearly 80% of the bonus pool is used by the top 100 picks, and the next 212 picks account for only 20% of the value. The Tigers had 14 picks in the top 100, which is just slightly more than the average for all teams (13.3 top 100 picks).

The second-best team in accumulated value was the Kansas City Royals. KC had $49.3 million to spend and acquired talent, according to the experts, worth $44.4 million. That difference in value is the equivalent of the slot value of the sixth pick in the draft, which is a very significant difference. Kansas City acquired this talent with 18 picks in the Top-100, including six first round picks and four second round picks.

Overall the Tigers had the second-most amount of surplus value, i.e. letting the draft come to them and selecting the best player available, and as a result getting players that have slipped, and also picking players that they liked. The only team with more surplus value was the Washington Nationals. Washington had a bonus pool of $27.0 million, and drafted players worth $27.1 million. One must give kudos to the Nats for their approach, but recognize that the Tigers acquired $23 million more in talent than the Nats, which is over 85% of the aggregate bonus pool for the Nats. The Tigers may have been slightly less efficient, but they acquired nearly twice as much aggregate talent.