Where Talent Comes From

Saturday, October 21 2006 @ 03:05 AM EDT

Contributed by: Magpie

I was writing about the Tigers the other day, puzzling out how this year's AL champs were assembled. Some of the players were drafted, some were signed as free agents, some were obtained in trade - just like everybody else.

Back in the early days of the Baseball Abstract, Bill James carried out this very same exercise - assembling information on what share of a team's talent was acquired by trade, through the system, via free agency. Back then, James was using something he called the Value Approximation Method (VAM). The VAM used a number of simple cut-off points to arrive at a single integer that could be assigned to any player's season.

The VAM was extremely crude, as James himself would be the first to acknowledge, and the notion of using a single integer to stand in for a player's season is... well, not appealing. Except, of course, when it's useful. Like when you want a way to do rough comparisons between great numbers of seasons. In that instance, the fine distinctions that make Carlos Guillen more valuable than Ivan Rodriguez are not as important as the broader distinctions that makes both of them more valuable than Brandon Inge or Justin Verlander. (Although James' Win Shares method operates on a scale fine enough to make those distinctions as well.)

And so, with no further ado: where do major league teams get their talent?

There are three major sources: the Amateur Draft, Trades, and the signing of professional Free Agents. These are by far the most important. Roughly 90% of the talent in the major leagues got onto a roster by one of these methods; every team has players obtained in each of these ways.

There are other ways for teams to obtain talent - the signing of amateur free agents (mostly Latin players from countries not covered by the amateur draft, as well as some undrafted North American players) has been quite important for some teams. On the other hand, quite a few other teams have no talent at all obtained this way.

In addition, there are several miscellaneous methods of obtaining talent: the Rule V draft, waiver claims, simple cash purchases. I have grouped these last few methods into a catchall category, and given it the original label of "Other." And, as with the amateur free agents, this has been helpful to a few teams, but many others have no talent obtained this way.

A couple of points on classifying certain types of players. The Japanese leagues are regarded as professional leagues. (Duh.) Ichiro Suzuki was an undrafted free agent, but he was certainly playing professional baseball before he joined the Mariners. Like Hideki Matsui, he was already a star. It's not at all like the Yankees signing Mariano Rivera out of Panama back in the day...

When a team re-signs one of its own free agents, I am generally regarding the acquisition of that player with respect to how he joined the team in the first place. For example, Paul Konerko goes into the Obtained by Trade column, even though he was on the free agent market last winter.

Here are the figures for the major leagues as a whole:

                                          Amateur         Pro            Amateur            
             Total WS       Trade          Draft       Free Agent      Free Agent      Other    
MLB TOTAL      7081      2355  33.3%    2100  29.7%    1964  27.7%    413  5.8%    249  3.5%

Here are figures for the two leagues. Overall, you can see that NL teams have a little more talent remaining from their draft picks than they've picked up on the free agent market. It's not a big difference, but it's there. As we'll see, while some NL teams are built almost entirely from free agents, some others have almost ignored this means of acquiring talent.


                                          Amateur          Pro         Amateur            
             Total WS       Trade          Draft        Free Agent    Free Agent      Other    
AL TOTAL       3492      1154  33.0%     999  28.6%    1006  28.8%    223  6.4%    110   3.2%
NL TOTAL       3589      1201  33.5%    1101  30.7%     958  26.7%    190  5.3%    139   3.9%

And, finally, here are the 30 teams:

                                          Amateur          Pro         Amateur            
             Total WS       Trade          Draft        Free Agent   Free Agent      Other    
NY YANKEES      291        60  20.6%      64  22.0%      93  32.0%     70 24.1%      4  1.4%
MINNESOTA       288       127  44.1%     119  41.3%      29  10.1%      8  2.8%      5  1.7%
DETROIT         285        74  26.0%      81  28.4%      87  30.5%     11  3.9%     32 11.2%
OAKLAND         279       138  49.5%      99  35.5%      30  10.8%      0  0.0%     12  4.3%
CHICAGO WS      270       156  57.8%      42  15.6%      63  23.3%      0  0.0%      9  3.3%
LA ANGELS       267        61  22.8%      95  35.6%      82  30.7%     29 10.9%      0  0.0%
BOSTON          261       100  38.3%      60  23.0%      98  37.5%      0  0.0%      3  1.1%
TORONTO         261        73  28.0%     117  44.8%      65  24.9%      6  2.3%      0  0.0%
TEXAS           240        98  40.8%      68  28.3%      70  29.2%      4  1.7%      0  0.0%
CLEVELAND       234       111  47.4%      53  22.6%      47  20.1%     23  9.8%      0  0.0%
SEATTLE         234         9   3.8%      31  13.2%     129  55.1%     55 23.5%     10  4.3%
BALTIMORE       210        43  20.5%      65  31.0%      76  36.2%     11  5.2%     15  7.1%
KANSAS CITY     189        65  34.4%      32  16.9%      71  37.6%      5  2.6%     16  8.5%
TAMPA BAY       183        39  21.3%      73  39.9%      66  36.1%      1  0.5%      4  2.2%
                                                                                                      
NY METS         291        72  24.7%      47  16.2%     143  49.1%     29 10.0%      0  0.0%
LA DODGERS      264        48  18.2%      43  16.3%     161  61.0%      7  2.7%      5  1.9%
SAN DIEGO       264       162  61.4%      46  17.4%      46  17.4%      0  0.0%     10  3.8%
PHILADELPHIA    255        51  20.0%     143  56.1%      38  14.9%      2  0.8%     21  8.2%
ST LOUIS        249        66  26.5%      67  26.9%     107  43.0%      0  0.0%      9  3.6%
HOUSTON         246        59  24.0%     121  49.2%      47  19.1%      6  2.4%     13  5.3%
CINCINNATI      241       125  51.9%      45  18.7%      71  29.5%      0  0.0%      0  0.0%
ATLANTA         237        67  28.3%     115  48.5%      18   7.6%     37 15.6%      0  0.0%
FLORIDA         234        74  31.6%      49  20.9%      40  17.1%     35 15.0%     36 15.4%
ARIZONA         228       108  47.4%      76  33.3%      28  12.3%      9  3.9%      7  3.1%
COLORADO        228        34  14.9%     151  66.2%      24  10.5%      3  1.3%     16  7.0%
SAN FRANCISCO   228        48  21.1%      37  16.2%     118  51.8%     15  6.6%     10  4.4%
MILWAUKEE       225       106  47.1%      76  33.8%      35  15.6%      0  0.0%      8  3.6%
PITTSBURGH      201        93  46.3%      62  30.8%      23  11.4%     23 11.4%      0  0.0%
CHICAGO CUBS    198        88  44.4%      23  11.6%      59  29.8%     24 12.1%      4  2.0%

There are all kinds of stories behind these numbers, and I encourage you to peer over them and find some. Having done this much of the Heavy Lifting, I am tired and want to go to sleep. I am an old guy, after all.

Let me just draw your attention to some of the broad strokes...

Seattle has obtained fewer talent by trade than any team in the majors. And the Mariners lead the AL in talent acquired through free agency. The Mariners? The Mariners?

The Yankees have done very well with amateur free agents, much better than anyone else, From Mariano Rivera and Bernie Williams to Robinson Cano and Chien-Ming Wang, it's almost as important to their team as the big expensive pro free agents. Whereas more than half the teams in the majors received 10 WS or less from amateur free agents.

The Los Angeles Dodgers have obtained more production from free agent signings than any team in baseball. They were followed by the Mets, and the runaway AL leader, the Seattle Mariners. (I still can't quite get over that.) The Atlanta Braves have received the least, which in their case is a Philosophical Statement ("We really don't like guys from other organizations, they have weird habits.") In the case of the Twins and A's, who have received just a little more than Atlanta, it's a Financial Statement ( "We got no damn money.")

The Colorado Rockies and Philadelphia Phillies have more talent from their own draft picks than any team in the majors, by quite a bit. Houston is a little behind those two teams, and then come the two AL leaders, Minnesota and Toronto. At the bottom of this list? Why, the Cubs. Thank you, Mr Prior. Thank you, Mr Wood.

Finally, here's some Weird Lists of individual players.

The 10 most valuable players acquired by their current teams through:

Free Agent (Pro)     Amateur Draft       Trade              Free Agent (Amateur)  
Beltran, NYM    38   Pujols, St.L.  39   Soriano, Was.  30  Cabrera, Fla.  34     
Ortiz, Bos.     29   Berkmann, Hst. 34   Cameron, SD    28  Reyes, NYM     29     
Ramirez, Bos.   29   Jeter, NYY     33   Guillen, Det.  26  A.Jones, Atl.  25     
Furcal, La      27   Wright, NYM    32   Thome, CWS     26  Zambrano, Chi. 19     
Ibanez, Sea.    27   Mauer, Min.    31   Young, Tex.    26  Martinez, Cle. 19     
Bonds, SF       27   Howard, Pha.   31   Johnson, Was.  26  Cano, NYY      18     
Dye, Chi.       26   Utley, Pha.    28   Sizemore, Cle. 25  Wang, NYY      17     
Rodriguez, Det. 25   Morneau, Min.  27   Hafner, Cle.   25  Paulino, Pgh.  16     
Guerrero, LA    25   Atkins, Col.   26   Ramirez, Fla.  25  Lopez, Sea.    16     
Suzuki, Sea.    24   Rollins, Pha.  26   Rodriguez, NYY 25  Rodriguez, LAA 15     
                                         Santana, Min.  25

Oh, let's see what there would be in the "Other" column as well. Bound to be at least ten pretty useful guys.

Other
Uggla, Fla. (Rule V)          22
Monroe, Det. (Waivers)        14
Carroll, Col. (Cash Purchase) 13
Taveras, Hou. (Rule V)        13
Victorino, Pha. (Rule V)      12
Scutaro, Oak. (Waivers)       10
Alfonzo, SF (Cash Purchase)   10
Jenks, CWS (Waivers)           9
Shelton, Det. (Rule V)         9
Gibbons, Bal. (Rule V)         9

Finally (didn't I say that already?), today is the birthday of both Whitey Ford and George Bell. Two of my all-time favourites.

Who have a lot more in common that you might think. For example, they're both Scorpios. Or Libras. Or whatever the hell they are, don't expect me to know...

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