2023 Amateur Draft - Some Post-Draft Thoughts

Who Drafted Slap Hitters in 2023

Using MLB Pipeline (only data I had access to that gave 20-80 grades) the 30 drafting teams drafted 99 hitters who were listed in the MLB Pipeline top 250 draft prospects.  Here are some numbers:

• 17/99 had power grades of less than 45
• 12 teams drafted at least one guy with below a 45 power grade
• 3 teams drafted more than 1 player with under a 45 power grade
• Cleveland - 5 hitters drafted, 3 with under a 45 power grade (Kayfus had a 45)
• Tampa - 5 hitters drafted, 3 with under a 45 power grade
• Baltimore - 5 players drafted, 2 with under a 45 power grade (including prototypical leadoff hitter and their #1 pick, Enrique Bradfield, Jr.,)

So, while Cleveland was not alone in drafting slap hitting players, they were certainly in the vast minority of teams in terms of thinking this was a good way to go.  The limitations to this analysis are that it only considered players in MLB's top 250 draft prospects using their rating scale for grading.

Hitters in MLB's  top 250 With Grades Under 40 in any category

Looking again through MLB's top 250 I found the following number of players who had ANY grade in any category (hit, power, run, arm, field) of under 40 using the scout's 20-80 grading scale.

• Run:  8 players had running grades of 30 or 35 (none of them were drafted by the Guardians_
• Power: 4 players had a power grade of under 40.  Three of them were drafted by the Guardians including the ONLY player in the entire draft, Christian Knapczyk, who had a grade of 20 in any category.

The same provisos apply: Only looked at the MLB Pipeline top 50 and not at the actual picks by the teams.  Grading based on MLB Pipeline grading criteria.

Summary

The above data shows to me how the Guardians went way over the top with their desire to place contact over power, which was essentially opposite to the strategy that was used by almost every other team in baseball.  While that is OK if your philosophy is working for you, the 2022 draft where they drafted similar hitters (Lampe, Furman, Lipscomb) with similar profiles has not worked out for them with Lampe, after April, struggling against A ball pitching, Furman, after his promotion to age-appropriate Lake County, really struggling and Lipscomb, who is doing OK  playing against younger competition in Lynchburg but has not been promoted yet.

The Guardians are using a strategy where they are drafting players whose upside is as a backup or utility player and they are doing it in the first 10 rounds of the draft.  That is just plain wrong!

How can a team use a similar strategy two years in a row, actually ramping up that strategy in the second year, if it didn't work the first year?  This, to me, is a sign that the Guardians think they know more than the rest of the teams in baseball and you can have that philosophy if you are successful.  However, as we are seeing this year, small ball the way the Guardians play it puts too much of a strain on your pitching staff to hold the opponents to well below league average run scored and your offense to score runs on 2-3 singles in an inning instead of 1 HR.  

The philosophy isn't really working for you.  Why continue it and ruin yet another draft?  And we're not even talking about the pitcher drafting mistakes they have made in the last 2 drafts.  Hey, you will always have draft failures but when you continue to use a failed drafting philosophy, you just exacerbate the situation.

I have said in a number of these blog posts that when you blow a draft you hurt your chances of competing in the future.  When you blow 2 in a row, you REALLY limit your ability to compete from 3-10 years post those drafts.  As an example, look at the 2015 and 2016 Guardians drafts. If we had blown those drafts like we have blown the 2022 and 2023 drafts we would be without Beiber, Civale and McKenzie, assuming that we would have drafted everyone else we did (unlikely as our philosophy would have been different).   Starting in 2019 I think it can be easily postulated that we would not have made the playoffs and maybe not even have had anything close to a .500 record in 2020, 2021, 2022 or 2023.  

That is what we have to look forward to as we do not currently have enough strong prospects in the minors to make up for two straight years of failed drafte. 

Say what you want, but these drafts have failed.  2022 based on a failed philosophy and failed performances and 2023 where the type of players drafted don't project to major league starters, let alone quality major league starters.

Will I look back some day and see that this was a Moneyball-like strategy that I didn't understand at the time?  Maybe.  But, looking at the numbers, I don't think so.