The Use the "Experts" Strategy

With the major rounds of the draft now behind us, I decided to revisit a common question regarding how the Royals would fare if they used different methods for the draft. You may recall the article I did using 20 lotto balls. Now, I will create the scenario where we picked some random person, who does not have to have any knowledge about what baseball even is, and gave them MLB's list of top draft prospects for each year. Whoever is the highest ranked and still available at the Royals turn would get taken.

The free lists MLB produced only go back to 2011, but it still should provide something interesting. I do not have access to Baseball America and wanted to include picks from the top 50, so we are limited to just this source. Let's see how it went.

2011

The infamous Bubba Starling draft. The best player available here would have been Anthony Rendon, which easily changes the trajectory of the team with just 1 pick.

2012

Instead of Kyle Zimmer, John Doe sees that Mark Appel is still available and takes him. We will assume Appel also does not want to sign with the Royals like he did with the Pirates, so the Royals walk away without a player but do get an extra pick the following year.

2013

The convenient fact of getting the #6 pick to make up for Appel should give the Royals the bonus pool to avoid playing the underslot game with Dozier. At #6, they take Austin Meadows, famously dealt to the Rays in the Chris Archer trade. Instead of Dozier, they take prep pitcher Trey Ball (Indiana Gatorade Player of the Year). At #34, Sean Manaea is still available and I think the Royals would be able to offer him enough to sign.

2014

The Royals go for CF Bradley Zimmer instead of Kyle Finnegan. Zimmer was thought of as a good prospect for a couple seasons. Foster Griffin and Chase Vallot get replaced by equivalently bad players in Sean Reid-Foley and Henry Gatewood.

2015

Ashe Russell is replaced by HS OF Daz Cameron. No value gained there. Instead of Nolan Watson at #33, the Royals opt for Kyle Funkhouser. The Dodgers failed to sign him at #35, so I will assume the Royals do the same and thus get a replacement pick at #34 the following year.

2016

The Royals originally did not have a pick in this draft. They would benefit by being able to take Dakota Hudson to add to the rotation.

2017

The #14 pick was Nick Pratto. The Royals would have instead taken Jeren Kendall, who has a career .693 OPS in he Dodgers minor league system.

2018

Interestingly enough, the Royals took what MLB thought were the best available players for their first 2 selections. Brady Singer and Jackson Kowar remain with the Royals. Instead of Lynch, they opt for Cole Wilcox. He originally did not sign out of high school after going in the 37th round, but I will assume this slot is much more appealing for him and convinces him to skip out on going to UGA. Unfortunately, he's put up a 5.32 ERA at AA at age 23 this season. Instead of Bubic, the Royals take another high school pitcher in Kumar Rocker. Rocker was similarly taken in the 38th round back then, so going at #40 might be enough for him to give up on Vanderbilt. Regardless, it is hard to say what he would have been without the college experience. Would he have avoided the injury?

I'll wrap up the analysis there. The table below shows the career WAR that Joe Schmoe would have accumulated. As noted earlier, a lot of the difference comes from Rendon. The swing from negative value Dozier to Meadows is pretty sizeable too, even if Meadows is now hitting like the next Dozier.