This article is brought to you by Tyson Tucker, one of the newest members of the Prospects Live team.
The idea for this piece came to mind in large part thanks to our draft director, Joe Doyle’s work over on his podcast “Overslot”. Over the past few weeks Joe has been churning out podcasts discussing everything MLB draft including eye-popping exclusive interviews with GMs across MLB. Jerry Dipoto and Mike Elias, both highly respected minds in the game, have already appeared on the show. I wouldn’t bet against seeing more high-profile names on the show here soon.
It's not just the one-on-one interviews that catch your eye. It’s the laidback nature and willingness of these decision-makers to talk about their journey and the processes in their profession. Of course, they don’t spill all the secrets but the insight to be gained from these conversations is second to none. Dipoto dove into a number of things in the hour-long interview but what caught my attention was what he had to say about how tiebreakers in draft decisions take place. How those sometimes heated conversations get resolved. Let’s dive in.
Typical Tiebreakers
To understand the tiebreakers, we first need to understand how the model is constructed.
Dipoto spoke to Seattle’s process favoring more of a soft model. A soft model, like any model, based on the weights garnered from a variety of sources and measurements, spits out an order for their scouting crew. Where the “soft” aspect of the model comes into play is just how much that order weighs into their decision.
Jerry describes how the decision-makers will take that order and then debate it up and down, moving names up and down based on live looks and the advice of the people who have had eyes on these players throughout the draft season. It’s a collaborative process that when done succinctly provides a sense of clarity when it comes decision time.
There’s plenty of preliminary factors that can influence a selection. Primarily, signability and makeup. And while surface level in nature those factors are far from simple to quantify and hold conviction about.
Signability feels like an ever-moving scale for the prospects as their stock rises or plummets. Its variability is largely based on which team is calling to inquire about price. This all typically culminates with a split-second decision through an agent on draft day. There’s tons of moving parts involved, which can make scouting departments' heads spin. Signability and slots are one of those quirky factors about the MLB draft that make it so complex yet invigorating.
Makeup on the other hand may be even more complex than the signability aspect. Teams are tasked with gauging the mental maturity, aptitude, work ethic, courage, ability to handle failure, etc. among 18 to 24-year-olds. To add the stressors of quantifying those aspects, the aptitude of that prospect could render the org millions of dollars in the way of winning or cost the org millions based on lost pick value.
It’s a near impossible task but organizations do have mental skills coaches they lean on in their decision making. Dipoto speaks highly of Mariners Assistant GM Andy McKay who was paramount in their 1st round selection of high schoolers, Harry Ford and Cole Young.
Essentially two separate million-dollar or more bets on 18-year-old kids. The kind that can make or break an organization for the decade to come. You better have your ducks in a row and be sure of who that kid truly is.
Signability and makeup are certainly factors in the model and to be considered but they are only the tip of the iceberg on where the tiebreakers reside.
Organizational Awareness
Across MLB organizations, whether they lean into actual usage or not, they all typically have some semblance of a model. Majority of those models, as I previously discussed, take in a ton of data and weigh it out to their liking in order to create a list. Using the weights and the data the model will spit out a holistic metric to predict a “career value estimation”.
Each organization does this in a different manner and can use a variety of things to estimate value. Some will estimate WAR, some will create a dollar amount, others I’m sure have their very own acronym to create a central metric. Regardless of how the organizations define it, this is how they are sorting the names in the model and what drives some guys to the top of the model.
Where I believe the low-hanging fruit lies is within organizational self-awareness. The process in which I’m about to detail may not always apply to the elite first round draft picks. Where it really vests itself is in the middle rounds to provide organizational value at a higher rate than other teams. As I’ve said multiple times in my pieces, this is where the best organizations win.
To explain what I call organizational awareness, we’ll use the Chicago Cubs and their player development infrastructure as an example.
The Cubs have taken a liking to pitchers who possess the high vertical break and/or cut/ride fastball profile. In addition to emphasizing the cut/ride profile, it’s clear their player development staff has shown an affinity and ability to develop sweeper slider profiles. They have picked up a number of free agents and drafted players who embody at least one of those profiles. Namely 2022 7th overall pick Cade Horton, Anthony Kay, Michael Fulmer, Jameson Tallion among others. Noteworthy.
When looking at 2023 Draft prospects, our rankings have Auburn RHP Joseph Gonzalez ranked as the 81st prospect. Additionally, LSU RHP Ty Floyd finds himself ranked 123rd. The gap between the two prospects is not astronomical but consensus would suggest that Gonzalez is, at least currently, is the more enticing prospect.
For the sake of this piece, based on the underlying information and data let’s say Joseph Gonzalez “Estimated Career WAR” within the Cubs’ draft model is 5.5 WAR. Which would be a 50th percentile or “average” outcome. To continue our hypothetical, based on the ranking Ty Floyd’s Estimated Career WAR is 4.3 for his 50th percentile outcome.
Those numbers are largely arbitrary, due to my lack of knowledge on the Cubs model. Regardless, baseline suggests Gonzalez is the pick if the team is looking for a college RHP at this pick. But, this is where self-awareness allows us to decipher between the two prospects.
“Gonzalez is a pitchability righty with low-90s stuff. His slider is the best secondary forcing the opposition to chase out of the zone at truly extreme rates thanks to two-plane break. There's also feel for a changeup, and he's flirted with a curveball as well.” Gonzalez, although a better overall prospect, appears closer to his maxed-out form for the Cubs sake.
On the flip side our scouts had this to say on Floyd, “Floyd gets ride on his fastball and explicitly works at the top of the zone, specifically gloveside, with the fastball. Scouts do want to see more willingness to pitch inside to righty bats. While he's almost entirely a heater guy, there is a curveball in there with solid spin rates.”
Floyd is more of a development project but his fastball profile and lack of true breaking ball falls right into the Cubs’ lap. He has shown the feel for spin with the high-spin rates so you can trust it’s in there. With a player development staff that specializes in teaching sweeping breaking-balls Floyd could take off. It’s their demonstrated efficiency in developing arms with the profiles we discussed that makes them a better fit for Floyd than Gonzalez.
Even if the Cubs believe Gonzalez's 50th percentile outcome is higher than Floyd’s, based on the low-hanging fruit within Floyd’s game matching their PD strengths they have a better chance to realize Floyd’s 75th percentile outcome or even more. Which would outpace the 50th percentile “Estimated Career WAR” for Gonzalez. Making Floyd inherently more valuable to them as a franchise even though he’s “lower ranked”.
It's about lining up player needs with player development strengths. Floyd fits the mold in this case.
This is a singular cherry-picked example of a decision a team would need to make come draft time. But there’s multiple situations like this every round across the MLB Draft. These are the types of things that need to be taken into account when making a decision. As we previously discussed there’s hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on the line.
How do we break a tie? This could be one of the answers.
Conclusion
These types of factors aren’t in play for every single decision up and down the draft board. The truly elite at the top of the draft often don’t need these types of tiebreakers. But later in the draft when it comes time to break a tie and debate a model’s order, it’s time to look at the data. Data can provide the answer.
This is not to say the old-fashioned scout falls to the wayside. Some of the data within the model is calculated and identified by the boots on the ground scout. That scout meets with the player, that scout catches 10 of the player’s games, that scout talks to the people around the player; then gives the inputs for makeup, game IQ, speed, things of that nature. A model is only as good as its inputs. Bad inputs = bad model = bad picks.
If anything, this amplifies the need for your traditional scout. They have the eyes for those types of things and provide the right input.
The marriage between traditional and new age scouting within an organization only works when both sides want to get it right. There is no one without the other. Both are required for optimization.
The draft is about maximizing value. Identifying organizational strengths is paramount in making this happen. It’s about looking beyond the model to squeeze out every last drop. The premier organizations that win on the margins have undoubtedly already factored these factors into their models. The organizations who haven’t will lose in the long run.