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  • Evaluating Deron Johnson's Drafts

    Thrylos

    By Thrylos

    As the Minnesota Twins are evaluating their front office, I would like to take the opportunity to evaluate the performance of certain parts of their front office for which there might be appropriate objective evaluation criteria. Deron Johnson, the Twins scouting director since 2008, has been primarily responsible for the Rule 4 amateur draft. There is a feeling that the Twins do not draft and develop players well. But drafting and developing are two different things. It's hard to evaluate drafting departments without comparing them to the rest of the league.

    How has Johnson done against the league?

    Twins Video

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    Here is the data: I looked at the overall WAR for each team for each draft for all players selected by that team in the first 10 rounds of that draft. Calculated the average WAR for each draft and the better teams are indicated with green. The teams are listed alphabetically and the Twins are bolded. Averages in yellow indicate small sample size, because simply not enough players made it to the bigs in the last few seasons to make any conclusions, but the ones who made it, count to the total team WAR numbers.

    28288195950_b7593ebd31_b.jpg

    Long story short:

    During the time that Johnson has been in charge of the Twins draft the Twins did better than only six other teams in the league: The Red Sox, Yankees, Phillies and the Rangers and Dodgers who all are willing to open their wallets and buy players drafted and developed by others and, surprisingly, the Rays, who are more than willing to sell everyone high to restock their system with players that other teams drafted to develop. The Twins do neither, so that it a pretty big problem. By this criteria, Deron Johnson has been performing way below average, and D students should go home...

    Few notes:

    • This is pretty interesting data about where the Twins can look to stock their front office. Surprisingly, the Diamondbacks', Padres', Jays', White Sox', and Nationals' systems might be good sources of scouting talent to replace at least Deron and some of his scouts.
    • If it were not for 2009 where Dozier and Gibson account for most of the Twins' WAR, the numbers would be really pathetic.
    • If you look at teams like the White Sox that have had the fourth best draft WAR in the period and really nothing to show for it in the majors, you can make easy conclusions about problems with their development and management systems.
    • Yes, there are up and downs in most teams, but with the Twins, other than 2009, it has been mostly downs, and the other teams have done something about it (replacing under-performing front office pieces.) Will the Twins do the same?

    • Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch

    Follow Thrylos on Twitter: thrylos98

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    Featured Comments

    dbminn

    dbminn 1,849

  • Verified Member

    • Posted

    Nice article, Thrylos. Pretty clear the Twins had drafts somewhere between bad and horrible in 2008, 2010 and 2011. (Rosario still has a chance to make the 2010 draft look a bit better).

     

    I don't think WAR is a good evaluator from 2012-present. By WAR, only 9% of the cumulative average value in Thrylos' chart has come from players drafted beginning in 2012.

     

    The Twins will soon have five players from the 2012 draft on their roster (Chargois being the last of the five). All have a chance to contribute in the coming years. We can't say either way at this point whether that draft was a failure. 

     

     

     

     

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    70charger

    70charger 5,604

  • Verified Member

    • Posted

     

    Why compare to other HS kids......who would you rather have right now, Trea Turner or Nick Gordon? 

    The answer to this question shows yet another of the million ways this analysis is flawed. Some teams would absolutely say Nick Gordon, because these teams' - the rebuilding ones' - lack of competitiveness would waste Trea Turner's cheap and young years.

     

    So how does the state of the current team fit into the analysis? Short answer, it doesn't. And that's not very helpful.

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    drivlikejehu

    drivlikejehu 2,201

  • Verified Member

    • Posted

    It's hard to evaluate at a high level of precision. But the Twins have overall been below average at drafting for the past 15 years, no matter how you want to look at it, with the caveat that the evaluation always lags because the results take so long to manifest.

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    The Wise One

    The Wise One 689

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    • Posted

     

    It's hard to evaluate at a high level of precision. But the Twins have overall been below average at drafting for the past 15 years, no matter how you want to look at it, with the caveat that the evaluation always lags because the results take so long to manifest.

    A study looked at the WARP of the players drafted by each team for the seasons covering 2014. Minnesota was right in the middle, when they expanded it to 2010-2014, the Twins were still in the middle. Drafting was the issue over the last 15 years

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    drivlikejehu

    drivlikejehu 2,201

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    • Posted

     

    A study looked at the WARP of the players drafted by each team for the seasons covering 2014. Minnesota was right in the middle, when they expanded it to 2010-2014, the Twins were still in the middle. Drafting was the issue over the last 15 years

     

    Link?

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    drivlikejehu

    drivlikejehu 2,201

  • Verified Member

    • Posted

     

    Where is yours?

     

    I didn't make reference to any specific authorities, but instead provided an assertion based on what seems to me to be common sense. If you have empirical evidence that says otherwise, please share so that I can re-visit my opinion.

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    glunn

    glunn 6,247

  • Community Moderator

    • Posted

     

    They worked with Byron ALOT in spring on his bunting abilities. With his speed bunting should definitely be part of his game still needs work.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSHBF6ElHeA

     

    This video does not give me comfort. It looks like the ball is coming in at less than 70 mph and without any movement.

     

    I never coached beyond little league, but I would like to see him practicing with actual fastballs and curveballs, or with a batting machine that is coming in at 95 or 100 mph.  Maybe he has done other drills, but from the games I have seen his bunting skills are disappointing.  Based on his overall skill set, I wonder whether the coaching has been competent.

     

     

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    The Wise One

    The Wise One 689

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    • Posted

     

    I didn't make reference to any specific authorities, but instead provided an assertion based on what seems to me to be common sense. If you have empirical evidence that says otherwise, please share so that I can re-visit my opinion.

    Read the article some time ago. Common sense says between 2010 and 2014 there were a few players the Twin drafted that put up decent numbers, even if they were no longer playing for the Twins

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    The Wise One

    The Wise One 689

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    • Posted

     

    I get these points.  But about half of the teams that drafted below the Twins from 2008-11, actually did better than the Twins.  There was an interesting similar comment arguing that the teams that drafted higher in each draft (like the Nats early) are favorites.  So I looked at the top 5 or so individual WAR contributions from each of the early drafts vs. overall draft pick and looked like that:

     

    5 (or so) Highest WARs in draft by drafted position:

    2008: 5 (31.6), 135 (18.3), 117 (17.5), 16 (15.2), 96 (14.2)
    2009: 25 (44.4), 246 (27.4), 82 (21.9), 63 (18.3), 1 (18.3), 59 (18.0)
    2010: 13 (29.4), 3 (22.3), 1 (21.5), 70 (19.2), 23 (12), 272 (11.5)
    2011: 172 (13.1), 14 (13.1), 18 (10.3), 11 (9.6), 1 (9.4), 6, (9.1),

     

    Funny enough no number 1 pick has the highest draft.

     

    As far as the second point goes, this really is part of the drafting strategy and should weigh in the evaluation.  The Twins chose to take preps who will take 5 years or so to develop vs. College players who are ready in 2-3.  It was a choice and it hurt them.  And it is fine to do that if you are willing to fill the gaps with free agents in between, which is not what the TR & Co Twins do

     

    Fun thing to speculate:  Would the 2015 Twins that nearly missed a post-season berth be there if they chose Wacha over Buxton in 2012?

    By highlighting the fact the best player by accumulated war is not even the first person selected then it really shouldn't matter who is doing the drafting, it is luck. Any person drafting then should be fired from their job if they can't pick out the best player in the draft.  Some judge of talent

    Players multiple picks lower than what Johnson picked doing "better",  Again multiple teams missing out. All heads must roll  

     

     

    Drafting Wacha rather than Buxton would leave some bitter blogger in another 5 years wondering how the idiot Johnson passed on a superstar CF where Wacha was a flash in the pan that after the scapular injury limited his career . Poor snakebit Twins ended up with another injured pitcher.

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