Redrafting Five First Round Picks

In a redraft wouldn't Bradley go in the top 10 if not better? There aren't 30 good players to have emerged from that draft. Wouldn't Trout, Donaldson and Syndegaard go in the top 3 or even number 1? By the time you get to the 20s the players in those redrafts wouldn't be very exciting.

How does a redraft make sense if the only team withe the benefit of hindsight is the Twins?

It's not a very illuminating exercise, for the reasons already pointed out. The same could be done for every team in baseball.

A better question would be, what if the Twins drafted as well as a club like St. Louis? Things would certainly be very different. 

Overall production from the draft is important . . . second guessing individual picks generally is not.

Maybe I am wrong, but I think the OP's intention was to have a fun thread and a fun conversation. Everyone knows you cannot change the past, that's obvious, and every thread does not have to be so serious.

I think, to add to Bark's post, that it's also interesting to see that some of the very top guys to come out of recent drafts aren't the ones that armchair scouts like the people on this board would have been clamoring for.

Was anybody here screaming about not picking Trout? As I recall, the Gibson pick was pretty roundly praised.

Maybe some of us ought to take a step back from the ledge as regards the current draft too. We are not clairvoyant. Hell, we're not even that smart. And besides, isn't development a bigger part of the picture anyway?

My personal preference when playing the what if game is keeping the distance to about ten picks after the Twins real selection.

This article has given me nightmares and i'm not even asleep!

I remember wanting the Twins to get Todd Frazier, and wondering what they were thinking with little Ben Revere. 

I think Ben Revere has justified his pick.  He has been a solid big leaguer.  How many teams are saying they would rather had Revere as their first rounder?  that would be a fun exercise to add to this one.  which picks before the Twins would gladly swap with the Twins? 

Analyzing te MLB draft is fun, but a futile exercise for a couple of reasons:

1). It's not like the NFL, NBA, etc draft in the sense that players don't contribute for half a decade in a lot of cases. There may be players from the Trout/Gibson draft that may not have reached the majors yet, but still may be good players.

2). It's also not like the NFL, MLB, etc draft in the sense that money is a huge driving force. It's the only draft where a team might have a guy as the best player in the draft, but they won't draft him because he wants X dollars. So,

how do we really know that some of these guys that got "passed on" we're actually players that those teams would love to have, but were employing a different draft strategy in terms of how they're spending cash.

3). The talent pool is ridiculously big, and diverse. Because of age and projectability, you could find a superstar in the first round, or the 5000th round. There is just no way to know with some of these high school players. It's a total guessing game.

I guess the real point here is where have the Twins made a great pick in this timeframe? It points out the need to take a fresh look, clean house in the front office and try something else. In particular the poor pitching drafts are killing this team!

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/how-los-angeles-angels-hooked-rookie-phenom-mike-trout-in-mlb-draft-051212

Well, Trout was highly regarded by a few teams...

probably be a good idea to read why.  it's why I posted the article.

I read the article, (see my edited response) and had seen it before. Of course the Angels and Yankees are gonna say he was #2 on the board several years after the fact, ditto with all the teams that "barely" passed on him. Every team wants to act like they and their scouts knew he was a special player....in hindsight.

ok

Lots of conclusions could be drawn from this exercise, and most would be woefully flawed.

One could to do a useful, truly comparative exercise. If we're not comparing the result against other teams, what are we learning? I'd start (but I won't) by examining a relevant and longer window of time, say 2002-2011. Then, I'd track just 6 picks from each of those drafts: the two preceding the Twin's pick and the three following it. With this limitation, we're accounting for the quality of prospects available in that particular draft at that particular stage of the draft. I'd then compare the present-day value of the Twin's pick against the other selections, probably using more qualitative criteria, i.e., in what order would a GM most likely select these six guys for his team today? Not a believer in WAR as a stand-alone-tool. 

This might begin to provide us a slightly more valid answer than the one we often get. The question we'd be asking? Compared to other MLB teams in a similar position, do the Twins appear to be bumbling idiots when it comes to making draft selections? 

 Everyone knows you cannot change the past, that's obvious, and every thread does not have to be so serious.

Well you can but chances are with that the 87 and 91 world series go away, plus as soon as you do it you're wife will have a new husband and you will have no clue where you actually live but hey you might be able to watch Michael Bradley play home games for the Twins at Netflix field.