Draft picks

Baseball teams never used to care much about draft picks. Free agents were where it was at; if it cost a draft pick or two to sign a pitcher like Kevin Brown or a shortstop like Alex Rodriguez, so be it. Cost of doing business. Whatever.

The pendulum has swung hard the other way, thanks in large part to the Moneyball A's -- as well as the Minnesota Twins and other small-market teams who have built themselves on young talent rather than acquired veterans.

Has it swung too far, though?

Here are a few excerpts from recent Buster Olney columns on ESPN.com, columns surveying the landscape of free agency:

"All but two of the free agents who were offered arbitration turned it down in the hopes of landing multiyear deals elsewhere. But increasingly, it appears that the Jason Variteks and Orlando Cabreras are going to have a difficult time landing deals that match what they might have made in arbitration. "With everything that's going on, and the way the prices are dropping, there's no way I'd give Orlando Cabrera a two-year deal for big money -- not when I have to give up a draft pick," a club official said. "Not a chance." "

"Give the representatives for Francisco Rodriguez some credit, because they jumped at the three-year, $37 million deal at the right time -- partly out of concern that the market for closers was about to plummet for anybody who didn't act right away. Now Brian Fuentes, a Type A free agent, is struggling to find suitable bidders, his market hurt by the fact that any team that signs him will lose draft picks. Wrote here weeks ago that the Rockies had a fleeting hope of eventually re-signing Fuentes for a three-year deal, if his market dragged down his asking price in their range. "

And from a list of teams who might be in the market for Fuentes (in a different column):
"Brewers: He would fit in nicely for them as a closer, but it remains to be seen whether GM Doug Melvin will be willing to spend money on a multiyear deal for a reliever again, and whether the Brewers would be open to losing a draft pick in a year in which they should already get compensation picks for both Ben Sheets and CC Sabathia."

"Braves: Atlanta has had a tough winter getting anyone to take their money. So maybe they change direction and bolster their bullpen with an addition like Fuentes. But again, the sacrifice of the draft pick might be a sticking point."

The rule, as a reminder, is that team that signs a Type A free agent loses its first-round draft pick; the club that loses that free agent also gets a supplemental draft pick. Much of the focus of "Moneyball" was the strategy employed by A's general manager Billy Beane -- he would stockpile veterans about to hit free agency, get what he could out of them, and then cash in on their draft picks when they left. It appears he's doing that again with Matt Holliday.

But the "Moneyball" mantra really was far simpler than that. Beane simply wanted to acquire what was undervalued and discard what was overvalued. On-base guys, college players, pending free agents -- all fell under the umbrella of undervalued, and that's what Beane coveted them.

Draft picks, clearly, no longer are undervalued. And if what Olney writes is indicative of the way major league teams are approaching the offseason, they're almost in danger of becoming overvalued. First-round draft picks are fantastic -- but they don't all yield B.J. Upton or Prince Fielder. They just don't. Most first-round draft picks fail to make even a single All-Star team. Teams find plenty of value in later rounds; Dustin Pedroia was a second-round pick for a Red Sox team, for example, that didn't have its first-round pick that year.

Everything is a trade-off; if you sign Fuentes, you lose your first-round pick. But if you take a look at a couple of recent drafts, you'll see that proven-reliever-for-draft-pick might not be such a bad trade, after all. (We'll use the 2001 and 2002 drafts; they're far enough back that players have had a chance to show what they can do and make an impact at the big-league level.)

2001
Picks 1-5: Four for five. Joe Mauer is the best catcher in baseball; Mark Prior should have been a star if not for Dusty Baker; Gavin Floyd won 17 games for the White Sox this season (not the Phillies, who drafted him); Mark Teixeira is going to make $180 million sooner rather than later. Tampa Bay's Dewon Brazelton was drafted No. 3 overall; his career ERA is 6.38.
Picks 6-10: One for five, barely. Chris Burke hit a big postseason home run for the Houston Astros; he also hit .194 last season for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Three of the others drafted in this range never reached the big leagues and are out of baseball.
Picks 11-20: Three for 10 -- again, barely. Two of those three are journeymen Gabe Gross and Aaron Heilman. Casey Kotchman, drafted No. 13, still has a chance to be a star despite two rough months with the Braves to finish last season. Three of the others in this range have played a combined 14 seasons at Double-A.
Picks 21-30: Four for 10, and that's if we count Rookie of the Year-turned-flameout Bobby Crosby. Much-hyped Yankees prospect John-Ford Griffin, for example, went nowhere; he's had 23 major-league at-bats with the Toronto Blue Jays and spent all of 2008 at Triple-A Las Vegas. Brad Hennessey is a useful pitcher for the Giants; Jeremy Bonderman remains a success story since rebounding from a 19-loss season; Noah Lowry won 14 games for the Giants this season.
Overall: Twelve for 30 -- but eight for 25 once you get outside the top five.

2002
Picks 1-5: One for five. Yikes. B.J. Upton is a star. He might have been the ALCS MVP had the Rays held onto that 7-0 lead in Game 5, a game in which Upton hit a two-run home run in the first inning. The rest of the list? Bryan Bullington, Chris Gruler, Adam Loewen (who still has a chance to make it with the Orioles) and Clint Everts (who hasn't yet made it past Single-A ball in the Nationals' system).
Picks 6-10: Three for five. Better. Zack Grienke is the Royals' ace, Prince Fielder is one of the game's best young sluggers, and Jeff Francis went 17-9 for the Rockies in 2007 before enduring a rough, injury-plagued year this year.
Picks 11-20: Seven for 10. This is where the real haul comes: No. 12 Joe Saunders went 17-7 last season for the Angels; No. 15 Scott Kazmir is an ace, though not for the Mets; No. 17 Cole Hamels was this year's World Series MVP. No. 13 Khalil Greene (Padres) and No. 14 Russ Adams (Blue Jays) are useful if mediocre middle infielders. No. 11 Jeremy Hermida is a serviceable if not sensational corner outfielder. No. 16 Nick Swisher hit 35 home runs three years ago and might start at first base for the Yankees this season. No. 19 James Loney and No. 20 Denard Span look like they're on the verge of breaking out for the Dodgers and Twins, respectively.
Picks 21-30: Either one or four for 10, however you want to break it down. Matt Cain, Jeremy Guthrie and Joe Blanton both look like they'll be adequate but not sensational pitchers for the next few years. (Cain has the most hype surrounding him, but he hasn't quite taken the leap yet.) Jeff Francoeur still hasn't quite figured it out for the Braves. But that's about it.
Overall: We'll go with 15 for 30 -- and that's with a pretty star-studded haul in the middle of the first round.

What do we learn? We learn that your chances of landing an above-average major league player in the first round of those two drafts was a little less than 50-50. Yes, there was some huge names -- Teixeira, Fielder, Kazmir, Hamels. But once you get beyond those, you're looking at players like Bonderman and Burke and Francoeur and Heilman, players who perennially are trade bait for teams looking to land someone with more impact.

Losing a first-round pick hurts. But let's not pretend first-round draft picks are guaranteed like currency. Yes, you'd pass up a reliever like Brian Fuentes to draft Scott Kazmir. But would you give him up to draft Dewon Brazelton?