2016 Mock MLB Draft

Jason Groome

A.J. Puk

As many of you already know, this year’s version of Baseball Mogul includes most of the 100 top prospects that are eligible for this year’s amateur draft. As the 2016 database already includes the top 75-80 players for each franchise, we also have a decent understanding of each team’s specific organizational needs.

So I booted up Baseball Mogul 2016 to see how it would handle this year's draft. One advantage of having a full simulation at our disposal is that I was able to simulate the draft 10,000 times and record all the results. The following table shows the most likely result of the first round (although this exact order only occurred in 131 of the 10,000 simulations). The average draft position for each player is shown below as “ADP”.

Pick	Team	Player	Pos	Age	Bats	Throws	Hgt	Wgt	Scouting	ADP
1	Phillies	Jason Groome	LHP	17	L	L	6'6"	220	40/75	1.61
2	Reds	A.J. Puk	LHP	21	L	L	6'7"	230	45/70	1.78
3	Braves	Nick Senzel	3B	20	R	R	6'1"	205	40/70	3.31
4	Rockies	Mickey Moniak	LF	18	L	R	6'2"	190	40/70	4.36
5	Brewers	Corey Ray	CF	21	L	L	5'11"	185	40/75	5.46
6	Athletics	Delvin Perez	SS	17	R	R	6'3"	165	45/75	6.26
7	Marlins	Riley Pint	RHP	18	R	R	6'4"	195	40/75	8.31
8	Padres	Kyle Lewis	RF	20	R	R	6'4"	195	35/70	10.86
9	Tigers	Matt Manning	RHP	18	R	R	6'6"	195	35/70	10.41
10	White Sox	Dakota Hudson	RHP	21	R	R	6'5"	205	40/65	11.46
11	Mariners	Cal Quantrill	RHP	20	L	R	6'3"	185	40/70	11.01
12	Red Sox	Braxton Garrett	LHP	18	R	L	6'3"	190	40/65	12.06
13	Rays	Blake Rutherford	LF	19	L	R	6'2"	190	45/70	10.86
14	Indians	Zack Collins	C	21	L	R	6'3"	220	40/65	14.16
15	Twins	Forrest Whitley	RHP	18	R	R	6'6"	250	40/70	15.21
16	Angels	Bryan Reynolds	CF	21	S	R	6'2"	210	35/70	16.26
17	Astros	Alex Kirilloff	CF	18	L	L	6'2"	195	40/65	16.06
18	Yankees	Kevin Gowdy	SP	18	R	R	6'4"	170	35/70	18.61
19	Mets	Will Craig	3B	18	R	R	6'3"	225	45/65	17.16
20	Dodgers	Jordan Sheffield	RHP	21	R	R	6'0"	185	40/70	18.71
21	Blue Jays	Buddy Reed	CF	21	S	R	6'4"	185	35/70	20.51
22	Pirates	Ian Anderson	RHP	18	R	R	6'3"	170	40/65	20.56
23	Cardinals	Cody Sedlock	RHP	20	R	R	6'4"	210	45/65	19.86

Scouting shows Baseball Mogul’s “Overall” and “Peak” ratings for each player (on the standard 20-80 scouting scale).

... and this table shows how frequently each player was taken with one of the top 3 picks (rounded to the nearest 0.1%):

Player	Pos	Age	Pick #1	Pick #2	Pick #3
Jason Groome	LHP	17	50.1%	39.1%	10.6%
A.J. Puk	LHP	21	39.2%	45.5%	14.4%
Nick Senzel	3B	20	6.8%	10.2%	42.1%
Mickey Moniak	LF	18	1.4%	2.6%	11.3%
Corey Ray	CF	21	1.0%	0.9%	9.0%
Delvin Perez	SS	17	0.7%	0.5%	6.2%
Riley Pint	RHP	18	0.5%	0.8%	3.5%
Kyle Lewis	RF	20	0.2%		0.7%
Matt Manning	RHP	18		0.3%	0.4%
Dakota Hudson	RHP	21			0.3%
Cal Quantrill	RHP	20	0.1%	0.1%	0.4%
Braxton Garrett	LHP	18			0.3%
Blake Rutherford	LF	19			0.2%

As you can see, Baseball Mogul was ambivalent about whether to take Puk or Groome with the first pick. Twelve years after Moneyball publicized the argument that college players had been perennially under-valued, front offices still frequently use top picks on high school players — so Mogul's drafting AI models that behavior.