Wednesday, June 8, 2016

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 draftOne 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.

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