New draft process...

[osoZ]

OK I know I am new but I like the thought of a round by round rookie draft. I have been told that it was done in the past and it didn't work that well. Right now I think there is a good group of owners.

My premise for wanting to change it is this. Last year I had the #2 pick. Toronto was great to me. I got A TON of good prospects, but I would have MUCH rather had David Wright, Joe Mauer, Bobby Crosby, or even Zach Greinke than ANY of the prospects I got. Now I do understand that if we did a round by round pick I would have actually had the 8th pick this year(with this group of prospects), but I could have had Harden or someone easily with the #2 pick.

I also feel it distributes the talent better in a round by round draft. While this can potentially harm a team picking high, it can also help them greatly. There is no mystery this way. Teams have banked on players getting called up(Arizona this year with Los Angeles) only to have injury or slow progress stopping them from actually making it to MLB. This also allows teams with a decent record to at least get a decent prospect or a relief pitcher whatever they feel they need the most.

Now it seems easy enough to do the round by round draft, but there is a problem. Because of the way we are drafting right now. We face a serious issue with this method. We are essentially a year ahead. While we do not know what we are drafting, we are taking the players that would be in the next years draft.

For example...I have the 8th worst record in the WSL for the '04 WSL year. By the way it SHOULD work, I should be picking 8th from the talent that the '03 WSL year actually awarded(the year I had the 2nd pick). The only way to go to a round by round draft is to take a hit in a year. The only options I see are to: scrap the draft order for an entire year(not wanted most likely), adding up a 2 year record and creating a draft order based on a 2 year period(you still get players at the same time for next year), andf finally to only allow players to get like the top 2 or so players from the team from the '04 WSL draft and let the rest go into a rookie draft for the '05 WSL draft.

Now this is my idea. I have tossed it around to a few people. It seems like the most logical thing to do. I know a lot of people don't like change, but we seem like the only league in the strat community that drafts like we draft. It is like rolling the dice and hoping that you do well. Sure teams have top notch prospects and those guys do turn out, but just as many fail miserably as succeed. This way you can at least make a MORE educated guess on who you draft.

What I want is any suggestions to things that make more sense. Feedback from people in general on this idea. We need to get this discussed at length before the upcoming draft. So we really got about a month to decide.

Later.

[senorian]

Although I do agree with you in some aspects of this I don't feel that we need to drastically change the way we draft. I for liked having the round by round pick to an extent but also hated it. After 3 rounds or so of doing this it just gets a lot more difficult selecting players that could have some decent potential. Having a farm team makes it more exciting and is there to help out the teams that finish in the lower part of the league

You might have gotten 1 great pick and maybe a 2nd very good selection since you got to pick so high but there's no way your going to get much after 3 or more rounds. Now by having selected Toronto last season, I'm sure that you had some really good prospects. Some owners do spend a good deal of time looking over minor leagues to draft and some don't really care. This was also true of the round by round.

What i suggest is this..We continue this season with the selecting of a teams' farm system and then next offseason discuss our future draft choices. If we choose round by round then we keep this season minor leaguers and do the round by round the following season thus eliminating a need to selecting a team before the 05 strat season begins.

Keep in mind though that after the 05 strat season a majority of players will be free agents and having to add a round by round on top of that could be a major hassle

[Seth Keichline]

"I have been told that it was done in the past and it didn't work that well."

Round-by-round went fine in the past. But for the group of owners that we had at the time, it made sense to change the draft to our current format.

I'm curious to read everyone's reaction. Please, post your response to Brandon's suggestion.

[Duhman14]

Being the biggest iddiot todate in the WSL I am favorable to the team draft process still I beilve we only did like seven rounds before and even then it was a crap shoot I like the system that is currently in place that way you have to look at the whole team and if you need pitching you can draft a team that has a ton of guys who are supposed to coming up i feel the amount of quality prospects you get now out weighs the prospects you got when you only drafted seven people but once again I am the biggest tool in the league so what the hell do I know

Good day

[SteveJack]

Looking at time constraints as well as limited resourced (provided we don't buy BA's book or something similar), I'm in favor of how the draft currently is. Granted, I haven't been through it before, but just putting together a spreadsheet of guys who could be called up for each team was a pain in the ass, so I'd hate to imagine what comparing them all into a draft board would be like. Teams can still get some decent prospects, as my predecessor did with Navarro and uh...well, I can't quite say since the old draft page is gone. Either way, the guys who do their research will, with a bit of luck, do better than guys who don't. We're just cutting a lot of time out of the picture in the process this way.

Edit: Anyone who was in on the NFL draft on TRL will no doubt agree that going with teams is the better bet. It took us an entire month and we had real NFL players to stat check.

[osoZ]

There are plenty of free resources on the internet. Granted the later rounds will be harder since most of the free resources only cover the top players. I just thought the idea of KNOWING who you are getting and drafting someone that SPECIFICALLY helps you outweighs getting a bunch of mid-level prospects that MIGHT help you someday(which was my case).

[poonsickle33]

As a long time member of the WSL I have experienced both versions of the draft. It seems to me that the primary reason that we scrapped the individual rookie draft was that when it came to our teams with no owners (at which time was many), HAL would end up making some very odd choices (players who hit .800 in 10 at bats or pitchers who had 7 Ks in 3 innings, etc.) and so it just perpetuated the lack of parity in the league as the weak teams continued to get weaker and the strong got better. Plus the computer had no concept of “prospects” so the “human owners” got all of the good ones. We did this in an attempt to “pass the prospects around”, and it think it worked. Some of the teams with no owners actually began to get better (until they were taken over by humans, some of whom screwed them up again).
From a personal point of view, I would enjoy an individual player draft, it’s easy to get 1 or 2 valuable players even at the 24th position. But there are a couple of positive points in the way that we do things now.
1. It throws an element of chance into the equation. Let’s face it, MLB teams can draft and sign any number of players, but only time will tell who pans out and makes it to the major leagues. Example: Philly Signs Jim Thome to a long term deal, then Ryan Howard goes off in 2004 leaving them with a dilemma. I think the way we do it now mimics the majors because your “minors” are an unknown element.
2. It allows you to trade prospects in your “minors”. This helps pennant drives and teams who need to “wave the white flag”.
3. It makes the current season more fun because while we’re playing the ‘04 seasons, you’re watching the ‘05 season hoping everyday that somebody will get called up. Man, I checked the Phillies minor league sites at least once a week to check on the progress of Gavin Floyd, Cole Hamels, etal.

I like the way we do things now, but I would enjoy a new player draft as well. Either way I’m happy.