WAR Bubbles for 1st Round Pitchers

As promised, here’s the 2nd part to my post on draft value picked up by the Giants in the 1st round. The post on position players can be found, here. The premise remains the same; I’m looking at players drafted by the Giants (they didn’t have to sign) in the 1st round of the MLB Player Draft. This time we’re looking at pitchers. The bigger the bubble, the higher career WAR that player has. Orange bubbles are good, they indicate positive career WAR totals. White bubbles are bad, they indicate negative career WAR totals. All WAR date is pulled from Baseball-Reference.com

Also, last time it was pointed out to me by Roger in the comments section that I may have been missing some of the weirder rounds of the draft.

From Wikipedia:

Originally, three separate drafts were held each year. The June draft, which was by far the largest, involved new high school graduates, as well as college seniors who had just finished their seasons. A second draft was held in January for high school and college players who graduated in the winter. Finally, there was a draft in August for players who participated in amateur summer leagues.^[13] The August draft was eliminated after only two years, while the January draft lasted until 1986.^[14]

I should have everything right this time. I’ve included the January draft and August draft among the ‘regular’ June draft. The graph and then a data table.

Data Table

Name			Year	G	WAR
Matt Cain		2002	165	20.1
Tim Lincecum		2006	121	18.3
Dick Tidrow		1966	315	11.9
Scott Garrelts		1979	370	9.3
Mike Remlinger		1987	611	8.4
Noah Lowry		2001	110	8.3
Pete Falcone		1973	325	7.8
Terry Mulholland	1984	504	7.3
Dave Heaverlo		1973	163	6
Randy Moffitt		1970	490	4.6
Jerome Williams		1999	70	2.6
Madison Bumgarner	2007	24	2.5
David Aardsma		2003	68	2.4
Rob Dressler		1972	31	2.1
Bob Reynolds		1966	11	2
Brad Hennessey		2001	149	1.6
Mark Grant		1981	211	1.4
Jeff Dedmon		1980	229	1.2
Jason Grilli		1997	81	0.6
Frank Riccelli		1971	17	0.2
Steve Soderstrom	1993	3	-0.1
Rick Luecken		1979	36	-0.4
Boof Bonser		2000	6	-0.7
Nate Bump		1998	110	-0.7
Kurt Ainsworth		1999	20	-0.9
Joe Fontenot		1995	6	-1
Paul McClellan		1986	17	-1
John D'Acquisto		1970	250	-3

When talking about pitching talent picked up in the first round, the Giants have done an amazing job in the 2000′s. Matt Cain (20.1 WAR), Tim Lincecum (18.3), Noah Lowry (8.3), Madison Bumgarner (2.5), David Aaardsma (2.3), and Brad Hennessey (1.6) are all products of the 2000 drafts. Looking at the graph, it’s easy to see that Cain and Lincecum have truly been special talents in their respective times in the majors. An impressive point for Lincecum is that by rWAR, he’s nearly matched Matt Cain’s career output in 4 fewer seasons.

While Bumgarner’s 2010 should excite us, Noah Lowry should be a cautionary tale for him, and all young pitchers. Sometimes young pitchers get hurt. Lowry’s career ends at 8.3 wins, but coming off of his 2005 season (204.2 IP, 113 ERA+, 2.8 WAR) he looked like an important piece of the rotation of future teams. Sadly for Lowry, and anyone that watched him pitch during his good years, declining peripherals gave way to arm troubles and eventually arm surgery. The Ainsworth-Williams-Foppert trio also flamed out. Jerome Williams ends up in the positive, but his career was slowed by conditioning problems (read: fat). Ainsworth fell victim to injury — only pitching 126.2 sporadic injury filled innings over his career and that’s truly a shame. He looked like the real deal as a minor league pitcher.

Dick Tidrow — the mustachioed one — was drafted by the Giants in 1966, but he failed to sign with the team. He went back into the draft in 1967 and signed with the Cubs when they drafted him in the 4th round (June Secondary Draft). Tidrow had a nice career, but he’s better known as the Giants scouting director and all the sweet, sweet arms that he’s injected into the farm system. Thank you, ‘stache.

The rest of the list has some fungible reliever-types mixed in with failed/injured pitchers. John D’Acquisto is an interesting story, not because he was worth -3 WAR over 10 seasons pitched, but because he later did hard time.

He was sentenced to prison in 1996 for trying to pass off a forged certificate of deposit and was also indicted on charges of defrauding investors of about $7 million and on 39 counts of wire fraud and money laundering. In that case it was found that D’Acquisto was not responsible for any of the charges in the 39-count indictment and out of the 39 counts 37 were dropped and two were taken with no additional time, for misrepresentation. It was later found that the people who perpetrated the civil lawsuit and criminal investigations as well as the convictions against John D’Acquisto were arrested and are still serving jail sentances in Europe. The consensus is that John D’Acquisto was set up and used to cover up a larger scheme by others; according to the court documents in his sentencing memorandum [1], he never stole any money or committed fraud.

Yikes. If you compare this graph to the ‘hitters’ graph, it’s pretty clear that the Giants have had a much better run in recent times when drafting pitchers. The 2000′s have been very impressive, indeed.