As the Minnesota Twins are evaluating their front office, I would like to take the opportunity to objectively evaluate the performance of certain parts of their front office for which there might be appropriate objective evaluation criteria. Deron Johnson, the Twins scouting director since 2008, who came into the organization when the dearly departed Terry Ryan became the General Manager in 1994, as a regional scout, has been primarily responsible for the Rule 4 amateur draft. There is a feeling that the Twins do not draft and develop players well. But drafting and developing are two different things, and need to see how each of them might be performing against the rest of the league.
How has Johnson done against the league, in the draft?
Here is the data: I looked at the overall WAR for each team for each draft for all players selected by that team in the first 10 rounds of that draft. Calculated the average WAR for each draft and the teams better are indicated with green. The teams are listed alphabetically and the Twins are bolded. Averages in yellow indicate small sample size, because simply not enough players made it to the bigs in the last few seasons to make any conclusions, but the ones who made it, count to the total team WAR numbers, since Deron Johnson was responsible for the Twins draft.
Long story short:
During the time that Johnson has been in charge of the Twins draft the Twins did better than only 6 other teams in the league: The Red Sox, Yankees, Phillies and the Rangers who all are willing to open their wallets and buy players drafted and developed by others and, surprisingly, the Rays, who are more than willing to sell everyone high to restock their system with players that other teams drafted to develop. The Twins do neither, so that it a pretty big problem. And yes Deron Johnson has been performing way below average, and D students should go home...
Few notes:
How has Johnson done against the league, in the draft?
Here is the data: I looked at the overall WAR for each team for each draft for all players selected by that team in the first 10 rounds of that draft. Calculated the average WAR for each draft and the teams better are indicated with green. The teams are listed alphabetically and the Twins are bolded. Averages in yellow indicate small sample size, because simply not enough players made it to the bigs in the last few seasons to make any conclusions, but the ones who made it, count to the total team WAR numbers, since Deron Johnson was responsible for the Twins draft.
Long story short:
During the time that Johnson has been in charge of the Twins draft the Twins did better than only 6 other teams in the league: The Red Sox, Yankees, Phillies and the Rangers who all are willing to open their wallets and buy players drafted and developed by others and, surprisingly, the Rays, who are more than willing to sell everyone high to restock their system with players that other teams drafted to develop. The Twins do neither, so that it a pretty big problem. And yes Deron Johnson has been performing way below average, and D students should go home...
Few notes:
- This is pretty interesting data about where the Twins can look to stock their front office. Surprisingly, the Diamondbacks', Padres', Jays', White Sox', and Nationals' systems might be good sources of scouting talent to replace at least Deron and some of his scouts.
- If it were not for 2009 where Dozier and Gibson account for most of the Twins' WAR, the numbers would be really pathetic.
- If you look at teams like the White Sox, that have had the fourth best draft WAR in the period and really nothing to show about it in the majors, you can make easy conclusions about problems with their development and management systems
- Yes, there are up and downs in most teams, but with the Twins other than 2009, it has been mostly downs, and the other teams, have done something about it (replacing under-performing Front Office pieces.) Will the Twins have the guts to do the same?
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