I am back with an annual update to my series on measuring how teams like the Cardinals do at draft-and-development. This will be a multi-part series. This first installment will essentially add the 2025 season to the numbers and comb out some interesting tidbits, focusing more on the Cardinals than the rest of the league.
Last year’s update is here …. You can follow the chain back from there, if you have spare time.
Additional (ie. later) installments will reflect some methodology changes I am intending but not yet finished with. First, I want to go deeper into assessing the development side of things and will incorporate some early career scouting projections and compare with actual results. It has been observed that these results probably reflect the drafting/scouting side more than the development side. Will see if I can improve on that. I also want to update the methodology to segregate WAR received by the drafting team versus WAR received by other teams. For example, this will reduce the award given to the Cardinals for being smart enough to draft Max Scherzer, but not rich (or aggressive) enough to sign him. Will have to see how this goes. But that is for next time. For today, here is the annual update using the same methodology.
For this update, I am narrowing the scope of analysis to the last ten years. Years 2016-2025. I’ve already published the last 25 years, and that won’t change much with just one season piled on, so I wanted a more contemporary view, trading off depth of data for recency. Just for a different look.
Some noteworthy items from this update
For those that need a reminder of how rare a “notable” player is, check out the following chart: