I have yet to see a publication, journalist or fan who thinks the Twins "won" the Santana trade. Today I read an article in the most recent issue of The Baseball Research Journal, written by Victor Wang that makes me wonder if the consensus is correct.
Wang looked at Top 10 prospects listed in Baseball America in the late 90s, and calculated how many of them were busts, how many were contributors, how many were everyday players and how many were stars. He used BP's WARP system to make those determinations, and I won't rehash them here. He did the same for prospects ranked 11-25 (and who never cracked the Top 10).
He then calculated what those prospects are expected to be worth, and what they are expected to cost, over a 6 year period. The first three years they make major league minimum. The next three years they make $0.64 million, $0.83 million and $1.29 million per WARP. The expected figures are a straight "expected value" calculation, multiplying the historical probabilities from his Baseball America analysis, times the salary and WARP figures he found.
He also calculated how much a free agent would cost assuming the same expected WARP, using $1.69 million per WARP in year one, and then increasing the cost by 10.87% each year for "inflation." (This last point is not entirely clear in the article. He mentions 10.87% escalation, but then seems to use $1.69 million in his calculation).
The article includes tables that are totally non-intuitive, and unfortunately, his peer reviewers did not flag this for the author. He provides a text description of the tables that is scarcely more helpful. I had to read the article four times, and then do my own spreadsheet, despite the fact the calculations are pretty straightforward once you have Wang's data about the prospects.
(In the rest of this topic, I'll use the figures from my spreadsheet, based on what I interpret Wang's methodology to be. They differ slightly from those reported in his tables.)
Many of the conclusions support what we already know. Pitching prospects are a significantly more risky crop than hitting prospects. Top pitching prospects have a 54-60% chance of being a bust and only a 3-4% chance of being stars. Top hitting prospects have a 20-33% chance of being a bust, and 14%-16% chance of being stars.
(continued in Part II)
