Ale-X-Files Next Week Preview

There's no new article this week, but that's because I'm preparing one that will be a bit more intensive next week. Way back at the beginning of the season, Martín thought it would be interesting to evaluate the value of some portion of the draft, and I looked at how I might gather and present that information this week. It's something I'll likely continue at the end of each season

So, what you'll see next week is an evaluation of the first 10 rounds of the draft based on player WAR. The big questions that I'll examine next week (and each year) with those first 200 picks are below. Feel free to discuss what your predictions might be or how you feel your first 10 picks have been doing so far in this category:

1.  Which teams got the most value from their first 10 picks?

2.  How important were those top 10 picks?  (IE could we have predicted the success of a team based on the results of it's first 10 rounds?)

The stat I'll be using to determine "value", both because it boils things down to a single number and is representative of exactly what we're looking at, is WAR (Wins Above Replacement). The basic idea behind WAR is that it evaluates how many wins a player generates for your team that would be above the value of a player that you can get for the league minimum as a free agent.

For information on WAR and its accuracy, take a look at these two articles:

Everything you wanted to know about WAR

WAR: It Works