Five Years of War: Part 2, The Good, The Well-to-do, and the Successful

So here is Part 2 of my five year study of how the first 10 players for each team fared.   If you haven't seen my intro and caveats, please read them in Part 1.  They may answer some questions about about where the numbers came from, not to mention for comparison purposes.

This time, we'll look at the top 12 teams.

Team War

Rank	Team	2012-2015 Team WAR	Record from 2012-current	Playoff appearances
1	Montreal	163.8	534-412	4
2	Las Vegas	162	521-425	4
3	Nottinghamshire	132.1	529-418	3
4	Seattle	131.2	552-395	3
5	Minnesota	118.3	487-459	1
6	Georgia	117.1	458-488	1
7	Dallas	110.8	468-478	1
8	Fort Worth	110.5	403-543	0
9	New York	109.4	506-442	2
10	KC	107.2	476-470	0
11	Cabo San Lucas	106.7	546-400	4
12	Maple	100.7	488-458	3

Notes:

• Playoff appearances:  We reviewed this in the last one, but here's a refresher.  Of the 40 playoff appearances over five, 26 were from teams on this list, 14 from the bottom half.   Half of the appearances from this list are made up of the top 4 teams.   Only two teams on this list failed to make it ever.  Getting high value players in those first ten rounds pretty was pretty much a guarantee of long term success.

• Cabo San Lucas and Maple:  Both of these teams are near the middle of the pack and have 4 and 3 playoff appearances respectively.   Do they prove the top 10 picks were not significant?  Based on looking at a couple of things, I'm going to say no.  In fact, I think it answers some of the questions about Boston from last time.  Without taking anything away from these teams and their success, especially Cabo, I think there's a deeper question here about the difference in the draft success, and maybe even the overall strength, of the TML and RCL.

• RCL vs. TML:  The RCL holds 7 of the top 9 spots in WAR.   The grand total of the RCL WAR is 1309.4.   For the TML it is 1139.4.   This is the five year equivalent of three to four of the games most elite players.  Overall, it means that the TML got over 1/2 a WAR less per player.

• Picks:  Going into the draft, I ended up in the middle and my preference would have either been near the very top or near the very bottom (due to the serpentine nature).  Interestingly,  the two teams whose top 10 picks have pretty much blown everyone out of the water are Montreal and Las Vegas.  Anyone want to guess where they picked?  24th and 1st.   Seattle (#4 on the list) went 3rd.  Nottinghamshire went 17th and broke the mold a bit, but Sir William's draft strategy was well suited to a more middle position.

• The Outlaws: Speaking of NOT, the winner of three titles and a favorite for a fourth, a lot of us might have assumed he'd be higher in this category, or maybe not.  
• But the bottom line is they sort of "lost" two years while those players got older and better.   I'll also point out that the overall strategy employed here was obviously successful, and in no small part thanks to the first 10 rounds.  However, when I looked back I expected a lot more payoff.
• In fact, Nottinghamshires' WAR comes just from four very successful picks (see the link at the bottom for more info) in those first 10, so the strategy was definitely hit and miss, at least in the first 10 rounds.   The other teams in the top tier of WAR in this study may have had a superstar or two but they had value that was much more spread out across their first 10 picks as well.
• Now, NOT does have more players over 25 WAR in this list than anyone else and is fourth overall after basically being patient for two years, so the "hit and miss" was really a home run.

Individual Efforts:  Also, These Guys Have a Lot of All-Star Appearances

There are very likely players that will exceed the efforts of players here that have come up, but these are the players that have produced the most since the inaugural draft.  I chose 25 WAR as a cutoff because that would equal 5 WAR/year and, coincidentally, was right around where Jacksonville was!  

I thought this list would actually be longer.  It just goes to show how difficult it is to sustain this kind of talent year after year, and then for a half-decade.  22 players have averaged five WAR or higher since they were picked in the first 10 rounds of the inaugural draft (even if some of them haven't been up that long).

Team	POS	Player	Total
Las Vegas	SP	Maurice Gould	51.7
Seattle	RF	Steve Frend	44.3
OKC	RF	Lorenzo Rodriguez	42.9
Montreal	RF	Tom Becker	36.1
San Fran	CF	Tom Klein	36.1
Montreal	SP	Raul Perez	35.1
Minnesota	1B	Peter Blanchard	32.2
Nottinghamshire	CF	Leslie Whitney*	32.2
The Georgia	MR	Kent Rose	30.2
Cabo San Lucas	1B	Dan Smith	29.5
Dallas	SP	Rich Bussell	29.4
New York	CF	Joe Herman	28.8
Washington	RF	Joe Leftwitch	27.9
San Diego	1B	Miguel Ortiz	27.9
Montreal	C	Tim Shields	27.7
KC	SP	Antonio Gomez	27.6
Dallas	2B	Jessie Clark	27.4
Eureka	OF	Mike Bergeron	27.4
Nottinghamshire	SS	Jim Crawford	27.3
Nottinghamshire	2B	Danny Burris	27.1
Carolina	RF	Chris Barrett	27
Jersey	RF	Stan Cheslin	26.3

• Maurice Gould: Likely one of the most valuable players we will ever see in the ABL, averaging over 10 WAR per season and failing to reach that mark just once.  He'll do it again this year and has shown he can even dominate the hitter heavy RCL this season.   Still just 31, he'll continue to rack up the WAR as long as he stays healthy.

• Many of the players on this list are from Round 1.    (The highest pick not on this list is Evan Warner at #6).   Most are from Round 5 or higher, with one exception: Kent Rose, who was taken with the 150th pick in the 7th Round of the draft.  that makes him the biggest steal, at least in the first 10 rounds.  Unfortunately for Rose and a few others, this seasons seems to be a tipping point as many have produced at a much lower level this season.

• Miguel Ortiz had one of the biggest differences from high to low and then back up again.  A lot of players had significant drop-offs that never came back or were due to injury, but Ortiz has never played less than 150 games (though he may come close this season).  Ortiz had a 7.1 WAR in 2013, a 1.7 in 2014, and then 8.3 in 2015.

Put Me In Coach!

As I did last time, I'll take a look at a few teams that whose top 10 picks have seen the most ABL seasons.  Once again, we have 50 total possible seasons (5 seasons 10 players) that these players could have made contributions.

• Remember that 80% (40 of 50 seasons) seemed to be a threshold as just 3 teams have less than that % of seasons played from their top 10 picks.

• No one was perfect, but three teams had just one missed season: Fort Worth, Las Vegas, and New York.   While it's interesting, it doesn't appear any more significant as a predictor of success than WAR for those top 10 picks as they've had a range of success.  However, teams that didn't get as many seasons, as we saw in the last article, clearly struggled.

Absolutely Final Thoughts (at least for the article)

• I think the results here pretty much speak for themselves.   It's no surprise that 14 of the league's 40 playoff appearances are held by the four teams who have had the most production out of their top 10 picks and speaks to how much easier life is when getting value there. 

• My own team, Minnesota, is probably one of the most disappointing on the list.  Despite having pretty good success in the first 10 rounds, I've been to the playoffs just once.  Part of that is due to the fact that the three teams that dominate the playoff scene in the RCL had more success than I have in the first 10 rounds of the draft, and most seasons that means they've left just one spot open for another team.

• The mysterious Greg Irwin.  I'm not sure if I have his name wrong or what, but I couldn't find this player anywhere.  He was drafted by Cabo and I even have him producing WAR in the first year, but of the 200 players I looked for, he could not be found.

• The top three team individual seasons for WAR among their top 10 picks  went as follows: MON 40.4, SF 40.2, MON 40.1.  These were the only teams that managed over 40 WAR from their top 10 picks.  It's notable for two reasons.  It was in the first three seasons of the league and even hitting thirty was rare.

•  I'm not sure if I'll run this again, but if I do it will be another five seasons from now as not enough will change at this point from season to season.   A lot of the original talent will have declined and those that went young (dare I say Jacksonville?) may have gained some.

• Finally, here's the worksheet I used.  The Top Ten Picks page shows all of the players and their WAR for each ABL season with team's yearly total and half-decade totals.   The Team WAR page shows a summary of all the data for posting purposes here.   The third page was not updated this time around.