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This one sits behind a paywall. His take on the Pirates at 1.8: Devin Marrero "Most people saw Marrero as a top-five pick coming into the season, but he didn't have a great year for the Sun Devils. However, the entire industry seems to think the Pirates want him here. I have also heard them on Mississippi State right-hander Chris Stratton" It could be worse. But this draft strategy, if it plays out as Law predicts, is Littlefieldesque in conception. In fact, if the Pirates were to take Marrero at 1.8 next month, I'd say that this pick should alter the way fans view the 2009 Draft class. Instead of taking at face value team claims that it took Tony Sanchez with the 1.4 pick in order to conserve resources it intended to spend later, a Marrero pick makes the Sanchez pick look consistent with a pitching and defense first team building strategy.

Martin Manley put up a great analysis of the comparative value of a player by round for the 3 success outcomes (all pro, pro bowl, primary starter). Given the after draft thinking, it's a great read: http://sportsinreview.com/blog/?p=1018 I also did some derivative analysis on it. Looking at pro bowls a player drafted in the 1st round is X times more likely to go to a pro bowl in a given year than the other rounds as follows: Round 2: 2.7 Round 3: 4.7 Round 4: 10.8 Round 5: 8.3 Round 6: 10.4 Round 7: 20.8 If I’m a good team, I use those ratios as my bible to draft and trade picks. If I’m not a good team and I need a bunch of starters across the board, then I try to find many (hopefully rational) trade partners with good teams to take advantage of the different ratios for round 1 vs. other rounds for primary starters, which are: Round 2: 1.4 Round 3: 2.2 Round 4: 2.7 Round 5: 3.9 Round 6: 4.8 Round 7: 5.2 The grid (based off Martin’s data) can be found at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ak9DQaylNFGndFdfTFhFUUYyTnRrd0tLWmh1YlRMUXc&pli=1#gid=0