The Perfect Draft

by C.C. McCandless

With a freshly unveiled 2035 class, all CBA front office eyes once again turn toward the amateur draft. It’s common knowledge that early picks each year are valuable currency, regardless of the team, league, or even the potential draftees involved—the quickest path to a rebuild usually involves stockpiling extra draft choices. But what is the best that a team can truly hope for? How much more value comes from an early #1 opposed to a later selection in the round? Are late seconds and early thirds interchangeable? It’s certainly an inexact science. We decided to take a very quick look at the history of the first three rounds of the CBA Amateur Draft using one simple metric: finding the player with the highest career major league WAR to date taken at each spot, from 1-90 overall.

Some interesting observations:

* Brett Sisti is within striking distance of #1 total WAR out of the #1 draft slot, and at just 28, there’s no telling where that final bar may eventually be set.

* The big total at #32 overall looks like a huge outlier. A closer look reveals that this spike belongs to Alvaro Mejia, who may certainly have benefited from his five years of, umm…”vitamins” in Dallas.

* If we are looking for definable tiers, you can make a case for the first drop off coming at pick #16, as no player taken lower than 15th (aside from Mejia) has yet reached a career WAR of 25.

* Creating a block from pick 19 through pick 49 is really interesting, as it is bookended by two guys with over 20 WAR (Luke Allen and Scott Bradford). And while the block isn’t exactly symmetrical, it’s far from any clear, linear decline, either.

* Pick #20 overall has been strikingly bad, historically speaking. It began in 2021 with potential two-way stud John Faison, who didn’t pan out in either capacity for Denver, posting just a 2.55 career ML WAR. At least three other players taken there over the next decade managed zero WAR or worse. The best 20th pick ever was Branden Docter (6.20 WAR), and you then have to look all the way down at #42 for a slot that never had a better player taken.