http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mlb/news/20130605/draft-pick-by-pick-breakdown/?sct=uk_t11_a5#all
Breaking down what each draft pick has yielded from 1990-2010.
from SportsIllustrated
With Major League Baseball's annual amateur draft starting on Thursday, it's worth taking a look back at the quality of players that each of the first-round picks has yielded over the last generation of players. Because there are 33 picks in the first round this year, I looked at the top 33 picks in each draft from 1990 to 2010, picking those end dates because the last active first-rounder from 1990, Chipper Jones, just retired, and 2010 is the most recent draft-class to produce players who have already completed qualifying seasons (specifically, Bryce Harper and Chris Sale).
With the data from those drafts assembled, I figured out how many of the 21 players at each draft position made the majors, made All-Star teams and played five and 10 major league seasons. For the latter categories, a judgment call was made about any player on an active major league roster and their chances of reaching such thresholds. For instance, Bryce Harper and Mike Trout project as five and 10-year players but Giants rookie Nick Noonan does not. I also totaled up the collective career wins above replacement for those 21 players (using Baseball-Reference's statistics) and listed alphabetically who the best player or players taken at that spot were over that 21-year span.
The result shows some interesting trends, with some surprising dips and spikes in draft-slot performance as well as a rapidly deteriorating rate of return, particularly in the last quarter of the first-round. That last suggests that compensation draft picks, which fall at the end of the first round, are of less value than we've come to believe. Still, it's worth remembering that great players can be found almost anywhere in the draft. The most famous examples of that are Albert Pujols, who was a 13th-round pick in 1999, and Mike Piazza, who was taken 1,390th overall in the 62nd round of the 1988 draft purely as a favor to Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda.
Those examples are so famous because they are so uncommon. As you'll see below, the success rate of even first-round picks is often quite low.
