Guest Post: Yankees’ Draft Spending

The following is a guest post from long-time reader Jake Hopkins, who you’ve probably seen in the comments as Jake H. He took a look back at how much money the Yankees have spent in the draft in recent years, something that will now be limited thanks to the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

In one of his regular Friday chats, someone asked Mike if the Yankees should increase how much they spend on the draft and/or international free agents. This has been something that Yankees fans have been complaining about since last year’s draft, the Yankees not spending enough. Wanting to find out if this was true, I looked at the last five drafts, but with a twist.

What I wanted to do was take out the first round money in the draft. I did this because the Yankees never have a chance to draft a guy like Eric Hosmer or Stephen Strasburg. By taking these large bonuses out we can see the teams that spend throughout the entire draft and not just on their first round pick. The Giants are a good example; in the last five years they’ve spent $31.921 million on the draft and $16.356 million on first round bonuses (52.1%).

This point is more evident when looking at the total number of first round and supplemental first round picks since 2007. The Yankees have had a total of just five draft picks in those rounds during that time. That’s tied for the lowest amount of draft picks along with the Orioles and Marlins. The Blue Jays and the Rays are tied with the most at fifteen picks during that five-year span.

What I did was take the first round’s salary out of the equation and added back in a dollar. I then took that amount and divided it by the number of total picks that signed for the five-year period. The Yankees spent an average of $182,790 per pick, which was the fourth highest total. The Red Sox were number one followed by the Pirates and then the Jays. The Yankees also had the least amount spent on the first round picks until the 15th spot which was the Phillies, and they aren’t known for spending on the draft.

So we now know what the Yankees spent on average on each non-first round draft pick over that five-year period. Here is a year-by-year break down…

• 2007: $145,313 average draft pick spending, fifth most.
• 2008: $150,000 average draft pick spending, tenth most. (Remember no Gerrit Cole or Scott Bittle)
• 2009: $207,692 average draft pick spending, fourth most.
• 2010: $205,214 average draft pick spending, seventh most.
• 2011: $227,957 average draft pick spending, sixth most.

As the numbers show, the Yankees have increased their average spending on the draft over the last five years, with 2011 representing their highest average draft pick price. While the Yankees’ spending has increased, I’m sure people are saying that the MLB average has gone up. Yes it has, but not as much as you may have thought…

• 2007: $95,985 average for all teams.
• 2008: $131,825 average for all teams.
• 2009: $132,878 average for all teams.
• 2010: $143,813 average for all teams.
• 2011: $136,268 average for all teams.

So there was a large jump in draft spending from 2007 to 2008, then the average spending stayed close to those numbers with 2010 being the highest. Now keep in mind that this takes all teams into account, even those teams that don’t spend much at all. As the data shows, the Yankees have been consistently spending more per draft pick then the majority of the league. While people can complain that they didn’t draft such and such or sign who we want, we can’t say that they aren’t spending money.