Starting Rosters by Drafted Teams Chart

This comes from graphic on Reddit, a chart by me, and some thoughts about the Yankees.

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Graphic from Reddit:

Link to the Reddit post, here.

Just a couple of points on this chart:

• 3 teams only had 9 players listed, being the Tampa Bay Ray, Chicago Cubs, and Cincinnati Reds. I fixed this for my chart (below).

  • For the Rays I added pitcher Shane McClanahan (drafted by the Rays)

  • For the Cubs I added DH Frank Schwindel (drafted by the Royals)

  • For the Reds I added pitcher Hunter Greene (drafted by the Reds)

• As this was published on August 4th, I am going to assume that this chart is post-trade deadline.

  • This is further supported by the Washington Nationals player (Juan Soto) playing right field for the San Diego Padres

• The data for this graphic as to what players had each position came from the depth charts off Fangraphs' RosterResource.

  • As there is no "Miami Marlins" player listed for the Yankees in the outfield or DH (who would be Giancarlo Stanton), I am going to assume that the depth chart is from who is available to play as of August 4th.

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Chart from Ethan:

This chart comes entirely from the graphic (above), though it is another interesting way to look a this more in line with "data" as opposed to "depth charts". A couple points:

• The Blue line down the middle of the chart is to make it easy to find the team in question for how many of their own drafted players are they starting.

  • The Kansas City Royals have the highest number of their own drafted players as starters with 9.

  • The New York Yankees, San Diego Padres, and Miami Marlins each have the fewest number of their own drafted players as starters with 1.

    • For the Yankees this is Aaron Judge (RF)

    • For the Padres this is Ha-Seong Kim (SS)

    • For the Marlins this is JJ Bleday (CF)

  • The Houston Astros have the highest number of their own drafted players as starters in the league with 19. (!)

    • Closely behind them are the St. Louis Cardinals (18).

  • The San Francisco Giants have the fewest number of their own drafted players as starters in the league with 4.

    • Barely ahead of them are the Milwaukee Brewers and Washington Nationals (5).

• Only 2 teams have a combination of 3 of their drafted players playing for a different team. These are the Texas Rangers and Chicago Cubs (x2).

  • The Rangers have 3 of their drafted players currently playing for the San Diego Padres

  • The Cubs have 3 of their drafted players currently playing for the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees

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A Couple Notes About the Yankees:

This chart and graph are very telling about how the New York Yankees organization is and has been run.

What I get from looking at the chart, I see that the Yankees themselves don't trust their own player development system. Even though that one player is, without a doubt, the best player in the league currently it is hard to trust a team to have sustained success when they are unable to develop their own natural talent from drafting/international scouting. On one-end, it is darn impressive that the Yankees have maintained a winning record for so long. On the other-end, there are only two ways to get ahead of yourself for not having drafted great talent: trade away developing talent to get other teams players OR spending money to get other teams players. It also just feels like it in unsustainable if the team is constantly trying to work around signing/trading for big name players and/or contracts to fill needs (as it seems the Yankees often do at the wrong times). Look at the other teams who have just one of their own players playing for them. The San Diego Padres just emptied their farm system to try and go at it this year. They haven't won anything! Look at the Marlins! They are constantly in a fluxed state.

What I get from looking at the graph, I see that the rest of the league doesn't trust the Yankees with their player development either. The Nationals told the Yankees that they weren't going to even consider Anthony Volpe a legitimate prospect in talks for Juan Soto. The Yankees have just 7 players that they drafted playing as a starter around the league. That's tied for 5th worst behind the Giants (4), Brewers and Nationals (5 each), and tied with the Miami Marlins and Seattle Mariners (7 a piece). Truthfully, none of those teams inspires much confidence to me about the future of the Yankees. The Giants are in a similar situation to the Yankees- except worse because they directly have to play against the Los Angeles Dodgers- in how they bring in overpriced talent to fill holes. The Brewers are barely holding on to the NL Central, the Mariners are fine, the Marlins are a historically poor run franchise, and the Washington Nationals are just starting a rebuild. It's not who you want to be compared to.

Look at the Astros and Cardinals. They have a ton of their own talent playing for them. They have a ton of their own talent playing against them. That's a good thing. It means that they can afford to get THE GUY (whoever that is) when they need to in order to fill holes instead of trying to find the 2nd or 3rd or 4th option that they are actually afford to fit into the budget or acquire with prospects.