Why do sports teams focus on draft picks? Isn’t that like relying on an entry-level person to save a team of seniors?
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There are only so many opportunities to change your roster, that’s why there is so much hype around draft picks.
Generally rookie contracts have a set structure or price so you gamble on a new talent and lock them in at that (lower) price than if they were a Superstar free agent.
I can give you a brand new AMD or Intel top of the line processor, you only get to pick one. Or, you can keep your 1992 Pentium processor. It works, but it’s slower. Which do you pick?
The major advantage is the size of the salary of new players, compared to established players. Every team has a cap limit of how much they are able to spend so this becomes important. Instead of paying 30-40 million for a free agent establish quarterback, for usually a smaller number of years, you could possibly roll the dice on a new quarterback that you could have for 5 years on a rookie contract, paying only a couple million.
Your team can’t be made up entirely of very good “senior” employees. Especially in a sport with a salary cap. You’ll have some stars, and then you have to fill out your roster with players who are better than almost anyone on the planet, yes. But middling to meh in terms of the rest of the league.
Draft picks make the league minimum salary for their first few seasons.
When the Toronto Maple Leafs drafted Auston Matthews, they got a player who is (currently) top 3 in the entire league, but for three years they got to pay him less than $1 million a year. And they got to pick him to specifically play for their team without giving up any players in a trade.
Not really. It depends on the sport.
Baseball for example almost never sees a recent draft pic make the major league team immediately. They almost always have to spend at least a couple of years in the minor leagues honing their skills.
Basketball and American football are the opposite. In those sports a high level draft pick can come in and make a difference right away. But even then it depends on the position of the player.
Hockey is somewhere between those 2 extremes, were the most talented draft picks can and do make the team very quickly and make an impact, but most players still have to spend several years in the minor leagues.
Comparing sports play to the business world is not a great example, because it’s as much a physical game as it is a mental game.The young athletes who are high round draft picks are in their physical peak already, and have generally been playing the sport since they were little kids, so they have sufficient experience in general. What they usually don’t have is specific experience for situations that may be unique on the Pro level.
Cost. Most sports have team salary caps and “rookie contract” scaling, meaning that a drafted player will essentially cost nothing to the team’s salary cap for their first few years. If you draft well, you will have a decent chunk of your team made up from cheap and talented players allowing you to spend $ in “free agency” to acquire veteran, more expensive players to round out your roster and compete for championships. Teams that dont draft well (and try to compete for championships) often have very limited windows (1-2 years) before their roster is way over priced and then lose 1-2 years trying to rebuild their roster. Bad franchises can be stuck in this loop for decades.
Besides cost, basically every draft will also produce some legendary players. Additionally, almost all sports allow a team to keep a player for their entire career if they Really want to… so, if you find a generational player in the draft its really good!
That said, teams that are in a championship window generally prefer proven players and will trade picks for proven players to teams that arent in a position to compete for championships so the draft is always a little bit like what your(OP) question is implying.
A few reasons:
– Players get older, so you need newer/younger players to replace older ones
– Players get injured, so you need newer/younger players to replace injured ones
– Every Hall-of-Fame player was once a newer/younger player
– Most newer/younger players get better (and will command more money) when they get older/better; ergo, a team’s payroll will balloon immensely over time if they don’t have a crop of newer/younger (cheaper) players coming in to replace older/better (more-expensive) players
– If a team wants to acquire a really good player via trade, they’ll be a more attractive trade partner if they have drafted and developed newer/younger players into good players (i.e. good outgoing “trade pieces”)
– If a team wants to acquire a really good player via free agency, and the free agent wants to win, then teams with newer/younger players can be attractive because newer/younger players are usually on low-$$ rookie-scale contracts, which means more $$ available to pay the incoming free agent (This is how the NBA’s Phoenix Suns attracted Chris Paul and Jae Crowder in 2020 and nearly won a championship after a decade of missing the playoffs altogether)
Talent doesn’t come cheap.
This is true for veteran players with a tried and true record, who can fetch top dollar in the open market and stretch out the salary for teams. For leagues that have salary caps, there are only so many star players you can have before other teams snap them up with better offers. Draft picks allow them to fill their roster with players at a lower price.
More importantly though, it’s an investment in the future. The first draft picks are the cream of the crop – the most likely future stars, barring bizarre turns of events that stop them. These are the players who, effectively, start with higher stats and have more potential for growth. Give them a few years and they’ll become the new pillars of your team when your ageing veterans retire.
As the first draft picks are weighed more heavily towards lower-performing teams in order to encourage more competitive balance in the league, the general idea is that the lowest-ranked teams will get more of the fresh talent for them to bolster the team in the near future. From a financial perspective, the teams will value those picks and potentially trade them for better immediate options, such as trading existing players from other teams in exchange for a first-round pick. So a successful team might want to secure their future by letting go of veterans, gaining a future potential star while giving fading stars to less successful teams, who in turn might see short-term benefit.
In football, a first round reciver, running back and sometimes QB can make a difference right away. Especially since the worst a team is, the higher a pick they get. So that means the “senior” players weren’t yielding enough wins.
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