Greg Smith — Scouting Director

Value by position — where the value came from (descriptive)

Pos	Picks	fWAR	DVOS
P	40	214	+105.7
OF	5	35	+31.2
IF	14	47	+9.3
C	3	1	-9.7

Position from each player's primary MLB fielding spot; never-MLB picks excluded. This table is descriptive, not a skill ranking — per-position DVOS isn't reliable at this granularity (split-half ≈ 0 for P/OF, a small-sample mirage for C). The one reliable position cut is Hitter vs Pitcher: drafting hitters (C/IF/OF) above slot repeats (split-half +0.54, the KPI above), but drafting pitchers above slot does not (≈ 0) — so we rank Hitter DVOS and leave pitcher out.

Top picks — who drove the value

Yr	Ovr	Player	Pos	fWAR	Exp	DVOS
2004	2	Justin Verlander	P	83.9	14.2	+69.7
2011	1	Gerrit Cole	P	47.5	23.5	+24.0
1998	14	Jeff Weaver	P	24.2	5.8	+18.4
2010	2	Jameson Taillon	P	17.7	14.2	+3.5
2011	152	Tyler Glasnow	P	16.7	0.8	+15.9
1998	57	Brandon Inge	3B	14.5	1.8	+12.7
1999	117	Cody Ross	OF	13.3	1.0	+12.2
1998	117	Andres Torres	OF	11.4	1.0	+10.3
2008	79	Jordy Mercer	SS	11.3	1.9	+9.4
2011	61	Josh Bell	1B	10.0	1.8	+8.2
2008	174	Robbie Grossman	OF	8.5	0.8	+7.7
2011	272	Clay Holmes	P	7.7	0.5	+7.2
2008	2	Pedro Álvarez	3B	7.6	14.2	-6.6
2008	144	Justin Wilson	P	6.8	0.8	+6.0
2009	265	Brock Holt	2B	6.3	0.5	+5.8

By draft class

Year	Picks	fWAR	Expected	DVOS
1997	42	0.3	35.1	-34.8
1998	50	51.0	22.4	+28.6
1999	43	17.8	21.0	-3.2
2003	50	-0.6	25.7	-26.3
2004	50	84.5	27.6	+56.9
2008	50	33.6	27.6	+6.0
2009	51	6.3	24.8	-18.5
2010	50	19.8	26.2	-6.3
2011	50	84.0	35.2	+48.8
Total	436	297	–	+51.1

DVOS = Σ (a pick's career fWAR − the expected fWAR for that overall slot), credited to the scouting director SABR lists for that draft. We only attribute years with one unambiguous director on record; years where SABR lists multiple names (handoffs/overlaps) or none are left out, so a director's record here may skip years he was involved in — see the coverage note on the leaderboard. Single drafts are noise-dominated — one star swamps a class — so read the multi-year totals, not any one year. Full method on the DVOS page.