What is the highest possible pick the Cardinals can get in the MLB draft?

[Shady]

This is the most likely version of the worst case scenarios.

1. 9 Miami 79-83 .488 36.0 Won 1 7-3 1.85%
2. 13 Arizona 80-82 .494 37.0 Lost 5 3-7 1.51%
3. 14 Texas 81-81 .500 38.0 Lost 2 2-8 1.34%
4. 15 San Francisco 81-81 .500 38.0 Won 4 5-5 1.01%
5. 16 Kansas City 82-80 .506 39.0 Won 2 6-4 0.84%
6. 17 NY Mets 83-79 .512 40.0 Lost 1 5-5 0.67%
7. 1 CHI White Sox 60-102 .370 17.0 Won 1 3-7 27.73%
8. 2 Minnesota 70-92 .432 27.0 Lost 1 4-6 22.18%
9. 3 Pittsburgh 71-91 .438 28.0 Lost 1 6-4 16.81%
10. 10 Colorado 43-119 .265 -- Lost 6 2-8
11. 11 Washington 66-96 .407 23.0 Lost 1 4-6
12. 12 LA Angels 72-90 .444 29.0 Lost 2 3-7
13. 4 Baltimore 75-87 .463 32.0 Lost 3 3-7 9.24%
14. 5 Athletics 76-86 .469 33.0 Lost 2 5-5 6.55%
15. 6 Atlanta 76-86 .469 33.0 Won 1 7-3 4.54%
16. 7 Tampa Bay 77-85 .475 34.0 Lost 4 3-7 3.03%
17. 8 St. Louis 78-84 .481 35.0 Lost 4 4-6 2.35%
18. 18 Houston 87-75 .537 44.0 Won 2 4-6 0.34%
19. 19 Cincinnati 83-79 .512 40.0 Lost 1 7-3
20. 20 Boston 89-73 .549 46.0 Won 1 6-4
21. 21 San Diego 90-72 .556 47.0 Won 3 7-3
22. 22 Cleveland 88-74 .543 45.0 Won 2 7-3
23. 23 Detroit 87-75 .537 44.0 Lost 1 2-8
24. 24 CHI Cubs 92-70 .568 49.0 Won 3 4-6
25. 25 NY Yankees 94-68 .580 51.0 Won 8 9-1
26. 26 Philadelphia 96-66 .593 53.0 Won 1 5-5
27. 27 Seattle 90-72 .556 47.0 Lost 3 7-3
28. 28 Milwaukee 97-65 .599 54.0 Won 1 4-6
29. 29 Toronto 94-68 .580 51.0 Won 4 5-5
30. 30 LA Dodgers 93-69 .574 50.0 Won 5 8-2

A meaningful contribution. Thanks.

[HorseTrader]

Guys all this math is over me head

Well Shady can't spell math, so you are a head of him.

But I can spot a future Silver Slugger. Something many CT blowhards didn't see coming. LOL

You bragged about so many guys that you were bound to be right once in a decade. Kinda like a guy on another site, he purposes a thousand trades every winter, ONCE he got one right. One out of a thousand doesn't make you smart.

[Dan in PA]

Hey Cardstatman -
Just curious why you have Boston and Dan Diego picking ahead of Cleveland? These 3 and Cincinnati all lost in the same playoff round. Since Cincinnati and Cleveland are both revenue sharing recipients, I believe they both should pick ahead of Boston and San Diego (the revenue sharing payors).
I saw your order on another website too - but I think Cincinnati and then Cleveland is the proper order. Unless I'm missing something?

[cardstatman]

Hey Cardstatman -
Just curious why you have Boston and Dan Diego picking ahead of Cleveland? These 3 and Cincinnati all lost in the same playoff round. Since Cincinnati and Cleveland are both revenue sharing recipients, I believe they both should pick ahead of Boston and San Diego (the revenue sharing payors).
I saw your order on another website too - but I think Cincinnati and then Cleveland is the proper order. Unless I'm missing something?

I got that order from tankathon. However, it is possible it could be wrong since their site is all about the draft lottery and they really don't care about the ineligible teams.

Within each group of postseason rounds, draft order is determined first by revenue sharing status (payee clubs will pick before non-payee clubs) and then in reverse order of regular season winning percentage. So I think you may be correct.

[cardstatman]

I believe the odds by pick # for St Louis are roughly these...

39% 9th (this means one team behind STL won the lottery)
19% 8th (this means all lottery picks went to teams already ahead of STL in draft order and STL keeps the #8 spot)
14% 13th (this means two teams behind STL won the lottery)
7% 6th
6% 5th
5% 4th
4% 3rd
3% 2nd
2% 1st (2.35% to be exact)
1% 14th or lower (this means 3 or more teams behind STL won the lottery)

So the Cards have roughly a one in four chance of winning a lottery pick with their odds rising in each round.
If the do win, they will be ineligible next year.
They are more likely to move down from the #8 pick than up. However, they would be #11 if 3 teams weren't ineligible.

I may try to write a simulator to run few thousand drafts to see how closely it matches my rough estimates above.

[cardstatman]

Okay. So I wrote a simulator in LibreOffice Calc (basically MS Excel) and ran it overnight.
I used a macro to run 100,000 drafts so these results should be accurate to within about 0.1%.

These are the resuts for the Cardinals... (not far from my previous guess).

PIck Odds
1 2.33% --- this really should be 2.35 so even 100,000 drafts still are not accurate to hundreds of a percent
2 2.84%
3 3.47%
4 4.46%
5 5.78%
6 7.34%
7 0.00%
8 19.30%
9 38.59%
10 0.00%
11 0.00%
12 0.00%
13 14.43%
14 1.42%
15 0.04%
16 0.00%
17 0.00%
18 0.00%

Note: Picks 10, 11, 12 are locked in to COL, WAS, LAA who were ineligible for picks 1 to 9.

So the Cards have about a 26.2% chance of getting a lottery pick and the odds are greater with the lower lottery picks.

[cardstatman]

Here's the simulation results for all 18 non-playoff teams expressed in percentage chance for each draft pick.

Code: Select all

Pk  COL   CHW   WAS   MIN   PIT   LAA   BAL   ATH   ATL   TBR   STL   MIA   ARI   TEX   SFG   KCR   NYM   HOU
01  00.0  27.8  00.0  22.0  16.9  00.0  09.2  06.6  04.5  03.0  02.3  01.9  01.6  01.3  01.0  00.9  00.7  00.4
02  00.0  23.0  00.0  20.9  17.3  00.0  10.3  07.5  05.3  03.7  02.8  02.2  01.8  01.7  01.2  01.1  00.8  00.4
03  00.0  18.3  00.0  18.2  16.9  00.0  11.7  09.0  06.4  04.4  03.5  02.8  02.4  02.0  01.5  01.3  01.0  00.5
04  00.0  13.5  00.0  14.7  15.3  00.0  13.2  10.6  08.0  05.5  04.5  03.6  02.9  02.6  02.1  01.6  01.3  00.7
05  00.0  08.5  00.0  10.6  12.7  00.0  14.0  12.2  09.7  07.2  05.8  04.6  03.8  03.4  02.6  02.2  01.8  00.9
06  00.0  04.9  00.0  06.9  09.3  00.0  12.9  12.9  11.5  08.9  07.3  06.0  05.0  04.5  03.4  02.9  02.4  01.3
07  00.0  03.9  00.0  06.5  10.6  00.0  24.1  26.3  20.5  08.1  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0
08  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.2  01.0  00.0  04.4  13.4  27.1  34.5  19.3  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0
09  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.2  01.3  06.4  21.6  38.6  31.9  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0
10  100.  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0
11  00.0  00.0  100.  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0
12  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  100.  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0
13  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.4  03.1  14.4  37.6  44.4  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0
14  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.1  01.4  08.9  32.9  56.7  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0
15  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.6  05.1  25.4  68.9  00.0  00.0  00.0
16  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.2  02.4  18.3  79.1  00.0  00.0
17  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.9  10.8  88.2  00.0
18  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.0  00.2  04.0  95.8