Home Grown Rockies: Which vintages are peaking?

Much has been made that the Rockies success last season was due to homegrown talent, but I wanted to break it out by draft year to see if that sheds any more light on how we came by the NL pennant or what we might expect in coming seasons. So I started off with THT's Win Shares chart and then just assigned those values to that player's draft year if he was drafted by the club. If he was traded to the club for one of our draftees (Hirsh, Buchholz and Taveras) I assigned those Win Shares to the drafted player's year. In cases like Rodrigo Lopez, who was traded to the Rockies for two prospects, one drafted by the club, one not, I split the Win Shares accordingly. Sometimes I know this isn't the most accurate depiction of things, such as the Ryan Shealy/Scott Dohmann for Affeldt and Bautista trade where Shealy should probably get the lion's share of credit, but it is easier for me to just split everything in half and I'm lazy.

1995 - 23.8

Todd Helton 23.8

1996 - (-0.3)

Shawn Chacon (-0.3)
(Ramon Ramirez)

Jake Westbrook helped the Indians a little.

1997 - 9.9

Aaron Cook 9.9

1998 - 30.1

Matt Holliday 30.1

1999 - 21.9

Jason Jennings 21.9
Willy Taveras 12
Taylor Buchholz 5.6
Jason Hirsh 4.3

That just nudges out the 19.8 Win Shares that our 1999 draft provided the San Diego Padres in 2007 with Josh Bard and Justin Hampson.

2000 - 44.5

Garrett Atkins 19.7
Brad Hawpe 22
Clint Barmes -0.3
Darren Clarke 0.2
Scott Dohmann 2.3
(1/2 of Affeldt, 1/2 of Bautista)
Justin Huisman 0.6
(Zach McClellan)

2001 - 3.8

Cory Sullivan 3.8

In my minimal searches to see if anybody else from this draft has panned out (Jayson Nix might next season) I found out that former Rockies farmhand and 2001 fifth rounder Gerrit Simpson was pitching for Fargo-Moorhead of the Frontier League last season.

2002 - 25.5

Jeff Francis 14.2
Ryan Spilborghs 9.5
Ryan Shealy 2.3
(1/2 of Affeldt & Bautista's 4.6)
Sean Barker (-0.1)
Jeff Baker (-0.4)

Two players drafted by the Rockies (one, Jeff Salazar, signed with us, Micah Owings did not) in 2002 also provided the Diamondbacks with 18.4 Win Shares last season.

2003 - 0.7

Ian Stewart 0.7

2004 - 7.9

Chris Iannetta 5.0
Jim Miller 1.8
(1/2 of Rodrigo Lopez's 3.5)
Seth Smith 0.8
Matt Macri 0.3
(Ramon Ortiz)
Josh Newman 0.1
Joe Koshansky (-0.1)

2005 - 25.3

Troy Tulowitzki 25.3

2006 - 0

2007 - 0

The amateur draft is just part of the home grown equation, however, so let's layer in foreign and undrafted free agents:

1995 - 23.8
1996 - (-0.3)
1997 - 9.9
1998 - 30.1
1999 - 34.4
Manny Corpas 12.5
2000 - 44.5
2001 - 8.9
Ubaldo Jimenez 3.6
Ryan Speier 1.4
Juan Morillo (-0.3)
2002 - 29.3
Franklin Morales 3.8
2003 - 0.7
2004 - 7.9
2005 - 25.3
2006 - 0
2007 - 0

Here are some other notes:

1998 and 2000 are clearly peaking right now, and are good examples of the time frame needed to judge drafts. Six to nine years seems about right.

Todd Helton is the Rockies' Grand Mesa in that his value just doesn't seem to want to come down, but he isn't the only valuable cog to come from the 1995 draft class. Adding in Brian Fuentes' 8.3 Win Shares would bump that class ahead of 2002 in overall contributions.

Because of fairly astute trades, 1996 and 1999 are currently experiencing echo bounces after their initial peaks and will peak for a second time in the not too distant future. Given the value that the 1999 class gave us last season, that we haven't seen the most out of this group is a very appetizing thought.

2001 wasn't so much a down year for our scouts as it was paying another price in draft picks for signing Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle. However, if you were to pick a season for the vintage to make a big jump, it seems 2008 would be a good choice, as Jimenez and Nix will both be vying for major roles on next season's team. Of course, you could consider that Nix should also be attributed to 2000's draft as we only got him because we failed to sign Matt Harrington.

2002's future is helped a lot by foreign free agents Morales, Pedro Strop and Jonathan Herrera, so I think we still have a couple of years before it fully peaks.

Rivaling 2001 for worst recent vintage by this chart would be 2003's class, which is riding almost entirely on the success of Ian Stewart and that year's two most notable foreign free agents still in the system: Esmil Rogers and Samuel Deduno. Stewart still seems like a fairly safe bet, although I've become skeptical on Deduno.

2004's role last season is probably understated a bit, as Miller was the more highly regarded (over Jason Burch) piece in the trade that brought us Rodrigo, and Win Shares as a stat just generally seems to undervalue starting pitchers. However, when the peak for this class really starts to hit in two or three seasons, it should be a whopper. Besides Iannetta, Smith and Koshansky, you've still got more than a half dozen key prospects in the system: Dexter Fowler, Chris Nelson, Hector Gomez, Jhoulys Chacin, Aneury Rodriguez, Xavier Cedeno, David Patton and Matt Miller to give you some names. To think that Macri and Steven Register (drafted by the Mets in this month's Rule 5) could have also been a part of that group is mind-boggling. Heck, Register could still come back if he doesn't pan out with New York.

Keeping with the even years deep, odd years shallow theme we've been going with this millenium, right now it appears that 2005 and 2007 seem to have fewer potential impact players than the 2006 class, but it's still too early to tell on any of them, and 2005 is already doing quite well for the Rockies with just one guy anyway.