From Phil Birnbaum:
As you’d expect, the early draft choices got a lot more playing time than the later ones. Even disregarding seasons where they didn’t play at all, and even *games* where they didn’t play at all, the late choices were only involved in 1/4 as many plays as the early choices. Berri and Simmons don’t think that’s a problem. They argue — as does Gladwell — that we should just assume the guys who played less, or didn’t play at all, are just as good as the guys who did play. We should just disregard the opinions of the coaches, who decided they weren’t good enough.
That’s silly, isn’ t it? I mean, it’s not logically impossible, but it defies common sense. At least you should need some evidence for it, instead of just blithely accepting it as a given.
And, in any case, there’s an obvious, reasonable alternative model that doesn’t force you to second-guess the professionals quite as much. That is: maybe early draft choices aren’t taken because they’re expected to be *better* superstars, but because they’re expected to be *more likely* to be superstars.
And:
The reason I bring this up now is that, a couple of days ago, Berri reiterated his findings on “Freakonomics”:
“We should certainly expect that if [Andrew] Luck and [Robert] Griffin III are taken in the first few picks of the draft, they will get to play more than those taken later. But when we consider per-play performance (or when we control for the added playing time top picks receive), where a quarterback is drafted doesn’t seem to predict future performance.”
What he’s saying is that Andrew Luck, who is widely considered to be the best QB prospect in the world, is not likely to perform much better than a last-round QB pick, if only you gave that last pick some playing time. Presumably, Berri would jump at the chance to trade Luck for two last-round picks. That’s the logical consequence of what he’s arguing.
Read the whole thing from Phil, along with his follow-up and see more here on the original Gladwell-Pinker debate and analysis.