One of the knocks against new Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro is his drafting record while GM of the Cleveland Indians. While he is generally conceded to be an above-average trader, many writers say that the poor amateur draft choices that Cleveland made while he was GM from 2001-2010 contributed significantly to the limited success of that franchise over those years.
But is this criticism valid?
To see if this criticism was fair, I conducted a test. I took all of the Cleveland first-round picks from the 2002-2010 drafts and compared them to the next three players chosen in those drafts.