The best teams in baseball didn’t draft their own pitchers, but why?

A couple days ago, I marveled at the Cardinals and their ability to not just have perhaps one of the most dominant pitching staffs of all time, but also how they have put that staff together primarily through their efforts drafting pitchers and signing them internationally. As of Sunday, "Cardinals pitchers ha[d] thrown 513 innings through the club's first 57 games. Of those, only 63.2 ha[d] been thrown by pitchers not either drafted by the Cardinals or traded for using players drafted by the Cardinals."

What I couldn't say then, but that I can say now is how the Cardinals actually stack up to other clubs in that regard. Pretty darn well, actually. The following charts tell interesting stories about how clubs have been building their staffs.

Teams using their own draft picks

First, here is how teams that have filled their 2015 pitching staffs primarily through the draft, meaning that these staffs consist either of players drafted by the club, or acquired via trade using players drafted by the club. This is expressed through Innings Pitched and is up to date as of Tuesday morning, June 9:

As you can see, the Cardinals fare extremely well, having deployed their draft picks to pick up, for instance, John Lackey to supplement Michael Wacha, Lance Lynn, and others they drafted themselves. What's particularly interesting about the list, however, is how the Cardinals are the only team in the top four that have a record above .500.

Looking further down the list, the bottom five teams, the Twins, Cubs, Astros, Dodgers, and Royals are all either in first or second place in their respective divisions. Read that again: the Twins, Cubs, Astros, Dodgers, and Royals are all either in first or second place in their respective divisions and have the fewest innings pitched by players they drafted.

Now, we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge the large factor that free agency and the trade market is playing here, especially with teams like the Yankees and Dodgers, but there is a missing ingredient worth considering.

The missing ingredient: International talent

Let's move on and look at non-Asian international signings, primarily players signed young out of Venezuela, Dominican Republic, and Cuba:

The Indians blow everyone away here thanks primarily to Danny Salazar and Carlos Carrasco (whose presence on the Indians can ultimately be traced back to Bartolo Colon). But these numbers can be heavily influenced by a single starting pitcher, given that simply based on sheer volume, there are many more draftees than international signings every year. The most interesting part of this list to me, anyway, is the cluster of teams who have had almost no contribution from pitchers signed internationally.

Combine the two, and...

Finally, let's look at how clubs stack up overall when we combine the contributions they received from amateurs they either drafted or signed:

There's no one way to build a great staff

Again, we see a real mixed bag. What I take away from these lists is not that there are multiple ways to build a winning ballclub. I think most of us understand that intuitively. But if we look at the clubs at the bottom of the list, the Astros, Twins, Cubs, Royals, and Phillies, we see teams that have recently fallen into disrepair through poor drafting and inept front offices.

The first four of those have seemingly righted themselves somewhat last season and this year, but it takes time to build up the farm system required to be able to trot out a large number of pitchers a club either developed themselves, or acquired with amateur talent they acquired.

The systems at the top are something like Old Growth systems, whose prospects flowered and bore fruit years ago, and who are still benefiting or suffering, to varying degrees, from that now. It suggests that this process is cyclical.

It reminds us that, no matter what happens in this draft that concludes today, we won't know anything about the results until years down the line.