Fooch's update: Room for disagreement here, but this is an interesting take on the 49ers recent drafting.

I hate to say it, but Trent Baalke isn't even close to the Seattle Seahawks when it comes to effectiveness on draft day. In fact, that little doozy in 2012 may very well be the reason that we didn't make the playoffs last year.

Well, I decided to run the numbers and quantify just how terrible 2012 was. Using Pro Football Reference's Draft Finder, I was able to assess the effectiveness of every NFL team's draft over the past five years, based on CarAV. So, I did a quick regression based on draft position (1 through 256) for each draft since 2010 to see how well teams drafted.

I tallied up total CarAV per team as well as CarAV above expected value -- I think this last one is important; its not really fair to give credit to the Rams for taking Sam Bradford in 2010 #1 overall while not giving tremendous credit to the Seahawks for taking Richard Sherman. So, I'm ranking by the 'residuals' -- CarAV above expected CarAV. Here are the sum results from the last five drafts -- its automatically weighted, so that the 2010 season matters much more than 2014 -- since we don't know how 2014's class will truly turn out, I think that's fair:

The 49ers have the 13th best draft haul since 2010...but its only a fifth of a standard deviation above average. The Seahawks, meanwhile, are over three-and-a-half standard deviations above average; that's absurd. In addition, we seem to be riding on the fact that the 49ers turned in an exceptional draft in 2010, and that's weighed the heaviest (again, because that's the only fair way to do this); but when you look at more recent classes, the results don't look nearly as good. (Note: Look at how well this lines up with on-field success). So, let's take a look at individual 49er draft classes:

Again, you can see that 2010 was phenomenal -- over one-and-a-half standard deviations better than the average 2010 team draft; its a little bit inflated because Taylor Mays has continued to produce in Cincinnati. 2011 was a good draft too...but merely above average. 2013 was a BAD DRAFT -- players have yet to produce other than Reid -- and 2012 was an epic failure. 2014 is listed as below average -- but its hard to tell at this point...Ward may be a bust, but Carlos Hyde hasn't had a chance to start yet.

Now, let's take a look at how the 2012 compares to all 160 team drafts since 2010 -- I have to weigh them by Z-score (standard deviations from in-season mean) because that's the only way to objectively compare different years. So, here are the 16 worst drafts since 2010 (bottom 10%):

SF-2012 is rated as the 6th worst team draft since 2010. However, if you look deeper it may very well be the 2nd or 3rd worst: There are a lot of 2014 classes up there, and there simply hasn't been enough time to evaluate those classes thoroughly. Cleveland's 2014 class still can turn it around, as can Miami's. However, the 2010 Rams Class is in the books, as is SF's 2012 class...barring Joe Looney becoming an all-pro, this draft is an epic failure. Buffalo has been a draft day train-wreck and their 2010 was abysmal. Before we finish, I just wanted to take a quick look at he best 16 drafts since 2010:

Seattle was just incredibly in 2011 and 2012 and Green Bay was pretty spectacular in 2013.

Bottom Line: So what does all this mean? Well for one, Baalke did not draft well in 2012 and 2013, and 2010 was only half his class (transition). 2014 saw some day 2 and day 3 gems, but to be honest Ward looks like a bad pick...but hey Aaron Lynch could end up being a superstar from the 5th round. If the 2013 class doesn't produce this year (looking at you, Tank), or if 2015 is a bad class, Trent Baalke is going to get fired along with Jim Tomsula after the 2016 season. You simply cannot miss this much. He's been a slightly above average Drafter who's riding on the success of 2010. He is no draft Ninja