Draft, High Schoolers V. College
by FishHead on Feb 3, 2009 12:12 AM EST
11 comments
The draft discussion thread got me thinking and I went and looked back on 4 recent drafts, 02 03 04 and 05. For my own knowledge I wanted to see if you were better off drafting a HS kid or a college kid with your first round pick. I went through the 4 drafts and looked at each pick and my own oppinion to judge if the player lived up to first round expectations. Now these were my oppinions but I was objective and pretty hard(Thats what she said). Basically I asked myself would I be happy with this pick if this were my team. There were a few tweeners, that I told my self for anyone who I had to think about I would put under the no. I feel to consider a first rounder a success he should be more than a solid contributer to a team. For example I did not label Taylor Tankersley a hit. He was a tweener, but I dont think you want to draft a middle reliever with your first round pick. On the other hand I considered Ryan Wagner a hit with his recent success. I did the first round and the supplemental. Heres the results:
(I will list them like this 5/8. which means 5 high school hitters were hits out of 8 HS hitter draftees)
05 Draft
- HS
- 1st Rd - 4/7 Hitters; 1/4 pitchers
- 1s - 0/2 Hitters; 3/7 pitchers
- Total = 9/21
- Coll
- 1st Rd - 5/10 Hitters; 2/9 pitchers
- 1s - 1/3 Hitters; 2/6 pitchers
- Total = 10/28
04 Draft
- HS
- 1st Rd - 3/7 Hitters; 2/6 pitchers
- 1s - 0/1 Hitters; 0/2 pitchers
- Total = 5/16
- Coll
- 1st Rd - 1/4 Hitters; 3/13 pitchers
- 1s - 0/1 Hitters; 1/7 pitchers
- Total = 5/25
03 Draft
- HS
- 1st Rd - 4/9 Hitters; 2/3 pitchers
- 1s - 2/2 Hitters; 1/3 pitchers
- Total = 9/17
- Coll
- 1st Rd - 4/11 Hitters; 3/7 pitchers
- 1s - 0/2 Hitters; 0/0 pitchers
- Total = 6/20
02 Draft
- HS
- 1st Rd - 5/9 Hitters; 4/7 pitchers
- 1s - 0/2 Hitters; 0/1 pitchers
- Total = 5/16
- Coll
- 1st Rd - 3/5 Hitters; 3/9 pitchers
- 1s - 0/3 Hitters; 0/5 pitchers
- Total = 6/21
My conclusion is that there turned out to be a higher failure rate amongst college draftees in the first round as opposed to High School draftees. More shock was the fact that first round high school pitchers had a lower failure rate than college "polished" pitchers. I believe and have believed that the bust rate for all draftees is extremely high and the "safer" college guys are not exactly safer. In fact first round high schoolers turned out to be safer.
Now the problem with this data is that it is my oppinion. I felt I was fair and if other people choose they can do their own and come back with their own info. I feel I can look at the names objectively and give my oppinion of them.
Id like to hear arguments and support so have at it.
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If you're excluding decent-not-great players like Mark Teahen
your analysis is going to inherently favor high-risk/high-reward players, who are mostly (not entirely) high school players.
And 2005 is far, far too recent to be evaluating a high school draft class. The college junior class that was just drafted in 2008 is the same age group as those players. In terms of producing at the MLB level, not a single one of the high school hitters in the 2005 class has done much of anything. Even the college players are iffy to evaluate from that year. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that your “hit” rate from that year is much higher than for the other years.
I don’t think there’s enough evidence to make a firm call on any classes after 2002 or, pushing it, 2003. And I think if you want to make this into a comprehensive analysis, you need to move beyond “hit” or “miss” and start evaluating players based on value provided.
One last point— theoretically, as teams become more skilled at drafting, the average value of high school and college picks should start converging on each other. From what I’ve read, that’s already started happening. There’ll of course always be random fluctuations, since baseball players are individuals and not wave patterns, but the underlying pattern should be pretty steady.
Many years from now, when his name's recalled
Everyone will say, "He should have passed the ball"
-- Al Stewart, "Football Hero"
by PaulThomas on Feb 3, 2009 1:50 AM EST reply actions 1 recs
Yea
I agree that 2005 was too soon, but I looked at if the players were top prospects from that draft or flame out. It was too soon for that draft class and you bring up good points about eliminating the mark teahan’s. I also wanted to do a quick study, maybe over the next few months ill do research and put a cut off mark for numbers such as ops, k/bb. etc.
With that said, I think this showed that high schoolers produced more high impact players and not as many busts as one would expect.
by FishHead on Feb 3, 2009 11:37 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Yes, I think on the whole the high schoolers who have been drafted have on the whole been much more effective
in this decade than they were in the 1990s.
Many years from now, when his name's recalled
Everyone will say, "He should have passed the ball"
-- Al Stewart, "Football Hero"
by PaulThomas on Feb 3, 2009 12:06 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Go look at Jazayerli's studies on the draft
He did some pretty great work a couple of years ago in his column on BP. Not going to bother trying to summarize it. Worth reading in its entirety.
by aap212 on Feb 3, 2009 3:02 AM EST reply actions 0 recs
Yes, his study showed that college was better than high school
But that was a huge different early in the study period; in the second half, the difference was much less.
Lots of other info as well.
I did a study as well. I did not cover high school vs. college, but found that finding good players was extremely hard, even in the first round, even in the Top 10 picks overall. Here is a link if you are interested, but it’s a bit old now, and better statistics are available: http://sfgiants.scout.com/2/343576.html
Basically the star/good players are who you think they are, the useful ones are like Teahen, Michael Tucker, etc.
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by obsessivegiantscompulsive on Feb 3, 2009 1:13 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Jazayerli's study was more detailed than that
I thought his positional breakdowns in terms of college vs. high school offered some interesting insights. He also reflected on how values could change over just a couple of years.
by aap212 on Feb 3, 2009 3:03 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Looking only at the first round skews the results...
due to at least one important factor:
The highschoolers chosen in the first round are considered elite, very high-ceiling, can’t miss talents (at the time they are drafted at least). In the vast majority of cases the highschoolers drafted this early end up signing.
The college players chosen in the first round are players that may have been originally drafted as highschoolers, but not as first rounders, and chose to attend college instead. They are players that did not blossom until they were in college. While inarguably talented, they are likely to be thought of as having lower ceilings (with perhaps a better chance to attain that ceiling) than the first round highschoolers.
by baseballjunkie on Feb 3, 2009 3:58 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
I'm kind of curious about this theory
A lot of people mention it and I’d be interested to know if it’s true that the best high school players will almost always take the money rather than go to college.. Because high school prospects who teams think will go to college are rarely drafted in the first round, it seems like the best way to see who would have been a 1st round pick is to look at all of the high school players who were offered 1st round money (slot levels make this reasonably easy), and see how many of them took the bait and how many didn’t.
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by OldProspects on Feb 3, 2009 8:13 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
i think you are looking at it a little inversely
or maybe it’s being explained that way….the point is not who the fact that they took the bait versus didn’t because there are very few stories where someone didn’t sign for big money and that money was still there a few years later, if you are offered $1 million or $2 million as a high schooler you are taking it, or you are an idiot (this isn’t a matter of opinion, you really are an idiot if you don’t take that money right then and there), college players are going to lose some leverage and obviously often will try their best to do stupid things like holding out, etc, but the good ones are going to at least be high on projection boards so ultimately looking at a draft projection board might really be a better way of judging who starred and who flopped, the money and position all have a way of getting confusing and masking the true talent that is being evaluated
sure fire college players, usually are going to pan out as what they were supposed to be, sometimes people use their first round pick on a guy who many say will be a reliever down the road, the fact that the organization acted like he could start and he failed trying, to become an average reliever or maybe even a good one later just meant that organization made a mistake, he is what he was supposed to be, but you just got confused by their wrong interpretation, the scouts often still stick to their story in many cases and those college guys might be lower ceiling, but the ones drafted early usually are what you thought they were going to be
2002’s draft, jeff francis isn’t a bust, he’s a soft-tossing lefty who tried to pitch in a launching pad, who didn’t see this coming, seriously, i did…joe saunders has been good so far, drew meyer was a bit of a bust, but a stumpy middle infielder with medium grades across the board just isn’t supposed to be a star, he was overdrafted, khalil green has been solid, albeit injured often, russ adams is a defensive whiz, he’s in the majors, nick swisher has been inconsistent, but he’s had his moments, i have no idea who roger ring is, bobby brownlie was a stud prospect who was done in by injuries, guthrie was hurt, but is coming along, blanton has been good, i’ll just stop there, but it looks to me like that college class mostly lived up to it’s expectations across the board pretty well
by IHateMitchMustain on Feb 4, 2009 1:20 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
You make two points
One is that it’s very rare for high school players offered serious bonuses to go to college. My original post said that though this was intuitively true, I was hoping somebody might actually look through and do the numbers to find out if or how true that is.
Second, you say it’s better to find the best high school players who go to college through projection boards. That’s also a fine way, though I’d be worried that the college-bound players would be undervalued by the projection boards as well, because they would be assumed to be a tough sign.
TheSouthWing.com - A Magazine of essays, prose and poems
by OldProspects on Feb 4, 2009 11:30 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
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