The Bench Coach links to an interview with Paul DePodesta on Baseball America, and comes away with the impression that DePodesta will be more flexible in drafting high school players than the Oakland A’s were. I found something very interesting in the article also (Emphasis added):
Whether Los Angeles outdrafted Oakland in the last two years and has a better farm system?we rank the Dodgers second, the A’s 17th?is, for now, a subjective opinion. DePodesta prefers cold, hard facts.
Which is fine with White. He believes in analyzing data from past drafts to find ways to do his job better. The Dodgers have done studies similar to the one Baseball America did last spring, which showed that high school picks yield a higher percentage of above-average big league regulars and stars than college choices.
“Paul likes research and reasons, and I’m into statistics and analysis too,” White says. “He’s open if you can prove to him what you’re saying is accurate. I’ll have information to show him.”
Now, the draft is not one of my strong points, but the way I understand the research I’ve seen, is that it’s perfectly fine to draft position players out of high school, but high school pitchers are a huge risk. In general, the younger a hitter is when he gets to the majors, the more likely he is to have a terrific career. But pitchers seem to do better in the majors when they’ve gone through college. So it’s perfectly reasonable to have a mixed draft strategy.
Also worthy of note with draft strategies: a relatively small-market team like the A’s needs to be able to fill its bench and bullpen (and even some starting positions) with low-cost role players, usually young guys who haven’t yet made it to arbitration or free agency. The Dodgers can afford to pay a couple million bucks to a lot of those players.
High school players are, as I understand it, considered a high risk/high reward proposition: sure, more of them become stars, but more of them also wash out.
When you draft college players, you’re more likely to get a useful major league player while less likely to find that superstar (although, Mark Prior, as we all remember, was a college pitcher… so the college stars do exist).
I’d like to see this guy’s research. It sounds like nonsense to me. I’m pretty familiar with James’ research up through the 1980’s, I did my own fairly thorough research from 1990-1995. Drafting high school pitching in early rounds was clearly a bad idea in both James’ study and mine.
I think the reason that college pitchers are more reliable is that, generally, if a pitcher is going to have chronic or career-ending arm problems, it’s likely to show up before he’s 22. So if a guy is still healthy, and good, out of college, he’ll probably stay that way. Just my $.02
Actually, looking at the college pitchers who have been drafted early in the last three years, a large number of them are going down with serious injuries, and almost as soon as they begin their professional careers. With the almost sole exception of Mark Prior, the recent high school pitchers drafted early generally appear to be superior in both talent and durability. High school pitchers are just not abused any more by minor league coaches. The message has sunk in that over-work causes injuries, and MLB organizations have a lot invested in the futures of their young arms. College pitchers, on the other hand, are still abused, and why should they not be? College coaches are paid to win baseball games, not develop young talent for long, productive baseball careers. Hence the arm troubles that are becoming manifest once these college pitchers are drafted. And as far as Bill James’ work in this area is concerned, shouldn’t the fact that James’ data stopped at 1984 impinge on how seriously we take the conclusions he drew? High school players are not as raw as they used to be, and with the increase in size of signing bonuses over the years, a lot fewer premium high school talents are rejecting offers from MLB teams and opting to play college ball. I think it is interesting that even a sabermetrics-friendly outfit like Baseball Prospectus is waking up and smelling the coffee. They just released their Top 50 Prospects list. Of the 18 pitchers listed, only 4 were drafted out of four-year colleges, and only one college pitcher features in the top 11 (Ryan Wagner of the Reds, who is just a relief pitcher).