MLB DRAFT, 1ST ROUND
PITCHER VS. HITTER, COLLEGE VS. PREP

A couple of developments have gotten me thinking about what type of player makes the most sensible first round draft pick. One is the Pirates' decision to take college pitchers in the first round in 2002 and 2003 because they are "safe" choices. Neither, of course, turned out to be especially safe: Bryan Bullington lost the stuff he had shown as a college junior and Paul Maholm was seriously injured when he was hit in the face by a line drive. The second is the 2005 draft class, which is expected to be both deep and well balanced. For the first time in many years, there should be a number of good high school and college position players available, as well as plenty of good pitchers. The depth in college position players is the best in years. According to Baseball America, any team drafting in the top 25 or so should be able to get a good college position player.

I decided to look at a five-year period, 1994-98. I chose that period because it ended long enough ago that it should be possible to make reasonable judgments about the success of the players chosen and because it's not so long ago that environmental factors, such as conditioning, would have changed radically. Ten years probably would have been better, but I have a job and a life.

I wanted to characterize draft picks as having been either successful or unsuccessful. The criterion I settled on was whether the player had become a major league regular. For pitchers, I defined that as including established starters and closers. I probably would have included solid, established setup men, but nobody came close to fitting that description anyway. These standards worked out surprisingly well, as there were few close calls. The four closest were Matt Anderson, Felipe Lopez, Mike Cuddyer and Jayson Werth. Anderson spent a year as a bad closer, then ended up back in the minors, so I counted him as unsuccessful. Lopez is still young and seems to have a good chance to be the Reds' regular SS for a few years, so I counted him as successful, although that admittedly is a borderline call. Cuddyer and Werth are in similar situations, except their chances of being regulars seem a little more secure going into 2005.

There were only a couple of other issues. I counted unsigned players, because whether or not they signed has nothing to do with whether they had the talent to become major league regulars. I counted J.D. Drew once, although he was twice drafted early in the first round. I did not count Ariel Prieto, as he was drafted as a Cuban defector.

Year-by-year summaries are here:

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998

The overall results are as follows:

FIRST ROUND—TOTAL	Successful	Unsuccessful	% Successful
HS Position	12	32	27%
HS Pitcher	9	22	29%
College Position	16	15	52%
College Pitcher	12	26	32%

FIRST ROUND—FIRST HALF	Successful	Unsuccessful	% Successful
HS Position	9	12	43%
HS Pitcher	4	6	40%
College Position	14	4	78%
College Pitcher	9	13	41%

I went into this expecting to find that pitchers are less reliable choices than hitters. That's not exactly what I found. As the above table shows, college position players chosen in the first round are far and away more likely to be successful major leaguers than college pitchers or high school players of either type. There is minimal difference in the success rate of the latter three. The difference is especially telling in the first half of the first round, where college position players have a very high success rate. The obvious conclusion—assuming that the time period I chose is representative—is that a team that is mired in the lower half of the standings year after year will dramatically improve its chances of maximizing its talent base if it uses those early draft picks on college position players.

One other conclusion that this data helps support is that the draft is not a crap shoot, as many fans like to believe. About a year ago, Baseball America did research showing that the odds of a draftee having a significant major league career diminish round-by-round, with a big drop from the first to the second round and a steady drop in each round thereafter. The five-year period I chose shows a dramatically higher success rate in the first half of the first round than in the second half. Although predicting long-range success with amateur baseball players is much more difficult than it is with football or basketball players, and always will be due to the skill-oriented nature of the game, professional baseball scouts do a surprisingly good job of identifying the players with the best chance of success.

Getting back to the basic point, though, the Pirates' own history bears out my belief that college position players are the way to go. In their entire history, the Pirates have taken only two college position players in the first round: Barry Bonds and Jeff King. Of the 40 first-round picks the Pirates have made in their history, only Jason Kendall, Richie Hebner and, arguably, Craig Reynolds, all high school position players, have enjoyed comparable success to King. Obviously, none has been comparable to Bonds. No pitcher ever drafted by the Pirates in the first round has had a significant major league career except Kris Benson, who remains a disappointment, and Rod Scurry, who looked great for two years but flamed out due to substance abuse.

To take just the last 20 years, the Pirates have drafted ten high school position players, three high school pitchers and five college pitchers, in addition to Bonds and King. Of the position players, Kendall became a star, Willie Greene had very limited success and Neil Walker has just begun his career. The other seven were flops; five never even came close to reaching the majors. Of the college pitchers, Benson is an established, but disappointing, major league starter; Clint Johnston flopped; and the jury is still out on John Van Benschoten, Bryan Bullington and Paul Maholm, although there are reasons to be concerned about all three. Of the high school pitchers, one flopped and the other two—Sean Burnett and Bobby Bradley—need to recover from injuries.

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