High School draft picks vs collegian picks

How do you view them differently.

Aaron Hicks was drafted out of high school & has been a slight/more of a disappointment to most.
However, if he were drafted out of college....he woulda been picked last summer.
He is @ New Brit & only 22 yrs old but is on pace for a 140gm minor league season of 92runs 16HR 80RBI 72BB 36Sbs.
If he was our #1 pick last yr & already @ AA, would fans be more excited about him??

I made the same points on boards last summer about Chris Parmelee. He is only 24 but IF he was a college draft pick in 09 (instead of high school in 06) & made the MLB team after only 2 full minor league season, would he be thought of differently. Same with Joe Benson who woulda been a collegiate pick in 09. How would his last 2 minor league yrs be viewed now??
Would both their last 2 minor league seasons seem better?

Collegiate picks are usually thought of as safer because they face stiffer competition.

The TWins have had a lot of success with high school hitters... (Mauer, Morneau, Kubel, Hunter, Span, Revere) and yet they've had some busts (Moses, Garbe).
The Twins have had success with college pitchers ... (Baker, Garza, Crain, Redman), and yet they've had some busts (Johnson, Mills)

The Twins haven't drafted as many high school pitchers, but hve had some successes and some failures (Banks, Ard)
The Twins haven't drafted many college hitters, but have had some successes and some failures.

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Originally Posted by J-Dog Dungan

Collegiate picks are usually thought of as safer because they face stiffer competition.

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And, the reverse of that, HS picks usually have the higher ceilings.

The Twins do seem to follow some patterns in their drafts. Often they will take perceived high ceiling high school bats early, often in the first round. Within the first 10 rounds there is usually a lot of college pitchers. They often mix in college bats after the 4th round or so. After the 10th round or so they will or have often mixed in high ceiling high school arms, often kids they don't necessarily expect to sign but sometimes kids who don't want to go to college. Mostly after the 10th round they will be looking for guys to fill out the minor league rosters. Sometimes you might see a lot of middle infielders, occasionally catchers. Most of these guys will be college grads.

As noted by Seth, there are a lot of misses, but you can see the logic in what they do. Most of the high ceiling players available after the first half of the first round are usually high school bats. You have to be patient and because they often are very raw, the failure rate is a bit high. Still, your best chance of getting an impact bat is usually to draft high school kids. You can have good luck drafting college pitchers during the early rounds of the draft. Many decent starters are drafted there.

Later in the draft it is even more of a crap shoot, but occasionally the Twins have found guys like Valencia, Dozier, Kubel, and many others after the 5th round. A lot of those guys were college guys with good but not outstanding track records. Most of those guys are minor league filler but clearly a few can develop a lot after college.

Nobody has answered my question tho about how would you feel about Hicks if he was just drafted last summer & this was his first yr with his numbers/talent currently......or if Benson/Parmelee were college guys & only count their numbers after 09 summer.

If we were to draft Zunino or Devin Merrerro (wont but....)would you be excited with numbers like these after a year or 2??

To be honest, I think it would depend on what kind of numbers he put up in college. If he had had super years and was an all-american, then yes, he could be viewed a disappointment for where he currently is at. If, though, he had been just a so-so college player and it looked like he was starting to bloom, then I would feel better. As it is, all we have to compare him to is the earlier expectations of high school numbers and early pro career.

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Originally Posted by greengoblinrulz

Nobody has answered my question tho about how would you feel about Hicks if he was just drafted last summer & this was his first yr with his numbers/talent currently......or if Benson/Parmelee were college guys & only count their numbers after 09 summer.

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The problem with this hypothetical situation is that when a kid goes to college he has other things (like study) instead of focusing on baseball as a professional 24x7. So the kids who were drafted as high schoolers better be more advanced at the same age than kids who were just drafted from college, because they had much more practice playing plus 2-3 ST camps...

Cannot compare

Maybe im assuming, but it seems the twins will typically only sign HS aged players out of the dominican and usually draft Native players out of college. Whether there is truth to that or not I think its a good strategy. The success rate of drafting out of college is obviously easier because one can predict with more accuracy what your gonna get.

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Originally Posted by gunnarthor

And, the reverse of that, HS picks usually have the higher ceilings.

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Sometimes they have higher ceilings. But I don't think that is what he was getting to. College players are generally considered safer (as in actually make it to the major league team). It's not all due to the competition they see though. With college players, there is much more data on performance than a college player. So, you have a better idea of what you will be getting.

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Originally Posted by asmus_ndsu

Maybe im assuming, but it seems the twins will typically only sign HS aged players out of the dominican and usually draft Native players out of college. Whether there is truth to that or not I think its a good strategy. The success rate of drafting out of college is obviously easier because one can predict with more accuracy what your gonna get.

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Dominican players are not part of the draft. The rule 4 draft only covers the USA and Puerto Rico. Dominican plays sign as international free agents. The MLB is working there way toward an international draft, but is there yet.

thrylos is correct, a HS based player with 4 years in the minors should be more advanced than a college based player with 1-2 years in the minors. Plus, do you really think (outside of Mauer) that a college based player would be that far into the system? Frankly, I'm not all that impressed with Parmalee anyway, he was ok in the minors, and is overmatched in the majors, so no, I'd not be more impressed at this point had he gone to college. For me, it's about how old they are relative to competition and their likely prime years, and has nothing to do with whether they came from HS or college.

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Originally Posted by asmus_ndsu

Maybe im assuming, but it seems the twins will typically only sign HS aged players out of the dominican and usually draft Native players out of college. Whether there is truth to that or not I think its a good strategy. The success rate of drafting out of college is obviously easier because one can predict with more accuracy what your gonna get.

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I think it's sort of the opposite. Twins draft a ton of HS position players and college pitchers. They don't draft as many college hitters (before Micheal last year, the Twins hadn't taken a college hitter in the 1st round since 97) or HS arms (although it's a bit more common).

There is another aspect to choosing between HS/college, and that is managing your 40-man roster. This was raised in another thread concerning Yangervis Solarte. The rules here are a little complex, and they take into account the age when a player entered the minor league system. Still, if you draft a college player, you most likely will be able to figure out whether he's going to ever be a major league player, and what kind, by the time you have to start making roster decisions about him. If you draft a kid out of HS, you may have to make decisions about him before he's finished developing.

Solarte (who I believe was not drafted, but this doesn't affect the point here) seems to have had a good 2011 at AA as a 23 year old, and yet the Twins wound up letting him go because of 40-man roster considerations. He's now doing well at AAA for Texas, though he's cooled off after a hot start. Would we rather have him than Plouffe or someone else at this point? Who knows, it's second guessing anyway.

Anyway, I expect this has a lot to do with people viewing college players as "safer". If you draft a raw 18 year old with high potential, you are somewhat committing to adding him to the 40-man before he is ready to contribute to the major league team. You can't clutter your minor league system with too many of those.