Article: Draft a College Pitcher? Are you sure?

[ashbury]

I'm all about the Twins taking Pitchers (mainly college arms) in picks 32-72 Right now.

I'm in favor of this too. However, if we think it will result in a true ace pitcher, the 2011 Cy Young voting stacks the odds against. I took a quick look at the top 4 or 5 Cy vote getters (much below that and the ranking is skewed by individual voters), and typically these pitchers are taken midway through the first round, like pick 17 (Hamels and Halladay both, as it happens). Verlander is an outlier up at #2. A couple of guys like Lee and Shields went in later rounds and presumably could have been picked in the range you're talking about.

 

So to address to your point, in Halladay's year, there was Washburn available for the #31 pick, then Tomko, Dempster and Arroyo further down, sprinkled among the wreckage of washed-out picks 32-72. In Hamels's year, there was Jon Lester at #57, Broxton and Crain soon after. If you had ALL the picks 32-72, you'd scoop up some good ones; with a few picks, you're fighting less than 50/50 odds, unless your scouts happen to be godly.

 

Though, even #2 is still a crapshoot. The year Hamels went #17, the Rays got Upton at #2, so they can't second guess themselves too much. But when Halladay went #17, the Padres took catcher Ben Davis at #2 - hardly a bust but not what they probably were hoping for.

 

Again, I hope someone with teh mad database skillz has figured out a better methodology than my cherry-picker approach.

[twinsfanstreif]

If anyone wants to do their own research you can go here and do your own math. I did SS(hs and college), out of 214 drafted in the first round 40 had a WAR over 10, that's 18%, granted 10 of those were in the top 5 for a 30% rate. A little worse than college pitchers but I wonder what pitchers would be if you calculated in HS players.

[twinsfanstreif]

On my calculations pitchers have a 26% rate in the first 5 picks. Worse than SS and not much better than pitching over all

[minn55441]

min55441...they had money to do that this year, and didn't. So, I see no evidence Ryan is a changed man. Which makes me sad, because I think they have a nice core with Mauer, Morneau, Span, Willingham...but once again, they've surrounded them with yuckiness.

Mike, The differance was that after the 2011 season Ryan was named GM midstream. Billy was still running the show up until after the organizational meetings. Also we had all of these starting pitchers under contract. In my mind his hands were tied. He couldn't trade them. I don't think he was prepared to eat the salary when they had a chance to preform at a higher level.

 

When this season ends, Ryan will have a clean slate, with only Blackburn under contract. How he fills out our starting rotation will determine our course over the next several seasons. If he tries to fill all of the starting pitcher spots through the draft we are in for 5 or 6 years of losing baseball. If he can sign one of two quality starters as FA's and then work out a trade or two to fill the remaining spots we could quickly return to a competitive team again. We need to take pitchers in the draft, I just feel the odds are pretty low that we can pick up a pitcher that will make an impact within a year or two.

[Mike Sixel]

minn55441, fair enough. I'm certainly not going to say Ryan is a failure on his return after 1 year, any more than I REALLY wanted to after Smith's first year.

 

And, agreed, if they try to only fix this problem through the draft, there won't be 20K fans in the stands in 2013, 14...

[Loosey]

For comparisons sake and to see where the Twins could also find talent. I would like to see an analysis of where the some of the top aces in baseball today and some in the recent past were drafted. For example Johan Santana was discovered and signed out of Venezuela and eventually drafted by the Twins in the Rule 5 draft. I would like to see other examples such as this.

[scottz]

You have to take into account that guys like Adam Johnson technically made it to the majors. It's about the amount of guys that were affective. 50 of the 222 had a career WAR of 10 or more(keep in mind that Jason Marqis has a Career WAR of 12) that makes 22% were affective. Keep in mind that many people would be very upset if our #2 pick turned out to be like Jason Marquis. So really the 25 that had a WAR over 20 have been very good to elite and that's only 11% of college pitchers taken in the first round. Those numbers look much less promising.

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. However, I think the Twins pitching is in such rough shape right now, that they are going to have to be aggressive with their selections. If there's an obvious best player on the board, yes, I agree, go ahead and take that guy. But if it is a toss-up between a power arm who might join the MLB team in 2 years and a position player who might join the team in 4-5 years, I think you have to go with the arm. If we're being honest with ourselves, there are very few "sure things" in baseball anyway, and so the numbers we're talking about (11% elite in the first round) is probably within the error bars of a "good draft" anyway. Why not take a shot? If not, the reality is that we're punting on making a run in the Joe Mauer era, unless they are crazy aggressive in free agency with pitchers. I expect them to pick up 1 FA starter, and I hope they pick up 2, but I don't think they will. And if you aren't going to do that, you need a starter to come from somewhere.

 

Thoughts?

[nicksaviking]

A pitcher taken this high always could be a bust. Someone mentioned we would not be happy if he turned out to be Jason Marquis, another mentioned Adam Johnson. Any of these pitchers could bust out, but these guys are all fireballers. This year and last have seen a large increase in velocity in the top pitchers in the draft. There normally aren't this many guys who regularly hit 95-97, Jason Marquis never had that kind of heat, nor does Wimmers, Gibson, or likely Adam Johnson. I think the bust rate with most of these pitchers is being widely overblown. Even if they do bust, a high velocity starter who can't cut it, usually turns into an even harder throwing bullpen arm.

 

Either way, I don't see how Zunino or Buxton are any safer. One plays a position that limits offensive production and he has a high strikeout rate for a top of the draft college player. The other is playing very weak compition. Does Buxton remind no one of Donavan Tate? I haven't heard anyone compare the two despite the fact that they are both 5 tool, 6' 2", 200 lb rural Georgia, top 5 pick and best OF in their drafts? Tate went #3 3 years ago and is looking like a huge disappointment.

[Mike Sixel]

Latest ESPN insider states that Appel is moving back up the draft boards again....and is looking like he has a shot to be the first pick again. I bet Buxton drops, given the competition level, just my current guess, in April...

[CDog]

I think the bust rate with most of these pitchers is being widely overblown. Even if they do bust, a high velocity starter who can't cut it, usually turns into an even harder throwing bullpen arm.

I'm pretty sure the original post went into pretty much every detail of the calculations done, so I'm not sure exactly what could be being "overblown." If I count the men and women in a room and report the ratio is 7:5, is that overblowing the results?

 

And pitchers can also accumulate value as a reliever, so I would think that's cooked into the analysis that was done, too.

 

Perhaps a different way of looking at things would put a different set of shadows on it, but then someone could always do that if they wanted...

[mlhouse]

If you remove the obvious outliers like Clemons and Mussina, you can see the correlation between draft positon and value. Another factor you might want to control for is "signing bonus" because historically in the MLB draft some of the higher end prospects were pushed down the draft list because of signability.

 

For the Twins, it is obvious at #2 that they should take the best college pitcher.

[Jeremy Nygaard]

The newest ESPN Insider draft article suggests that Appel is back in the #1 conversation. Expect this to change a few dozen more times before the draft.

[Seth Stohs]

The newest ESPN Insider draft article suggests that Appel is back in the #1 conversation. Expect this to change a few dozen more times before the draft.

That's why it's best for us not to pay too much attention... It's easy for me to say "I'd lean toward Zimmer." But I don't know. Ha!