When thinking about the small percentage of players that actually make it to the MLB, I have thought a lot about organizational draft habits and the coinciding development. On a yearly basis, we typically see a breakdown of how many college players vs. high school players were drafted by an organization. I wanted to get more granular with where players are getting drafted from, such as a D1 power or high school states with strong track records of producing talent.
The main reason for looking into this is to consider whether or not teams should draft more heavily from smaller, lesser known schools and areas, especially later on in the draft. My thinking behind this is simple: diminishing returns. Here's what that looks like in terms of development, from a Driveline article back in 2016. The article is more geared toward youth development, but I believe some of the same principles apply.
If an organization is considering two players in round 20, one from Vanderbilt and the other from Little River State University, I would venture to say that drafting the player from the smaller school presents a better opportunity in terms of risk/reward. While it is unfair for me to assume that Little River did not do a great job of developing that player, I would say it’s more than safe to assume that he did not have the same access to the same training methods that are available at Vanderbilt. If the power conference player has already had access and experience of top-tier coaches, a state-of-the-art gym, quality velocity program, pitch design resources, bat speed training, etc., we can only expect his performance to improve so much (that’s not to say he can’t still improve and refine those).
What I’m saying is that a player who has not gone through a certain training regimen and is already being considered with the player who has been through a training program at a pick with a low expected return, select the player who could benefit from a more aggressive training regimen than he has previously has been on.
In this post, I try to find teams who might already take this approach and as naïve as it may sound, I would still consider this approach even if my results show nothing conclusive. There are many flaws in my logic such as making an assumption that better-performing conferences contain schools that have players whose “returns are diminishing.” This is unfair for numerous reasons, one being that in my experience, coaches with tighter budget-constraints are actually capable of doing more with less, but overall I wanted to try to figure out a way to find the players who have already had access to premier training. A strong group of area scouts would be much better at making this information accurate.
I classified all of the schools or academies players have been drafted out of between 2010-2018. I had to use a lot of subjectivity here but tried to be as objective as possible. Because I felt top Division 1 conferences would have the best resources, I gave them their own category based on the 2019 top 4 conference RPI's (SEC, Big 12, ACC, Pac-12). Top high schools and JuCo's were determined by the number of HS/JC players drafted out of those states between 2010 and 2018 (HS: California, Florida, Texas, Georgia and Puerto Rico. JC: California, Florida, Texas, Arizona). Non-D1 4-years schools (D2, D3, NAIA) were classified as such, with the rest of the D1's, high schools and JuCo's being classified relative to average based on RPI or number of draft picks from their respective state.
Here is the first visual for how different organizations drafted between 2010-2018. The key is essentially the reputation of where the players are coming from.
To get a little more specific, how do these organizations draft from "Top D1's" compared to the rest of the league?
The Astros, A's, Marlins, Nationals and Tigers have all drafted more heavily out of the "Top D1" conferences relative to other organizations, while the Blue Jays, Braves, Padres and Rangers have put their focus elsewhere. While I could be completely off base here with imperfect information on how scouting departments are built out, I think it's at least worth pointing out that the Astros have significantly reduced their amateur scouting department in recent years, while the Blue Jays and Padres are known to place a strong emphasis on in-person scouting. The Astros drafting more players from "Top D1" schools could be due to them having more readily-available video access to those players, and players from those schools having more data such as Trackman and Blast Motion, while the Blue Jays and Padres have more "boots on the ground" to get to the schools I have classified as not being top-tier.
The next thing I wanted to look into is if organizations change their drafting habits from the top 10 rounds to rounds 11-40. Going back to my initial question of whether teams are currently drafting for raw players that present an opportunity for some fairly quick returns, I would expect teams who do have this logic would draft significantly more from under-the-radar schools.
The significant drop-off in "Top D1" is expected because that is where the premier college talent is typically coming out from. But to paint a clearer picture of teams who draft less from "Top D1's" following the top 10 rounds, here is another visual...
The Tigers, Nationals and Astros were due for some drop-off, but 30% seems like a lot. Meanwhile, the Angels, Indians and Rangers philosophies remained fairly stable. It's interesting to see how much the Mets focus shifted after rounds 1-10, maybe they are drafting players that show more signs of raw talent in hopes of developing them.
My last stab at trying to quantify drafting players with higher upside and the coinciding development was to see if there was a relationship between Dan Aucoin of Driveline's article about value added to every system from 2010-2019 and the amount of non-Top D1 players drafted. There are a few flaws in my logic here such as Dan's article accounting for international players, trades, and only considers players who made the top 30 prospect lists for Baseball America. My thinking is that if an organization can develop those players, they should feel confident in drafting players that are more raw.
As you can see above, there is no relationship between drafting more non-top D1 schools and the value added within that organization. But as I naively stated in the beginning, this does not necessarily mean there is not a relationship. This is a difficult concept to quantify without actually putting into action or knowing an organizations philosophies. It's possible that teams do draft players with lack of training history, but they do not execute well on the development side.
A pitcher who currently throws 98 would likely fall into the "diminishing returns" category. Does that make him undraftable? Absolutely not. Returns are still returns. I'm essentially looking at raw/high-upside/high potential prospects through another lens: "what is their training history?" rather than what I feel is the typical viewpoint of how athletic he is, physical characteristics and how he moves on the diamond. The Vanderbilt senior who has had four years of premier training might have a great pro career, but if he is getting considered in rounds 11-40 with a prospect who has not had that access, I'm taking my chances on the player development department.
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