2023 Amateur Draft - Part 6 - High School Vs College In the Early Rounds

 Looking at the 2022 draft, it was definitely college-heavy.  Here is the breakdown of players selected in the first 120 picks of the 2022 draft 

1-30 - 13 HS/17 College

31-60 - 9 HS/21 College

61-90 - 6 HS/24 College

91-120 - 7 HS/23 College

Out of the top 100 selections there were 28 HS players selected. 

Also, in the 2022 draft all 19 of the players rated in the top 150 of all draft prospects (college and high school combined) (MLB Pipeline) who DID NOT get drafted were HS players who honored their college commitment.  Generally players who are rated that highly do not sign because their bonus demands were too high and/or they had a strong commitment to college that they honored.  And the 11 top rated HS kids who did not get drafted all went to different colleges, likely meaning that it was their college commitment and NOT the school that they were committed to that was more of a determining factor.

Looking at the top 30 prospects in each organization this spring using Baseball America's Prospect Handbook, of the 900 players who made the book:

174 were drafted out of high school

337 were drafted out of college.

A refresh on the the article I recounted about the analysis of players drafted in 2015 and before, here is the breakdown of college vs HS players in terms of making the majors and having a 3+ year ML career.

• First round: 75% of college players and 59% of HS players drafted made the majors with 52% of college draftees having at least 3+ years in the majors compared to 37% of high school draftees.
• Second round: 50% of college draftees and 40% of HS draftees make the majors; 40% of college draftees and 25% of HS draftees have a long career.
• Third round: 42% of all draftees make the majors, roughly equal for college and HS drafees and 28% of HS draftees and 25% of college draftees make the majors
• Fourth round: 39% of college draftees and 31% of HS draftees make the majors with 20% of college draftees and 17% of HS draftees have long careers

SUMMARY

Looking at last year's draft many more college players (72%) were selected by teams than HS players (28%) in the first 120 picks.

It is much more likely that a HS kid won't sign than a college kid, considering players who were drafted and did not sign plus top players who were simply not drafted because they were unlikely to sign.

Teams seem to find that almost twice as many college draft picks become top prospects compared to high school draftees.

So, this data would imply that teams are much more likely to have success in a draft if they can find college players of approximately equal value, talent-wise, compared to HS players.  As I said, it is my hypothesis that there are likely 3-5 players at every draft slot of roughly equal ability and projectability. Thus, finding a college player in those circumstances is likely to lead to more of a chance of success.  Additionally, if a team can find a player at a draft slot that matches their organizational needs (e.g., a catcher) all the better.  However, as I will show later teams SHOULD NOT draft a player who meets their organizational needs if that player is not as talented as another player who might be redundant, position/skillset-wise to players already in that team's farm system.  This would be what we refer to as an overdraft and we will talk more about that in a later post.

One factor not considered here is the ability of a team to draft and develop high school players compared to college draftees.   So, for example, if a HS school hitter and a college hitter are approximately the same ability and have the same projection, if a team can't develop HS hitters but can develop college hitters, they should draft the college hitter.  In the same way, if a team can develop college pitchers better than college hitters, the odds of their draft being successful go up if they draft college pitchers.  Now, teams should be able to change that by changing the focus of their development to better develop, say, high school hitters.  However, until they do, it is not a good idea to draft players your organization can't develop, no matter how much greater you think their upside is compared to a comparably talented college player.