2024 Draft - Part 1 - History (and my experience) Lesson

 OK, let's clear up one thing right now:  The draft is NOT a crap shoot.  Maybe it was back in the day, when everything was a scout's gut and a little video.  The first 50 years of the draft led to only about 50% of players selected first overall in the draft making a real mark in the majors with those numbers getting even lower later in the first round.  Look back on the futility of most of the early drafts by the Guardians and you can see how pathetic drafts were back then.

Is the baseball less certain than the draft in other sports? Obviously!  Guys can take 4-7 years to develop.  That is a career in other sports.   Guys in the NFL go right to the show and guys all the way down to the 7th round play in the NFL, some very effectively, in their draft year.   The time to gratification in the NBA draft is much shorter than in MLB, as guys play huge roles in their draft years, but even there the end of the 1st round & in the 2nd round has become, in some cases, a joke.    The NHL is probably closest to MLB but only recently has it become more common for guys in the MLB draft to reach the top level as fast as the best guys in the NHL draft. 

But with the advent of analytics and more access to players through video, pre-draft workouts and camps, drafting not only in the 1st round but throughout the draft is getting better.  

I think the numbers bear out that, in 2024, we have reached a point where high draft picks should be a sure thing, IF THOSE PICKS ARE THE RIGHT ONES.  

Have #1 overall picks failed in the MLB draft?  Sure.  Stuff happens.  But looking per decade, there has been a marked increase in hitting on the #1 overall pick in the last 15 years.

2010s - 20% failures (best case, some guys on the fence may not develop)

2000s - 50% failures

1990s - 30% failures

1980s - 10% failures

1970s - 50% failures

1960s - 50% failures (only 5 drafts)

What caused this?  I think it is analytics.  The only consideration relative to analytics is when teams distort the meaning and go in a direction that is contrary to the normal consensus of what analytics should provide.  In some cases that works out.  For example, the Guardians 2021 draft has a chance to be its best of all time because they spend almost every pick on college pitchers and, using analytics, picked the right pitchers who, within the Guardians development system, stood a good chance of being developed into ML contributors.  In 2022 and 2023, however, the Guardians eskewed the prevailing trend and drafted a lot of LH slap hitters, a strategy that has not worked for them, SO FAR.  There is a real chance that from those 2 drafts they may only end up with ONE ML player, Chase DeLauter.  That would be a disaster that I hope they can overcome with their unbelievable fortune of getting the #1 overall pick in the 2024 draft.

Analytics, I think, also has improved the early round drafting of HS position players.  Jackson Holliday is the most recent example although the counterpoint to him is Druw Jones, who was 1A to Holliday in pre-draft rankings but has struggled with EXACTLY what analytics suggested his weakness would be: his hit tool.

Look, any time it takes 4-6 years to develop a player, things can happen that result in that player failing.  However, drafting at the top of the 1st round should give the Guardians a great player.  The only thing that could kill that is if they think they know more than anyone else in baseball and draft a lower rated player or a player with obvious warts like they have in the last 2 drafts.  This fear does make me kind of sick to my stomach as this opportunity is (and should be) a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Cleveland.  They need to make the most of it.  Scratching the surface on draft history says they are set up to get a great player and maybe, due to drafting 10th in each round and having a Comp A pick this year, getting one of their strongest drafts ever. 

Let's hope so.  This organization desperately needs it, after 2022 and 2023.