Haha I love the way K-Pax looks straight up like he gonna mind control this into a routine flyball.
https://twitter.com/BenVerlander/status/1661563689479307264
and
https://twitter.com/BallySportWest/status/1661565593206632450
as the Angels…win four in a row.
I just learnt that money mickey moniak was a #1 overall draft pick in 2016. Clearly i dont follow baseball as close as i do nba or nfl but is the baseball draft less reliable/important? It doesnt feel to me like moniak was a big name and any #1 pick in other sports would be big (for good or bad).
Baseball draft is extremely high variance
Mike Piazza was like 69th round (nice)
I think that even with today’s analytics, the majority of 1st rounders do not get more than a cup of coffee in the show. Some not even that
Even when MLB velocity and spin rates were trash compared to today, still it was a totally different game than any of the draftees had ever played before, making good contact with professional Stuff
And pitching arms are just so incredibly flaky and flukey at that level
Like 90% of drafted shortstops have to move to a less important defensive position
Baseball-Reference has all the drafts, with the draftees career numbers in the table. You should check it out, to get an idea of what a fucking crapshoot it is
Also there’s a lot of hilarious reasons that the consensus best available player often does not even go in the top 5 picks
Who was the last real superstar that got drafted #1 overall?
I’m not coming up with someone later than (shortstop!) Chipper Jones (1991) off the top of my head, but I feel like there’s at least one in there
Off top of my head, wasn’t Josh Hamilton a #1 as a pitcher?
Edit: not a pitcher but was #1, dunno who I got him confused with
Define real superstar.
I mean you could go to Bryce Harper. But Dansby Swanson is good too and was drafted only a few years later.
Oh yeah, how could I forget Bryce
He had Lebron-level media coverage in high school, something I’ve never seen before or since in baseball
Why though? Baseball is basically a 1v1 sport. Feels like it should be more predictable
It’s in my next post!11
The minor league grind itself is probably a big contributor to the variance. Playing every day for a marathon of a season, and you catch holy hell if you aren’t getting blackout drunk with the boys after every single road game
Wood bats
But for real, the difference in how to navigate an at bat, compared to their amateur days, is like as big as going from a tee to live pitching. It doesn’t always translate. Some people just cannot ever hit or take a big league splitter or slider, or even just 4-seamer with more resistance to gravity than they’ve ever seen before
Dudes go from hitting .600 in high school, to way more variance of outcomes due to their lower batting average, and it can be like poker where you don’t know if your adjustments were good, because of sample size issues. None of the draftees have ever had to deal with that before facing pro pitching with wood bats. Some guys cannot get in the right mindset. First slump and they’re done
Strasburg and Harper were back to back number 1 picks, both had pretty huge hype leading up to the drafts. Harper was getting tons of national press in high school.
Gerrit Cole and Correa were other recent ones that are kind of stars I guess. Most of the more recent number 1s have been pretty bad.
Mauer was a number 1 but that was right around 2000
I played hs baseball in the early 80’s and the aluminum bats were hot back then. I was 5’8” 165lbs and hitting the ball over a 320 foot fence was no problem. Put a wood bat in my hands instead and it’s a routine fly ball.
Manoah washed up. Wonder if he partied too hard over winter and going to end up AAA.
Alex Rodriguez
Joe Mauer was there for awhile
correa/harper tier for today
Griffey Jr for all time best #1
