Kerry's Calculus Baseball's Amateur Draft:  An Historical Series Part One:  Background on First Round Picks

Series Introduction

Baseball's first amateur draft, instituted in 1965, was an attempt to put some limits on the bidding wars for amateurs that had developed in the 1950s, following the elimination of the bonus rule in 1957.  Signing bonuses cleared the $200,000 mark in the early 1960's; while this may sound tame by today's standards, this amount was more than any single established player was being paid at that time.  The amateur draft institution made it impossible for players to negotiate with more than one team, obviously depressing their leverage.

We'll start by examining the evolution of player choices in the first round of the draft since its inception in 1965. 

Why the first round?  Well, two reasons.  First, the first round of the draft represents each team's best effort, in terms of talent evaluation and its wish list.  Evaluating amateur baseball players is much more of an art than a science, but the fact remains that there is an excellent correlation between round of selection and ultimate big league success; the higher the round, the more likely a player is to make it to the big leagues and stay there.  There are exceptions, of course.  Perhaps the most compelling is Mike Piazza, who was chosen by the Dodgers in the 62nd (not a typo) round of the 1988 draft out of Miami-Dade North Community College and went on to become a star in the big leagues--to the point of having a very good chance of ending up in the Hall of Fame.  Mark Grace was selected by the Chicago Cubs in the 11th round of the 1985 draft out of San Diego State and is about to enter his 14th season as a starting first baseman in the big leagues.  Ken Griffey, Sr. was chosen by the Reds in the 29th round in 1969 out of Donora (Pa.) high school and was a star caliber player during a 19-year career.  There are numerous other examples.  (We'll take a more complete look at the "diamonds in the rough" in a later article.)  But for every Piazza, Grace and Griffey Senior, there are hundreds of players who don't make it.  Much more common are the Roger Clemenses, the Kevin Browns, the Alex Rodriguezes, the Ken Griffey, Jrs., the Reggie Jacksons....first round draft choices who developed into major league stars.  There are, of course, plenty of first rounders who never amounted to anything--who never even reached the big leagues, for a variety of reasons.  Remember Brien Taylor, the first pick by the Yankees in the 1991 draft?  He hurt his arm in a fight in 1993, had surgery, and never made it.  What about Ty Griffin, the Cubs' first round pick in 1988?  He was a second baseman out of Georgia Tech, a star for the U.S. Olympic team in Seoul.  The Cubs were so high on him that they started him at AA in 1989.  He never played any higher than that, apparently unable to adjust to wood bats.  (The Cubs of the 1980s and early 1990s, in fact, were the poster children for wasted first round draft picks.)  Heck, all the way back in the first draft in 1965, the Mets chose pitcher Les Rohr in the first round, the second overall pick in the draft.  He appeared in a grand total of six big league games over parts of three seasons.  There are plenty of first round failures, but, still, the first round is where the money is, literally and figuratively.  The best players, failures notwithstanding, are drafted in the first round and players from later rounds who make it--and even more rare, who end up starring in the big leagues--are, in many cases, more representative of accidents than anything else.

The second reason for focusing on the first round is...well, I have much more complete information from the first round. <g>

In future installments of this irregular multi-part series on the history of the amateur draft, we'll look at low-round success stories and high-round flops.  We'll look at the varying rate of success of first round draft picks, by team and by player category.  We'll also try to assess how successful each franchise has been in drafting over the years, along the same lines as the evaluation of the Orioles, Yankees and Red Sox that we examined last year.

But let's start out by examining how teams have gone about drafting in the first round over the years.

Choosing Players in the First Round:  The Historical Perspective

The very first player chosen in the 1965 amateur draft was, as most baseball fans know, Rick Monday.  Monday was an outfielder at Arizona State and was selected by the Kansas City Athletics who had the first pick.  Monday went on to a solid big league career which spanned parts of 19 seasons with the A's, Cubs and Dodgers.  What is particularly noteworthy about Monday's selection is that he was a college player.  There were 20 first round picks in 1965 and of the 20, only five (including Monday) were college ballplayers.  The other 15 were selected directly out of high school.  The other four were a decidedly less successful group.  Eddie Leon, a shortstop, was chosen by the Twins out of the University of Arizona, but didn't sign, instead waiting until the Indians drafted him in the second round of the secondary phase of the draft in 1967.  Leon went on to a decidedly lousy career, so the Twins didn't miss out on much.  Alan Gallagher was chosen 14th overall by the Giants out of Santa Clara University and had an almost anonymous career as a third baseman that spanned parts of four big league seasons.  Gallagher's probably best known for having five middle names.  The White Sox took Ken Plesha, a catcher from Notre Dame, 17th overall and he never made the big leagues.  Neither did Joe DiFabio, the pitcher from Delta State selected by the Cardinals with the last pick of the first round.

College first rounders were a rare breed for years.  The number of first round picks increased, of course, as the number of franchises in baseball went up, first to 24 in 1969 and then 26 in 1977, but the ratio of college to high school players selected remained quite low, as the following table makes clear:

Table 1: First Round Draft Picks, High School vs. College, 1965-1980

As you can see, this was overwhelmingly a high school first round through 1980, to the tune of four-to-one over collegians.  Only one collegian was drafted in 1967--the immortal Don Denbow, the 20th pick in a 20-choice first round--and none were selected in 1971.  

What's more, of the 79 college players selected in the first round of the draft in the first 16 years it was held (an average of almost five per draft), the stars were few and far between:  Monday (1965), Reggie Jackson (1966), Thurman Munson (1968), Dave Winfield (1973), Floyd Bannister (1976), Ken Landreaux (1976), Paul Molitor (1977), Bob Welch (1977), Bob Horner (1978), Kirk Gibson (1978), Tim Leary (1979), Tim Wallach (1979), and Steve Howe (1979) were the best of the bunch.  Some other serviceable big leaguers (e.g. Rich Dauer, Dave Roberts, Ken Dayley, Jim Acker, Dennis Rasmussen, Glenn Wilson, Atlee Hammaker, Hubie Brooks, Terry Kennedy, Bill Almon, John Stearns and Dick Ruthven) were also chosen out of colleges in the first round from 1965-80, but for a select group, it's pretty slim pickings.  

During most of the 1965-80 period, most big league teams were carrying 8-10 pitchers on the big league roster, though the number was creeping up through the 1970s as the five-man rotation and designated bullpen roles became ubiquitous.  The pitcher/position player draft choices in the first round during this period more or less reflects this, as the table below demonstrates:

Table 2: First Round Draft Picks, Pitchers vs. Position Players, 1965-1980

Combining the two variables, the breakdown of pitchers/position players by college/high school status more or less mirrors what one would expect:

Table 3: First Round Draft Picks, 1965-1980

As you can see, both pitchers and position players were roughly four times as likely over the period to come from high school as compared with college.  The table below breaks down the percentages within the pitcher/position player categories.  The table shows the percentage of pitchers who came from high school and college, and the same for position players.

Table 4: First Round Draft Picks, 1965-1980

The 4-1 ratio is reflected above.  But note the worm turning on the pitching side of the equation in 1979 and 1980, when more first round pitchers came from college then high school, the first time this had happened.

What we see happening in 1979-80 would foreshadow the trend that would take over the draft in more recent years.  The table below mimics Table 3 above, but for the 1981-2001 period.  Table 6 does the same in comparison with Table 4.

Table 5: First Round Draft Picks, 1981-2001

Table 6: First Round Draft Picks, 1981-2001

Note the dramatic change in all of the ratios.  In summary form:

Table 7

Table 8