LaMar: The Royals might be onto something with their college-heavy draft strategy
From Matthew LaMar at Royals Review on May 21, 2019:
The scene: June, 2018. New Jersey. Thanks to numerous circumstances, which included a mediocre 80-82 season the previous year, compensatory picks received when Lorenzo Cain and Eric Hosmer signed elsewhere in the offseason, and a competitive balance pick, the Kansas City Royals owned four of the top 40 picks in the 2018 MLB Amateur Draft. They also had the highest total slot allotment of any team. It was a gigantic opportunity and one of the most important events in franchise history.
The consensus: position players should be the priority. At the time, the 2018 draft was rich in position player talent. Combined with the Royals’ awful track record of developing starting pitching and a growing opinion that drafting hitters was the smartest thing to do, it seemed obvious that the Royals should go that route.
On the first night of the 2018 MLB Draft, the Royals selected Brady Singer, a starting pitcher out of the University of Florida, with the 17th overall pick. It seemed an odd choice, but per Shaun Newkirk’s aggregation of draft rankings from major sites, the value was clear—Singer’s aggregate ranking was 14th, and two sites had him as a top-five player.
Read the full article here: https://www.royalsreview.com/2019/5/21/18509161/the-royals-might-be-onto-something-with-their-college-heavy-draft-strategy
- Related link: “The Chances of a Drafted Baseball Player Making the Major Leagues: A Quantitative Study,” by Richard T. Karcher (SABR Baseball Research Journal)
Originally published: May 22, 2019. Last Updated: May 22, 2019.