2002 Major League Baseball First Round Selections

* Was the only player selected who did not sign

The Results Revisited

 1) Since in Beane’s perfect world these would all be 1st round picks (and in fact if it were a perfect world and no other teams were vying for them, it then figures that they would be the first 20 chosen), we can rank his success rate against that of all 41 first round picks from 2002.

Through the 2007 season, 10 of the 20 players on the list had made it to the majors for at the very least, a cup of coffee.  Since the ultimate goal is to advance the player to the majors, even a single at bat or batter faced at the big league level for the purpose of this evaluation is considered a success.  We’ll forget for now that 3 of the 10 had been recalled for exactly that: a cup of coffee and not much more.  We’ll also ignore that for a couple of the others, success has been fleeting at the big league level.  For now, all that matters is that 50% of the players on Beane’s list have been recalled to the majors at some point in their careers.

So how does that ranks against the success rate of all 41 first round picks?  Well, through the 2007 season, 24 of the 41 had reached the majors at some point in their careers.  That is a success rate of 59%.  If you subtract out the 13 players from Beane’s list who were selected in the first round, then the overall success rate drops just a little bit to 57% (16 of 28), still better than the 50% Beane’s list achieved. 

On the other hand, since those players would be the theoretically be the first 20 taken in Beane’s perfect world, we can also compare those 20 against the first 20 actually taken in the 2002 draft.  Those results are far from favorable.  Only three of the first twenty players selected that year have yet to get the call to the majors, a success rate of 85%.  That rate could rise up to 90% in 2008 when Span (20th overall) gets a long look in spring training as the Twins look to replace the departed Torii Hunter in center.  He will have stiff competition, though, from both Carlos Gomez, acquired in the Johan Santana deal and Jason Pridie, picked up along with Delmon Young.  The other two who have yet to make it, high school pitchers Chris Gruler (#3) and Clint Everts (#5), by now can be considered certifiable busts.

Interestingly enough, after the first 20, only 33% of the remaining first round picks have made it to the majors (7 out of 21 including all supplemental picks).  Of those final 21, nine were players off of Beane's list.  Of those 9 listers, 4 have made it (44%) while of the remaining 12 non-listers, only 3 (25%) graduated to the bigs.  Regarding where some of these players were taken, they actually did better than the non-listers.  Score one for Beane.

It should also be duly noted that 13 of the 20 players on Beane’s list were actual first round picks, and 8 of those have thus far made it to the majors at some point in their career (61%).  However, 6 of those 13 were taken by other teams. Of those six, four made it (67%) while four of the seven the A’s selected (only 57%) had made it.  It’s also worth noting that the two players out of the six listers selected by other teams who have not made it to the majors – Brownlie and Hagerty – were drafted by the Cubs, who had four first round picks that year, none of which have panned out. 

Around the rest of MLB though, only 8 of the 13 actual first round picks from the list were generally considered first round material.  This was proven true in six of those cases, since they were selected by other teams (Swisher and Blanton, chosen by Oakland, being the other two).  Of those eight, six have made it (Brownlie and Hagerty again are the exceptions).  Among the other five oddball first rounders selected by the A’s, only Teahen has made any kind of significant impact.  Included among those duds are “the third best pitcher in the draft” and “the next Jeff Kent.”  So the success rate of the acknowledged clear-cut first rounders is 75%, while conversely the success ratio of the oddballs is only 40% (2 out of 5), a rate that includes Brown and all of his 11 plate appearances as a success.

All things considered, when weighing the list against the actual first round picks, there is no sign of anything remarkable or revolutionary.

2) Beane’s number one criteria going into the 2002 draft was to pick college players whom you could more accurately evaluate and project and who would likely be ready quicker.  Therefore you can measure the success of the players on Beane’s list against the success rate of the 19 high school players drafted in the first round.

In any case, you only had to study the history of the draft to see that high school pitchers were twice less likely than college pitchers, and four times less likely than college position players, to make it to the big leagues.

                                                                                    ~Moneyball 

In 2001, A’s scouting director Grady Fuson used the club's top pick on a high school pitcher who could throw 94 mph.  He was “precisely the kind of pitcher Billy thought he had trained his scouting department to avoid,” and emphasized his point by throwing a phone through a wall.   That selection as much as anything led to the A’s decision to emphasize college players over high school players in 2002. 

Overall, nineteen players were picked out of high school in the first round of the draft by a total of seventeen different ball teams (2 open minded clubs – Atlanta and Cleveland – selected at least one college and one prep player, with the Indians actually selecting two HS players along with Stanford alum Guthrie.  The Dodgers took two HS players with their two picks).  Conversely, 22 college players were drafted by a total of 13 different teams and eleven of those 22 were hoarded by just two apparently like-minded and draft wealthy teams (the A’s and the Cubs).

Here we see that Beane’s list compares less than favorably against the success rate of the prep players, while overall, college and high school players from the first round of 2002 have graduated to the majors at just about the same rate.  Certainly, the book is not yet closed on the ’02 draft (and in fact high school players selected that year are by now more likely than the college players taken to eventually get a promotion), but thus far, taking a college player instead of one out of high school didn’t appear to give any type of significant edge in success of development this time.

Of course, it should certainly be noted for the record that the A’s and the Cubs are primarily responsible for bringing down the actual success rate of the college players from the ’02 draft.

Draft position must again be cited here, as 14 of the final 22 college players drafted in the first round (including all four of Chicago’s first rounders) were taken in the second half of the round, where we’ve seen that the success rate plummets.  Only 5 of those 14 have made it, while all 8 college players selected in the first 20 spots have at some point graduated to the majors (with mixed results).  Then again, since Beane’s players were in theory (to him at least) the top 20 in the draft, they should have had similar results to the first 8 regardless of the actual position where they were picked.  Still, nine players from the list were selected in the back half of the first round with only Guthrie, Blanton, Brown and Teahen making it to the top level (44%), again showing that there was nothing revolutionary about Beane's method.

Oh, and by the way, that high school pitcher whose top selection in 2001 drew the ire of Beane and resulted in Fuson’s unemployment (as well as the destruction of one of Ma Bell’s finest)?  Well that, of course, was the Tigers' 2007 Opening Day starter, Jeremy Bonderman, now a five-year major league veteran who amassed 56 career wins before his 25th birthday (Blanton by contrast had only 12 before turning 25).

3) We can also compare the A’s actual success rate with that of the other 29 teams in baseball to see which team drafted more future Major Leaguers

Top Ten 2002 Draft Success Rates*