John Sickels Not Impressed With Giants Draft

I thought it might be interesting to see how many walks MLB’s most hacktastic hitters drew in college. However, of the 16 of the players with the highest O-Swing%:

1) Vladimir Guerrero
2) Aaron Rowand
3) Pablo Sandoval
4) Jeff Francoeur
5) Carlos Gonzalez
6) Alex Gonzalez
7) A.J. Pierzynski
8) Delmon Young
9) Vernon Wells
10) Adam Jones
11) Yuniesky Betancourt
12) Jose Guillen
13) Miguel Tejada
14) Alfonso Soriano
15) Adrian Beltre
16) Jonny Gomes

…NONE attended four-year college. They were either drafted out of high school, were international signings, or, in Gomes’s case, went to JC. I wonder if this in and of itself means something – that hacktastic college hitters simply don’t make it. But I have no actual evidence for that – it’s just speculation.

The highest O-Swing% among four-year college draftees is Will Venable, followed by Gaby Sanchez and Rajai Davis.

Venable, attending Princeton, drew 11, 6, and 13 walks per season. However, that was in very limited playing time – 78, 96, and 143 at bats. So he was still walking a lot more often than Brown.

Sanchez, attending Miami, drew 29, 19, and 16 walks.

Baseballcube doesn’t have college data on Rajai Davis.

In any case, the most hacktastic former college hitters in all of baseball drew more walks in college than Gary Brown.

01) How well did he hit pitchers with MLB velocity?
02) How well did he hit pitchers with who were high draft picks?
03) How well did he hit against teams with highly rated defense?

When a scout goes to take a look at an amateur position player, his first concern is to judge the batspeed. The second concern is to judge his athleticism (since he’ll have to play defense).

Oh, I don’t think it’s a good thing to have no walks… just playing devil’s advocate really.
Since he isn’t a home run threat, I could see where the scouting report might be to avoid walking him at all costs… and/or his coaches emphasized putting the ball in play vs. cheating the game. Probably, he’s just always been able to get away with not taking walks.

Personally, I see a lot of weak contact with wood bats in his future.

Based on what, exactly?

And even less surprised that he is completely clueless as to why they were successful.

Dude — OBP — BB/K — PA

McGee — .384 — 34/86 — 652
Herr — .379 — 80/55 — 696
O. Smith — .355 — 65/27 — 615
Van Slyke — .335 — 47/54 — 475
Coleman — .320 — 50/115 — 692

Jack Clark actually had the best OBP on the team but was not a SB threat. Coleman’s leadoff OBP was a “WTF?” even in that era. Van Slyke’s is moderate. Ozzie is pretty good. Herr shows a great eye for that era. But McGee’s is all HITS (216 — .353 BA).

If you think that you can play games and wring out an extra amount that exceeds about $100,000K then I would say it’s woth the gamble. However, outside of the first 20, or so, picks, the money you gain almost always isn’t worth the risk of holding out (except in rare cases where you have a kid that fell due to a football commit or some other reason). And it is a gamble to not get out on the playing field ASAP and start worknig on your game. Not only do you risk having another organizational prospect jump ahead of you in development, but you also risk the team saying, “to hell with you, go (back) to college.”

The extra money that you might make from a signing bonus is going to be infinitesimal with respect to what you earn in your adult lifetime – as a baseball player or as something else, if you happen to wash out.

Of course, all thid would be a moot point if I believed that Boras was doing these things in an attempt to do what’s best for his client. But, I don’t believe that’s the case at all. I believe it’s quite self-evident that Boras does what’s in the best interest of Scott Boras. The fiasco with Pedro Alvarez and the Pirates 2 years ago is the prime example that comes to mind. Boras almost cost Alvarez a $6M+ signing bonus and relegation back into the draft pool for another year, just so he could boast that he got the highest bonus of the draft (instead of Buster Posey). The amount in question that they were haggling over was less than $10K – not something that Alvarez would ever notice considering he had a guaranteed offer of over $6M on the table.

That’s one example of Boras’s ego taking precedence to his clients’ best interest. Another thing to consider is how many of his clients have ended up falling precipitously down the board in the past several years due to the fact that teams just don’t want to deal with Boras as an agent. Finally, look at the guys that Boras has led down the rosy path that have been rudely awakened. This year we see James Paxton get drafted in the 4th rd. Last year he went at the top of the 2nd rd. Not only will Paxton lose out on hundreds of thousands of $$$$ in lost singing bonus, but his career has been set back significantly because Boras couldn’t handle the rules of agent/client interaction correctly, thus getting Paxton banned from his senior year at Kentucky.

I’m not debating your last point at all. Yes, I’d rather have had Coyle, Paxton, etc. or any variety of iterations personally. But I wasn’t making the pick – the Giants were, and they liked Jurica better for Sabean-only-knows what kind of reasons, including, potentially, signability. I don’t have any problems with criticizing them for taking Jurica in the 3rd.

My pet peeve is with calling out the organization for not waiting to draft a specific player, assuming the “could have gotten” him later in the draft.

The odds of a third round player amounting to much of anything is pretty low.

Here is a link to the 105th pick of every draft: http://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?query_type=overall_pick&overall_pick=105&draft_type=junreg&

Looking at only the first 40 years, since the recent picks need time to develop, only 10 of the 40 ever made the majors and the average WAR is 4.1 per major leaguer, and roughly 1.0 WAR per pick made. Rich Gale, a former Giant, has a 1.5 WAR for his career so that is what you get on average. And only 4 had much of anything of a major league career, and only 2 were good players (Cliff Lee and Bo Jackson; Hank Blalock is only producing WAR because of his home ballpark).

Or they let the drunk back behind the wheel.

yeah I’ve heard it said that way by not just BA. In fact, as I recall that has been his rep for a while.

While Mayo’s reports are worth checking out, he can be oddly off too. Generally, I’ve found him to be good at evaluating present skills and abilities, but not particularly good with projection, the ‘what may be’ when it comes to the raw projects. Were he running a draft, i’m pretty sure you’d see a lot of safe picks.