A Report on the Amateur Origins of Baseball’s Top-40 Players

Like many of this site’s readers, the author of this post has occasionally entertained a fantasy in which he’s tasked — as the general manager of a major-league club — with constructing a championship roster. As with many fantasies, this one is burdened by awful, dumb reality: apart from an impressive combination of talent and experience, the position of general manager also requires one to work “all the time” or at least “nearly all the time.” For those among us who have already allocated a portion of the day to assuming the fetal position and weeping gently, that sort of obligation is untenable. As assorted industry contacts have confirmed for me, employment in a front office allows almost zero time for reflection on the horror of merely existing.

Still, this doesn’t prevent one from contemplating how one would conduct the affairs of a club were he given the opportunity. This post is designed to do that, briefly.

This post is also built on a reasonable assumption — namely that, among the general manager’s most important duties (and the scouting director’s and team president’s) is the acquisition of amateur talent. With few exceptions, organizations exercise great control over players whom they procure by means either of the draft or international free agency. In addition to owning the rights to such players for years in the minors, clubs are then entitled to six or seven years of player control in the majors. One can (and maybe should) debate the merits of the system; however, that debate lies outside the scope of this very modest report. What’s relevant here is the fact that it exists.

Even if a club doesn’t have space for a talented player on its 25-man roster, this doesn’t render that player’s value moot. The Detroit Tigers, for example, have maintained a strong major-league club for much of the last decade in part by exchanging young, cost-controlled prospects for more expensive, more proven major leaguers. While the Tigers have frequently placed among the bottom third of farm-rankings lists, this isn’t to say that the organization hasn’t reaped the benefits of its amateur scouting department. Rather, they’ve attempted to leverage those benefits in a different way — by exchanging future for present value.

What’s the best place to find such players, though? That’s the question a GM et al. must answer — and the more accurate the answer, the better situated a club to win.

What I’ve endeavored to here is answer the question my own haphazard way, using the tools and resourced available to one guy sitting at his desk in New Hampshire. I started by identifying the best players in the game — which, for the purposes of this post, I’ve defined as players who’ve received a Steamer projection of four wins or greater. The four-win threshold is convenient: not only does that represent the “star” threshold in our glossary entry for WAR, but it also accounts for exactly 40 players. After identifying those players, I found their original signing information, as well — that is, whether they were selected in the amateur draft or signed as an international free agent. For the former group, I also recorded from what sort of school he was selected (high school, four-year college, junior college) and at what number he was picked. For the latter group, I recorded the country of origin.

In some ways, the current piece resembles a series of three posts I published last March, which also examined amateur origins. The projects are similar, but not identical. That series of posts examined good seasons, as opposed to good players. That distinction might seem like a merely semantic one, but there’s a real difference, too. A good season might be the product of a wildly high UZR figure, for example. The regression applied by Steamer smooths out those sort of outliers. Also, this post features newer data. So, if nothing else, it represents a “status update” of sorts.

The full results are featured below. In the meantime, I’ve provided three observations of particular interest, as follow.

1. The draft has produced a majority of today’s star players.
Among the 40 players projected to record four wins or more in 2016, only five of them (12.5%) were signed as international free agents. The remaining 35 (87.5%) were selected by way of the draft. This is surprising. A number of the last decade’s best players were signed as IFAs. Consider: Miguel Cabrera, Adrian Belte, and Robinson Cano are responsible for the first-, fourth-, and seventh-highest WAR figures among batters over the last 10 years. Each of them is over 30 now, however, and only Cabrera is projected for four or more wins.

Is this a trend? It seems unlikely. Roughly 25% of major-leaguers were born outside the United States. Some of them are ultimately subject to the draft, of course. Carlos Correa and Joey Votto were selected, by way of the draft, out of Puerto Rico and Canada, respectively. Jose Fernandez defected from Cuba to the States as a youth. He ultimately attended a Tampa high school. Still, many of those 25% were first signed out of Latin America. That the conversion rate to stardom is currently so low — it’s worthy of monitoring, if nothing else.

2. College and prep draftees are equally represented among star players.
While accepted wisdom typically suggests that college draftees possess both higher floors and lower ceilings than their high-school counterparts, the two groups are represented almost equally among the league’s 40 top players, which features 16 former four-year collegiates and 17 high-school draftees.

Anecdotally, the college products do seem to have taken a more circuitous path to stardom. Josh Donaldson, for example, didn’t record his 35th plate appearance until his age-26 season — this after having moved to third base permanently following years at catcher. Bryce Harper and Mike Trout, by contrast, both debuted as 19-year-olds. Still younger than Donaldson when he made his debut, it’s quite possible that Harper and Trout have produced more wins (57.9) already than Donaldson (24.1) will in his entire career.

3. Junior colleges represent a source of interesting talent.
In that study from last year, I found that nearly 10% of good seasons were produced by players who were drafted out of junior college. Only one such player had been selected in the first round: Bryce Harper. And, it should be noted, that Harper actually acquired a GED after his sophomore year of high school so he could enter the draft earlier than most high schoolers.

Not every talented product of junior colleges is as obscure as Kevin Kiermaier, but he represents an interesting case study. Selected in the 31st round out of Parkland College in 2010, Kiermaier has parlayed elite defense and a league-average bat into nearly 10 wins over the past two years.

Those comments having been made, here’s a sortable table with all the relevant data.

The Amateur Origins of Baseball’s Top-40 Players

	Name	Team	Type	WAR	How	School	Pick	Country	Year
1	Mike Trout	LAA	B	9.0	Draft	HS	25	—	2009
2	Clayton Kershaw	LAN	P	7.3	Draft	HS	7	—	2006
3	Bryce Harper	WAS	B	6.6	Draft	JC	1	—	2010
4	Manny Machado	BAL	B	6.2	Draft	HS	3	—	2010
5	Josh Donaldson	TOR	B	6.1	Draft	4YR	48	—	2007
6	Chris Sale	CHA	P	5.9	Draft	4YR	13	—	2010
7	Andrew McCutchen	PIT	B	5.7	Draft	HS	11	—	2005
8	Kris Bryant	CHN	B	5.6	Draft	4YR	2	—	2013
9	Max Scherzer	WAS	P	5.6	Draft	4YR	11	—	2006
10	Buster Posey	SFN	B	5.4	Draft	4YR	5	—	2008
11	Paul Goldschmidt	ARI	B	5.4	Draft	4YR	8	—	2009
12	Giancarlo Stanton	MIA	B	5.2	Draft	HS	76	—	2007
13	Corey Kluber	CLE	P	5.2	Draft	4YR	134	—	2007
14	Jake Arrieta	CHN	P	5.2	Draft	4YR	159	—	2007
15	Jason Heyward	CHN	B	5.1	Draft	HS	14	—	2007
16	Anthony Rizzo	CHN	B	5.1	Draft	HS	204	—	2007
17	Mookie Betts	BOS	B	5.0	Draft	HS	172	—	2011
18	David Price	BOS	P	4.9	Draft	4YR	1	—	2007
19	Jose Fernandez	MIA	P	4.9	Draft	HS	14	—	2011
20	Carlos Carrasco	CLE	P	4.8	IFA	—	—	VEN	2003
21	Stephen Strasburg	WAS	P	4.8	Draft	4YR	1	—	2009
22	Dallas Keuchel	HOU	P	4.8	Draft	4YR	221	—	2009
23	Felix Hernandez	SEA	P	4.7	IFA	—	—	VEN	2002
24	Matt Harvey	NYN	P	4.6	Draft	4YR	7	—	2010
25	Joey Votto	CIN	B	4.5	Draft	HS	44	—	2002
26	Carlos Correa	HOU	B	4.4	Draft	HS	1	—	2012
27	Jacob deGrom	NYN	P	4.4	Draft	4YR	272	—	2010
28	Nolan Arenado	COL	B	4.3	Draft	HS	59	—	2009
29	Madison Bumgarner	SFN	P	4.3	Draft	HS	10	—	2007
30	Jon Lester	CHN	P	4.3	Draft	HS	57	—	2002
31	Miguel Cabrera	DET	B	4.2	IFA	—	—	VEN	1999
32	Yasiel Puig	LAN	B	4.2	IFA	—	—	CUB	2012
33	Gerrit Cole	PIT	P	4.2	Draft	4YR	1	—	2011
34	Zack Greinke	ARI	P	4.2	Draft	HS	6	—	2002
35	Evan Longoria	TBA	B	4.1	Draft	4YR	3	—	2006
36	Noah Syndergaard	NYN	P	4.1	Draft	HS	38	—	2010
37	Chris Archer	TBA	P	4.1	Draft	HS	161	—	2006
38	Starling Marte	PIT	B	4.0	IFA	—	—	DOM	2007
39	Kevin Kiermaier	TBA	B	4.0	Draft	JC	941	—	2010
40	Tyson Ross	SDN	P	4.0	Draft	4YR	58	—	2008