Generating Statistical Comps for First-Round College Hitters

Last week, I published KATOH projections for the players who were drafted out of college in this year’s amateur draft*. As much as I love my projections, they only can only tell you so much about a player. Knowing a player’s projected WAR over a specified period is interesting, but it’s only one number. It simply tells you where a player falls on a spectrum of “good” and “bad.” It tells you nothing about how that player might accumulate those wins, or what he might look like doing it.

*Day one here, day two here, and day three here.

To put some faces to some of the hitters drafted in the first round, I generated some statistical comps using weighted Mahalanobis Distance calculations to college players since 2002. This analysis considers offensive statistics only, so the comps have not been filtered at all by position. The WAR columns refer to that player’s WAR through age 27.

You may notice that Mariners first-round pick Kyle Lewis isn’t included here. Lewis played in a non-elite conference, which has produced very few big leaguers historically. This made generating a KATOH-style projection for him less than straightforward.

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2. Nick Senzel, IF, Cincinnati

Proj. WAR thru age-27: 2.0

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5. Corey Ray, OF, Milwaukee

Proj. WAR thru age-27: 1.2

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10. Zack Collins, C/1B, Chicago (AL)

Proj. WAR thru age-27: 0.8

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16. Matt Thaiss, C, Angels

Proj. WAR thru age-27: 1.3

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22. Will Craig, 1B/3B, Pittsburgh

Proj. WAR thru age-27: 0.7

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32. Will Smith, C, Los Angeles (NL)

Proj. WAR thru age-27: 0.1