Prospect Watch: A Statistical Report on Every First-Rounder

Just over a month has passed since baseball’s amateur draft in early June, and a majority of the players selected during the first round of same have now both (a) signed with the relevant selecting club and (b) recorded either a plate appearance or inning as an actual professional.

What the author has done for this edition of the Prospect Watch is to produce a pair of leaderboards (one for batters; one, pitchers) of the aforementioned first-round selections, with a view towards monitoring the early production of these players. Links to the relevant FanGraphs leaderboards are available here: Batters / Pitchers.

Leaderboard: First-Round Batters
Here are all the first-round batters to have recorded at least a single plate appearance, sorted by Weighted Runs Above Average (wRAA):

Leaderboard: First-Round Pitchers
Here are all the first-round pitchers to have recorded an appearance of some sort — sorted, in this case, by kwERA, an ERA estimator that accounts for strikeout and walk rate and which Dodgers draftee Grant Holmes has temporarily broken:

Moderately Helpful Notes
Here are five notes, offering varying degrees of insight:

• Omitted from the above are the 12 (out of 34) draftees not to have recorded any sort of professional appearance thus far — of which group, three remain unsigned. The unsigned, as follows, are: Carlos Rodon (LHP, Chicago AL), Sean Newcomb (LHP, Los Angeles AL), and Erick Fedde (RHP, Washington).
• Left-hander Brady Aiken, selected first overall by Houston, agreed originally to a $6.5 million signing bonus with the club, but a final deal has yet to be reached owing to indications that the San Diego native might/does have a ligament injury.
• Cubs’ catching prospect Kyle Schwarber, selected fourth overall out of Indiana University and signed for $3.125 million, has recorded precisely as many home runs thus far (eight) as every other first-round batter combined.
• Right-hander Aaron Nola, selected seventh by Philadelphia out of LSU and then signed for $3.3 million, is the only first-round pitching draftee to have been assigned higher than Rookie-level ball. The college signee has, in fact, had found some early success already in the High-A Florida State League.
• Baseball America’s draft database has been of some assistance to the composition of this post.