Issue 7: The First Round Hit Rate Of First-Team All-Americans
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Happy Super Bowl Sunday to all who celebrate.
As for me, I’m more excited about college baseball getting started later this week. I’ll be traveling to Texas for the Shriner’s College Baseball Showdown for the second year in a row and reporting back after seeing Baylor, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas Tech.
Today’s newsletter is going to be a quicker one.
We published our preseason all-America teams this week on the site (both of which are linked below) and I wanted to look into the track record for the first teams. We annually talk about how these teams are predictive of the first round since our teams are voted on by scouting directors.
But just how predictive are they?
I went back and looked at each of our first-team preseason all-America teams dating back to 2018 (my first year compiling the lists for BA) to see what percentage of players on those teams actually went on to become first rounders for that draft year. Here are the results:
College First Team Members: 47/82 — 57.32%
High School First Team Members: 39/78 — 50.00%
That makes the 2023 class a bit of a high water mark for both demographics.
Twelve of the 13 (92.3%) eligible first-team college players in 2023 went on to get selected in the first round. Eight of the 13 (61.5%) eligible first-team high school players went on to get selected in the first round.
Both those figures represent highs in the time period I looked at. I’d be surprised if the 2024 class matched that sort of hit rate, especially considering the perception of each draft class at the same time in the calendar.
There’s probably a bit more to be gleaned from this data. Hitters are more likely to wind up going in the first round than pitchers, thanks to increased injury risk and the fact that high school pitchers are more likely to be selected after the first round but still sign for first round money—IE Thomas White from the 2023 draft class.
Here’s everything I produced for Baseball America last week:
Writing
The Outsized Reliever Risk Of The 2024 College Pitching Class — This was a fun piece to write. There are a lot of college pitchers ranked towards the top of the draft board with significantly higher walk rates than you typically see in this range. I wanted to look into how unusual that really is. Spoiler: it’s extremely unusual.
2024 Preseason College All-American Teams — Two unanimous first-team all-Americans lead the college teams: Wake Forest 1B Nick Kurtz and Florida 1B/LHP Jac Caglianone. The teams also include best tools for the college class, as voted on by scouting directors.
2024 Preseason High School All-American Teams — Like the college team, there were only two unanimous first-team members on the high school team: Texas C Cade Arrambide and Arizona LHP Cam Caminiti. The most notable name here though isn’t even a member of the 2024 class. It’s 2025 shortstop Ethan Holliday, who becomes the first first-team member as an underclassman since I have been doing this exercise going back to 2018.
How MLB Scouting Departments Grade The 2024 Draft Class — This piece comes from the same scouting director balloting that we get our all-America teams from and provides some insight into how the industry perceives the strength of a given draft class. This is the fourth year now that we have put 20-80 grades on the draft—bad news for 2024, it’s the worst-graded class yet.
Podcasting
Future Projection Episode 78: All-Americans, 2024 Draft Prospects & Ethan Holliday’s 1-1 Case — Ben and I talk briefly about Bobby Witt Jr.’s contract extension with the Royals, talk through All-American teams, wonder about Ethan Holliday’s 1-1 case in the 2025 class and then also take a fun listener question about how teams and agents play the signing bonus game on draft day.
Breaking Down Our 2024 Preseason All-American Teams — Peter and I dig into the All-American team results in audio format, plus talk a bit about the 2025 draft rankings that dropped on the site.
Here are a few other stories you might find interesting:
Six Takeaways From Our 2024 Playoff Odds Release — Ben Clemens writes about FanGraphs releasing their playoff odds for the league. Of all the teams here I might be highest on the Tigers, relative to their expectations at the moment.
Red Sox to be featured in Netflix documentary that will follow the team in 2024 — This could be awesome. Baseball seems late to the party that is prestige documentary style content covering the league, but there are so many opportunities to tell cool stories here and convert casual fans into more passionate fans and non-fans into casual fans. I think baseball’s regular season format is perfect for something like this.
2024 Preseason Projected Field Of 64 — If you’re a fan of the horserace that is the college baseball season, Teddy Cahill makes his first effort at projecting the final field of 64. Only a few days now…
How the Dodgers landed Clayton Kershaw — the first time: Excerpt — I thought this was a brilliant piece from Andy McCullough on how the Dodgers scouted and eventually were able to draft Clayton Kershaw back in 2006. This entire section here is hilarious:
“Picking fourth, the Pirates could not say the same. Earlier in the season, Kershaw thought Pittsburgh might choose him. The team had emailed him a battery of questions, a common practice at the time. His eyes glazed during the questionnaire. “Probably toward the end of them, I was just, like, click, click, click,” he recalled. During a pre-draft meeting, Pirates officials told him he had flunked the exam. “They said I had conflicting answers,” Kershaw recalled. “Sorry. What do you want me to do? I’m not going to retake it.” (The Dodgers took a different approach with their visit. White never came to Kershaw’s house. Calvin Jones made a brief pitch. After exchanging pleasantries, he asked if Kershaw would sign if the Dodgers chose him in the first round. Kershaw said he would. Jones thanked the family for their time and left. The meeting lasted five minutes, Kershaw estimated. “I was like, ‘Wow, you guys get it,’” he recalled.)”
The Never Ending Stories... — Rob Neyer is now on Substack and that’s just awesome. He was one of the first writers I followed religiously when I started becoming interested in writing about baseball myself, and I think he was also one of the first people who introduced me to sabermetrics.