Draft Digging

After looking at the results of the 2013 Astros draft, I was taken aback by the small number of high school players taken.  But when I dug deeper, I realized I shouldn't have been shocked.  In the last six drafts, here is the percentage of high school players drafted by Jeff Luhnow. 

2007 (Cardinals) 16% (8/51)
2008 (Cardinals) 16% (8/51)
2009 (Cardinals) 14% (7/50)
2010 (Cardinals) 21% (11/52)
2011 (Cardinals) 24% (12/50)
2012 (Astros) 27% (11/41)
2013 (Astros) 23% (9/40)

So it looks like 2012 was actually that odd year.  The Astros only signed 4 of the 11 high school players drafted in 2012.  If they sign half of the nine this year, the number of younger players in the system may be about the same.

It appears that the trend for Luhnow drafts is that the number of HS players taken will be somewhere around 15-25% depending in the depth of high school players in the draft that year.

The number that has really dropped off has been the number of JuCo players drafted by Luhnow and company. Did the reduction of rounds 41-50 impact this?

2007 - 8
2008 - 7
2009 - 9
2010 - 6
2011 - 8
2012 - 4
2013 - 2 

A Tale of Two Drafts

The real evaluation of  a draft is what happens four to five years down the road.  Let's look back at the Cardinals draft from 2009 to see how effective Jeff Luhnow and his staff were with that draft. Then we will look at the Astros draft from the same year and see which draft team you prefer. The Cardinals had the 18th overall pick and the Astros had the 20th overall pick. The Astros also had a compensation pick as well for not signing their 3rd round pick in 2008. So they had 51 picks total.

Cardinals 2009 Draft

Breakdown of players drafted/signed:
High School - 7 drafted, 5 signed, 4 active (MLB, Hi-A, 2-LoA)
Junior College - 9 drafted, 9 signed, 4 active (2-MLB, AAA, Hi-A)
College - 34 drafted, 30 signed, 8 active (3-MLB, 2-AAA, AA, Hi-A, Lo-A)

The major leaguers who are included in this draft are:

Shelby Miller (1st rd-HS)
Joe Kelly (3rd rd - College)
Matt Carpenter (13th rd - College)
Trevor Rosenthal (21th rd - JC)
Matt Adams (23th rd - College)
Keith Butler (24th rd - JC)

The Cardinals signed 44 out of 50 of their draft picks (88%) and still have 36% of those signed still active in their affiliated ball. That is 32% of the players that drafted both signed and unsigned.

Astros 2009 Draft

Breakdown of players drafted/signed:
High School - 19 drafted, 9 signed, 6 active (3-AA, Hi-A, 2-Extended Spring Training)
Junior College - 5 drafted, 3 signed, 0 active
College - 27 drafted, 24 signed, 4 active (2-MLB, 2-AA)

The MLB players included are:

Dallas Keuchel (7th rd - College)
J.D. Martinez (20th rd - College)

The Astros signed 36 out of their 51 draft picks (71%) and still have 28% of those signed active.  So basically 20% of the players drafted are still in affiliated ball today. Those who are active are at much lower levels than the ones in the Cardinals organization.

Just another reminder of why I am glad we have Jeff Luhnow leading the Astros as GM.  I believe the 2013 draft will be much closer to the Cardinals' 2009 draft than that Astros' 2009 draft when we look back in 2017.