Lincecum

[Captain E.]

It's a great article. SI used to have stuff like this all the time. Well worth a purchase.

Assuming this is the same story, its also well worth the.. free?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/tom_verducci/07/01/lincecum0707/index.html

[Tony-OH]

Most of what I've seen out of Lincecum's delivery shows that he's very efficient, and gets the most out of his slight frame. He also has great hip, torso separation, some of the best I've ever seen. Like you say, he's a freak of nature.

Back then, I wanted Rowell and we picked Rowell. In retrospect, I would have definitely went Lincecum every time.

Absolutely, when I was bird dogging for the Orioles out in Hawaii, I wrote up Lincecum as one of the best two pitchers I had seen in the minors or college, with Josh Beckett (when he was in Double-A) being the other.

To me he was a no doubter. In fact I said he could go straight from college to the majors and be effective, he was that good. Now, I never saw Rowell, nor did I know much about him before the O's took him, so I couldn't compare the two. But if I have a chance to take a top of the rotation college guy over an unproven high school hitter I'm going to do that every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Now let me caveat this with the fact that I'm personally very, very leery of drafting high school hitters in the first five rounds. I just think there are way too much risk involved and unless I've seen them hit with a wood bat against high level pitching (with advanced breaking balls), I don't think they are worth the risk unless they are a no doubter type guy.

I respect the hell out of Joe Jordan, and I know he does his homework on guys and that guys are going to miss, but if there's one thing I don't agree with him on is his penchant for drafting high school hitters so early.

The one thing his early high school hitters all have in common (Snyder, Rowell, Pope, Adams, and Henson) are they have terrible plate discipline in the pros. I really think this comes from the fact that you have no true numbers to go off of with HS hitters.

Yes, you can see them in showcase games against other top high school pitching prospects and maybe even in some college summer leagues during their junior year, but the one thing that's certain when you take a high school hitter is that you are taking a kid on pure potential due to their skills.

As a scout, you can judge a high school hitter's bat/wrist/hand speed and strength, and you can judge arm strength and accuracy, and you can even judge their body type of foot speed and athleticism, but what you can't judge until they face professional pitching is their ability to hit in games because they are not being judged against top professional type pitching.

With college players you at least have three years of data that can give you an idea of their plate discipline against a pretty high level of pitching. It's not perfect because the quality of college pitching, especially when you get away from the top programs and Friday night starters is not that great and they use the darn aluminum bat, but it's still something to go by.

Very rarely do you see a player significantly improve their plate discipline as they move up in the minors. It happens on occasion (A Bill Hall type slips through), but a guy with terrible plate discipline at low levels in the minor league rarely become good major league players.

Really to me, it's just risk management. It's ok to take a reach once in awhile with a guy your scouts believe could really be special, but if there's a 20 percent chance the the high school guy will become a perennial all-star and a 80% chance he'll flame out versus a 50% chance the college hitter will become a solid everyday player in the majors (his ceiling), I'm going to go with the college guys because I'm going to still have misses, but my system is going to have a lot more guys who will have some value then a bunch of complete misses.

Again, this isn't a knock on Jordan and his scouts. I respect the hell out of Joe and I know he forgot more about scouting last night when he went to sleep then I know now, but it's just a little different take on how we see things.

[Mad Mark]

I respect the hell out of Joe Jordan, and I know he does his homework on guys and that guys are going to miss, but if there's one thing I don't agree with him on is his penchant for drafting high school hitters so early.

This is one thing that surprised me about the latest Orioles draft...so many HS position players. My thoughts before the draft were that--given the current state of the Orioles farm system--I would be drafting all college players, all the time, for at least the next two years or so. I just don't get all the HS players the Orioles are drafting.

[rolliefingers]

Assuming this is the same story, its also well worth the.. free?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/tom_verducci/07/01/lincecum0707/index.html

That's a fantastic article.

[Moose Milligan]

Assuming this is the same story, its also well worth the.. free?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/tom_verducci/07/01/lincecum0707/index.html

Yeah, thats the article. I did a quick scan, I believe it's been posted in its entirety.

The part that fascinated me most was the part where it pinpointed why Prior keeps breaking down. I remember the hype around Prior and people thinking that he had flawless mechanics...well, thats not the case.