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General thoughts on drafting HS pitchers


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Oh my goodness. An 18-year-old lefthander with good secondary pitches and clean mechanics who may be hitting 97-98 and who could be pitching in MLB at age 21.

Where do I sign up?

Yeah I aint following the draft careful at all but this sounds like a tasty snack. Why not take the best HS lefty arm? Let him take three/four years getting to the bigs and be ready when Arrieta or Tillman or Matusz get expensive and we might be tempted to ship one out.

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High school pitchers...be afraid...be very afraid... The majority of thes kids have been used and abused during their young age. High schools, Babe Ruth teams, Legion teams, the list goes on.

And college pitchers haven't been overused? Do you pay attention to college baseball at all?

I'm not sure how much longer we have to hear about this. You do not know what you are talking about. High school and college pitchers suffer pretty much the same injury rate. The difficulty between the two is that in college you have more years of data, more years of tempting the injury bug, more filling out, and more stable lineups to face. Still with all of this . . . the only real statistical difference you see much of in terms of being successful are college southpaws. College lefties make quick work of minor leaguers and wind up at least throwing a few seasons as a middle reliever.

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And college pitchers haven't been overused? Do you pay attention to college baseball at all?

I'm not sure how much longer we have to hear about this. You do not know what you are talking about. High school and college pitchers suffer pretty much the same injury rate. The difficulty between the two is that in college you have more years of data, more years of tempting the injury bug, more filling out, and more stable lineups to face. Still with all of this . . . the only real statistical difference you see much of in terms of being successful are college southpaws. College lefties make quick work of minor leaguers and wind up at least throwing a few seasons as a middle reliever.

Where did I say anything about college pitchers???? If I were GM of the Nats I's take Ackley at #1 and come back with a pitcher at #10.

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Where did I say anything about college pitchers???? If I were GM of the Nats I's take Ackley at #1 and come back with a pitcher at #10.

By saying to be afraid of high school pitchers, it certainly seems that the correlative is that college pitchers are more of a sure thing. Anyway . . . I think you opinion of Ackley is awfully high.

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High school pitchers...be afraid...be very afraid... The majority of thes kids have been used and abused during their young age. High schools, Babe Ruth teams, Legion teams, the list goes on.

College pitchers pitched at all of these levels too.

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High school pitchers...be afraid...be very afraid... The majority of thes kids have been used and abused during their young age. High schools, Babe Ruth teams, Legion teams, the list goes on.

College arms play on the same junior/amateur teams, then log two to three years of being worked hard at a college program.

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High school pitchers...be afraid...be very afraid... The majority of thes kids have been used and abused during their young age. High schools, Babe Ruth teams, Legion teams, the list goes on.

So you are saying we shouldn't ever draft a pitcher because of injury concerns and we should get nothing but position players and convert them to pitchers.

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Two points:

1. It's not the case in legion, but in high school aren't most pitchers still limited to the number of innings/week they can pitch? With this protection in mind, I actually have the opinion that high school pitchers throw less pitches and log less innings than many college pitchers. They also pitch against far inferior talent, so their "stress" level probably isn't as high. Alternatively, their coaching is generally not as good, so they do assume some level of generalizable risk from that.

2. In general response to SG's thread, Per Malewski's article, AM seems to think that you can't make blanket assertions about differences between high school or college. He states that they've reviewed all of the data and reports (nice to hear) and determined that it really comes down to the circumstances of the individual player.

http://masnsports.com/2009/06/andy-macphail-on-the-draft.html

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