Draft advice: Don’t take a catcher

In just a few hours the MLB amateur draft will commence.  Unfortunately I will not be home to watch the inaugural telecast on ESPN2, but I’ll at least listen over the internet at work.

 At any rate, the draft is an incredibly important day for each and every baseball franchise.  Even the Yankees and their seemingly endless payroll are starting to feel the effects of years of neglecting the draft and the minor leagues.   It is an opportunity to acquire future star talent at comparatively undermarket prices.  And while there are a number of interesting stories in this year’s draft, especially the elimination of DFE (draft-follow-and-evaluate) and the awarding of compensation picks to teams unable to sign this year’s draftees, I wanted to instead focus on draft strategy, and particularly what I see as failed strategy from baseball as a whole.

 Every year, multiple teams will draft a catcher as one of its top picks, but rarely do these work out.  The physical demands of catching are so great that few are able to make it a lifetime career, and still be a productive major-league player.  Often teams will move good-hitting catchers from behind the plate to another position.  The Astros did this with Craig Biggio, moving him to second.  The Pirates tried this with Jason Kendall, only to discover he just wasn’t a good enough hitter to play the outfield.  The Tigers moved Brandon Inge to centerfield, and then to third base.  The Brewers many years ago moved BJ Surhoff to third and then the outfield.

Now, moving a catcher out of the position isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Many players start out as shortstops, and move all around the diamond, as most shortstops have the athleticism to play any other position defensively.  Catchers, especially in their younger years, are often as malleable, as it takes a fair bit of athleticism to play their position, even if it quickly strips this athleticism away later in a career.

However, when a team drafts a catcher early in the draft, it is clearly hoping that this player will be their everyday catcher for a long time.  But my observations of the game led me to hypothesize that burning an early-round pick on a catcher was a very good way to minimize the return on your investment, moreso than any other position player.  And having looked at the drafts from 1990-2006, I think I was right.

There were 78 catchers selected in the first or second rounds from 1990-2006.  This is the third most among non-pitcher positions, behind outfielders (214) and shortstops (114).  This is somewhat intuitive — there are three outfield positions in a game, so naturally teams need more.  Shortstops, as stated early, are defensively capable of most other positions, so teams who draft shortstops treat them as the same as secondbasemen, as evidenced by the fact that there were only 12 of that position selected.

Catchers did a decent job of making it to the majors at some point in their careers; at 47%, they were the second-most likely behind 1b to make it (I ignored the 8 of 12 2b due to sample-size reasons.)  But that is more likely because major-league teams use more catchers than they do the average position.  For instance, last year 103 players played more games at catcher than any other position, compared with 53 shortstops.  With nearly twice the number of roles in the majors in a year, it makes sense that more players make it to the bigs as a catcher.

But teams who select a player in the first rounds aren’t hoping that he makes it to the majors — they’re hoping he is a starter for a long time, or, at worst, at least a starter for a couple of seasons (as eventually he becomes a free agent and they stop reaping the rewards of the investment from drafting him.)  So I went through all the position-player draftees who made the majors, and quickly decided whether they had been meaningful major-leaguers at some point in their career.  I admit this was an arbitrary distinction, but it hovered at two consecutive seasons of around 400 PA’s, since that means a player was a regular for at least two seasons in a row.  I occasionally eliminated a player if I saw he had an OPS of below .600 (i.e. very bad) for one of those year, especially if those were his only two.  I tended to give credit to rookies who are doing well this year and second-year players who did well last year, to give recent draftees a chance to be useful in my study.

 Only 18% of catchers met this criteria, compared with 28% of 3b, 27% of 1b, 20.5% of OF, and 20% of SS.  Furthermore, catchers were getting a bonus from players like Paul Konerko and Brandon Inge, who either never played the position in the majors or left it before doing much.  If we limit it to players who stayed a catcher (which I think is fair to do, since teams who draft a player as a catcher see some of his value in the fact that he can catch), we find that only 13% met the criteria, or 10 total through 17 drafts.

 That’s a very low success rate, and just something to keep in mind, as multiple catchers have been mentioned as top 10 possibilities, with the Pirates, Cubs, and Nationals all possibly taking one in the first six picks.  While Joe Mauer has been a success story, he’s a rarity.  And even Joe Mauer should offer guidance, as he is dealing with chronic injury problems that may force him to leave the position soon.

Catchers are bad investments in the first round, and teams would be wise to spend their first-round bonus money elsewhere.

Explore posts in the same categories: Baseball, MLB, draft