Inside Baseball: More busts than big-timers

Once again last week, the NFL draft - the prime-time TV pageant in which jersey-wearing Visigoths turned stately Radio City Music Hall into Chickie's and Pete's - helped point out just how much tougher it is to evaluate talent in baseball.

Even now, in an era of radar guns, laptops, personality tests, and a more objective "Moneyball approach," baseball scouts are far more likely to err than their football and basketball counterparts.

Oakland general manager Billy Beane, the guru of Moneyballers, said that while baseball scouting has changed in many respects, it's still done in large part "by the seat of your pants."

"We have workouts and things like that. But we still haven't gotten into things like the NFL does with its combine," said Tom McNamara, the scouting director for the Seattle Mariners. "I'm still one of those guys who thinks scouting is more than stats. If that's all there was, you wouldn't need any scouts."

Baseball's draft began in 1965 as one of the sport's periodic efforts to emasculate the New York Yankees. In the subsequent four and a half decades, 45 players have been selected with the No. 1 overall pick.

Some have been monumental busts - Shawn Abner, Brien Taylor, David Clyde, Steve Chilcott, Matt Bush. Many have been above-average ballplayers - Rick Monday, Pat Burrell, Jeff Burroughs. A few were even better than that - Darryl Strawberry, Bob Horner, Harold Baines.

But not one has made it yet to the Hall of Fame - though Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., and perhaps Chipper Jones seem likely to end that streak five years after they retire.

Looking a little deeper into the phenomenon, the blog Baseball Past & Present recently examined the top 10 picks in the NFL, NBA, and MLB drafts for each year in the 1990s.

In the NBA, all 100 of them went on to play in the league - 96 for at least five years - and 41 became all-stars.

It was much the same in the NFL, where all 100 of the top draftees also played in the league, 91 lasted for at least five years, and 52 were all-stars.

But during that same period in baseball, only 83 of those top-10ers reached the majors, only 70 played at least five years, and only 28 developed into all-stars.

And if the bloggers had gone back one year, to 1989, they'd have come across the name of Jeff Jackson. For every Ryan Leaf in the NFL, there are three or four Jeff Jacksons in baseball.

The Phillies' No. 1 pick that year - No. 4 overall, ahead of Frank Thomas - Jackson, a lithe and athletic outfielder, looked like a can't-miss.

Yet he did.

In 666 minor-league - and zero big-league - games, he hit .234.

In some respects, of course, comparing baseball's draft to football's and basketball's is apples to lemons. Baseball's path to the big leagues is strewn with potential pitfalls, most of which don't exist in the other sports.

While No. 1 choices in football and basketball typically start off on the big club's rosters, all but a select few baseball draftees must climb through several tiers of minor leagues to get there.

Along the way, they risk injury, burnout, overexposure. Some never learn to hit a breaking ball or to throw one for strikes.

"It takes a special kid to stick with all the ups and downs that are inevitable in the minor-league experience," said Beane. "Just take a look sometime at the number of [drafted] pitchers who experience arm troubles along the way."

Baseball also drafts more high school talent than the other sports. Though teams like Seattle insist that their scouts make family visits, it's often difficult to project how teenage draftees will mature physically and, especially, emotionally.

"You want to know how they're going to handle failure and adversity because you know they're going to face it at some point," said McNamara. "Baseball is a part of life, and life is adversity."

Remember Matt Bush?

The San Diego Padres made the high school shortstop the No. 1 overall pick in 2004. He immediately punched someone outside an Arizona nightclub, which was more hitting success than he experienced on the field, batting .192 in his initial professional season.

In 2006, Bush broke an ankle. A year later, the Padres converted him to a pitcher. He quickly tore a ligament in his throwing arm and didn't pitch again until 2009. Then he was involved in a drunken fight at a high school and soon was released.

Six years after being drafted, his reputation as tattered as his confidence, he's in Tampa Bay's minor-league system.