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Mahomes was a third/fourth round draft type out of high school and the MLB draft is a loooong way away from even making it for a single day in the majors. Claim

Mahomes was a third/fourth round draft type out of high school and the MLB draft is a loooong way away from even making it for a single day in the majors. Claiming that he could “certainly” be an MLB MVP is ludicrous.

jessaustin 7y ago
The baseball draft is somewhat clueless; that's why they have 40 rounds rather than two or seven like a sport that has any idea at all about who's going to succeed. Yeah there were probably about a hundred guys standing in line in front of Mahomes for eventual MVP status. (He sort of jumped the line on the football side, winning in the first year he started.) Still, that's a lot closer than thousands of baseball grinders will ever get. He certainly had a chance. Reading is fundamental.
- elgenie 7y ago
  If "certainly had a chance" means "played baseball and was an OK prospect", sure, but then you're not saying much of anything. The truth is that it's a lot closer to five thousand guys, a shoulder, and an elbow between a third/fourth round high school pitcher and an "eventual MVP". Take a look at the third rounds of 2010 [1], 2011 [2], 2012 [3] drafts, which are fairly representative: only ~40% have made the majors at all, and there's one All-Star reliever (zero chance at MVP) and one reserve All-Star catcher (with zero MVP votes in his career) of the lot. There are 750 active MLBers at any one time and the odds are 60-40 against a third/fourth round high school pitcher, the riskiest kind of prospect, joining them. And of the 58 league MVPs awarded since 1990, exactly three have gone to pitchers. [1] https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=3&year_ID=2010&draft_type=junreg&query_type=year_round https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=3&year... [2] https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=3&year_ID=2011draft_type=junreg&query_type=year_round https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=3&year... [3] https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=3&year_ID=2012&draft_type=junreg&query_type=year_round https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=3&year...
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Only 2/3 of first rounders make the majors, and there are political reasons to give them a chance, so it's not obvious that 40% means anything. You're the one who decided he'd be a "third/fourth" rounder anyway. He was a 37th rounder out of high school because he had already declared for college. You keep calling him a high school prospect, but if he had played four years in college that's not what he would have been. Also his father was in the majors for a decade. Numerous major league players thought he was talented enough for the majors. If you're telling me that MVP voting is set up to exclude pitchers, fine, he wouldn't have been an MVP. That seems rather far from the point, which was "athletic talent exists and dominates specialized practice". He did play baseball through his sophomore year of college, and he did wait to specialize on football until his junior year.
    - elgenie 7y ago
      The scouting consensus is that he'd be a third/fourth rounder out of high school absent football [1]. That's being rather more charitable to his prospect stock than it probably deserves, considering he barely played in college as a freshman on a mediocre team (0 outs recorded, 2 walks, 1 HBP; 0-2 as a hitter [2]) and then didn't accumulate any stats as a sophomore before quitting. [1] https://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/sam-mellinger/article192126014.html https://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/sam-mell... [2] http://www.big12sports.com/fls/10410/ http://www.big12sports.com/fls/10410/
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        Great link! “We’d be pretty similar pitchers now,” said Michael Kopech, a high school rival of Mahomes’ and now baseball’s No. 10 prospect according to MLB.com. “He was just a bulldog. To be honest, I think anyone who ever played with or against Patrick would’ve assumed he would’ve been a pro in any sport he played.” Again, native talent not specialized practice. Or you could go with the example in TFA, Kobe Bryant who played more soccer than basketball until his junior year of high school. He still had some basketball success!
- slg 7y ago
  >The baseball draft is somewhat clueless; that's why they have 40 rounds rather than two or seven like a sport that has any idea at all about who's going to succeed. That is just factually wrong. The MLB draft has 40 rounds because there are over 5 thousand players in professional baseball which is more than double the NFL and more than 10 times the NBA. Athletic skill traditionally follows a normal distribution which means the similarity in players' skill levels converges the deeper you go into the bell curve. The result is there is generally a smaller gap in talent between the 500th and the 1000th player selected than their is between the 1st and 100th player selected. If Mahomes had the skill of a 3rd rounder, there were way more than a 100 guys in front of him for an eventual MVP. Here [1] is an article looking at the value of MLB draft picks that supports my point. [1] - https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-on-how-to-value-draft-picks/ https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-on-how-to-value-draft-...
  - elgenie 7y ago
    To be fair, (part of) the reason that affiliated baseball has 5000 players is the same as reason that the MLB draft has 40 rounds: the gap between high school / college baseball and MLB is incredibly greater than the one between college basketball and the NBA. Power law phenomena in known skills at the long tail of a normal distribution are a red herring in this case; the much much bigger factor is uncertainty about the probability of developing skills years later (can a pitcher add a breaking ball that complements his fastball? will a hitter be able to track MLB curveballs thrown faster than 95% of the fastballs he's seen?). Draft position and prospect status are based on imperfect guesses at the shape of the very very very wide distribution of potential outcomes for an individual player with very little data to go on. The MLB draft is what what the NBA draft would be if they had to select 9th graders based on their performance at HORSE with a kickball on a 9 foot rim and a dunk contest on an 8 foot rim.
    - slg 7y ago
      I would argue the difference between amateur and the top level professional baseball is so much wider than other sports just due to happenstance. MLB is older than the NCAA while the NBA and NFL are both younger than the NCAA. Therefore MLB needed to build up its own developmental leagues while the newer professional sports could rely on their college equivalents. Today almost every American born player in the NBA or NFL played in college while a whole lot of their MLB counterparts were drafted out of high school. That isn't due to some inherent difference in each sport or the ability of people to project forward a player's skill. It just the way the leagues happen to be setup. All that said, you are certainly right that a projection of a player's skill is inherently more difficult to make the earlier that prediction must be made.

jessaustin 7y ago

The baseball draft is somewhat clueless; that's why they have 40 rounds rather than two or seven like a sport that has any idea at all about who's going to succeed. Yeah there were probably about a hundred guys standing in line in front of Mahomes for eventual MVP status. (He sort of jumped the line on the football side, winning in the first year he started.) Still, that's a lot closer than thousands of baseball grinders will ever get. He certainly had a chance. Reading is fundamental.

elgenie 7y ago
If "certainly had a chance" means "played baseball and was an OK prospect", sure, but then you're not saying much of anything. The truth is that it's a lot closer to five thousand guys, a shoulder, and an elbow between a third/fourth round high school pitcher and an "eventual MVP". Take a look at the third rounds of 2010 [1], 2011 [2], 2012 [3] drafts, which are fairly representative: only ~40% have made the majors at all, and there's one All-Star reliever (zero chance at MVP) and one reserve All-Star catcher (with zero MVP votes in his career) of the lot. There are 750 active MLBers at any one time and the odds are 60-40 against a third/fourth round high school pitcher, the riskiest kind of prospect, joining them. And of the 58 league MVPs awarded since 1990, exactly three have gone to pitchers. [1] https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=3&year_ID=2010&draft_type=junreg&query_type=year_round https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=3&year... [2] https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=3&year_ID=2011draft_type=junreg&query_type=year_round https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=3&year... [3] https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=3&year_ID=2012&draft_type=junreg&query_type=year_round https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=3&year...
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Only 2/3 of first rounders make the majors, and there are political reasons to give them a chance, so it's not obvious that 40% means anything. You're the one who decided he'd be a "third/fourth" rounder anyway. He was a 37th rounder out of high school because he had already declared for college. You keep calling him a high school prospect, but if he had played four years in college that's not what he would have been. Also his father was in the majors for a decade. Numerous major league players thought he was talented enough for the majors. If you're telling me that MVP voting is set up to exclude pitchers, fine, he wouldn't have been an MVP. That seems rather far from the point, which was "athletic talent exists and dominates specialized practice". He did play baseball through his sophomore year of college, and he did wait to specialize on football until his junior year.
  - elgenie 7y ago
    The scouting consensus is that he'd be a third/fourth rounder out of high school absent football [1]. That's being rather more charitable to his prospect stock than it probably deserves, considering he barely played in college as a freshman on a mediocre team (0 outs recorded, 2 walks, 1 HBP; 0-2 as a hitter [2]) and then didn't accumulate any stats as a sophomore before quitting. [1] https://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/sam-mellinger/article192126014.html https://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/sam-mell... [2] http://www.big12sports.com/fls/10410/ http://www.big12sports.com/fls/10410/
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      Great link! “We’d be pretty similar pitchers now,” said Michael Kopech, a high school rival of Mahomes’ and now baseball’s No. 10 prospect according to MLB.com. “He was just a bulldog. To be honest, I think anyone who ever played with or against Patrick would’ve assumed he would’ve been a pro in any sport he played.” Again, native talent not specialized practice. Or you could go with the example in TFA, Kobe Bryant who played more soccer than basketball until his junior year of high school. He still had some basketball success!
slg 7y ago
>The baseball draft is somewhat clueless; that's why they have 40 rounds rather than two or seven like a sport that has any idea at all about who's going to succeed. That is just factually wrong. The MLB draft has 40 rounds because there are over 5 thousand players in professional baseball which is more than double the NFL and more than 10 times the NBA. Athletic skill traditionally follows a normal distribution which means the similarity in players' skill levels converges the deeper you go into the bell curve. The result is there is generally a smaller gap in talent between the 500th and the 1000th player selected than their is between the 1st and 100th player selected. If Mahomes had the skill of a 3rd rounder, there were way more than a 100 guys in front of him for an eventual MVP. Here [1] is an article looking at the value of MLB draft picks that supports my point. [1] - https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-on-how-to-value-draft-picks/ https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-on-how-to-value-draft-...
- elgenie 7y ago
  To be fair, (part of) the reason that affiliated baseball has 5000 players is the same as reason that the MLB draft has 40 rounds: the gap between high school / college baseball and MLB is incredibly greater than the one between college basketball and the NBA. Power law phenomena in known skills at the long tail of a normal distribution are a red herring in this case; the much much bigger factor is uncertainty about the probability of developing skills years later (can a pitcher add a breaking ball that complements his fastball? will a hitter be able to track MLB curveballs thrown faster than 95% of the fastballs he's seen?). Draft position and prospect status are based on imperfect guesses at the shape of the very very very wide distribution of potential outcomes for an individual player with very little data to go on. The MLB draft is what what the NBA draft would be if they had to select 9th graders based on their performance at HORSE with a kickball on a 9 foot rim and a dunk contest on an 8 foot rim.
  - slg 7y ago
    I would argue the difference between amateur and the top level professional baseball is so much wider than other sports just due to happenstance. MLB is older than the NCAA while the NBA and NFL are both younger than the NCAA. Therefore MLB needed to build up its own developmental leagues while the newer professional sports could rely on their college equivalents. Today almost every American born player in the NBA or NFL played in college while a whole lot of their MLB counterparts were drafted out of high school. That isn't due to some inherent difference in each sport or the ability of people to project forward a player's skill. It just the way the leagues happen to be setup. All that said, you are certainly right that a projection of a player's skill is inherently more difficult to make the earlier that prediction must be made.