The 2024 MLB draft is over, and it's time to make some definitive decisions about which teams performed best and worst before more players sign their deals. Just kidding – while I have a few team-specific thoughts below, this piece is about what happened throughout the draft. I sent messages to people in the industry (scouts, managers, and agents) to see what they thought of the results as a whole, and if they saw a continuation of broader industry trends or saw behavior specific to this year's trial. I've included some of their thoughts below.
Teams Lean on College Contact Hitters
If there was any feedback from team personnel in the past few days about this draft, it was that, especially on day two, teams prioritized college hitters who showed the ability to ride the ball. Rutgers shortstop Joshua Kuroda-Grauer (A's) and Texas Tech catcher Kevin Bazzell (Nationals) got things started in the third round, and then players who needed a swing change, like Zach Ehrhard of Oklahoma State (Red Sox, fourth round), or to be and more powerful, like Eli Serrano (Mets, fourth round), was also a common Day Two pick. There are a growing number of teams that would like to have contact skills to start and try to add or improve other things, like power or swing mechanics, later. A common perception is that hitting is difficult to teach. This isn't universal (the Orioles took Vance Honeycutt in the first round), and I think it could easily be argued that having balanced defense (especially the athleticism to play shortstop or center field) is innate and probably rare. Another variable that seems to have fueled this thinking brings me to my second major theme…
The Change in the Run Zone in College Baseball Made Power (and Other Traits) Stronger in Trust and Evaluation
There have been pieces written about this elsewhere, and it was a common practice among team personnel during the lead-up to the draft and after. Whatever changes the pitch (there are industry rumors/conspiracy theories about bat juicing in college baseball), it won't affect whether or not the hitter makes contact. Hitting a baseball is often called the hardest thing to do in professional sports, and as pitchers get better and better, finding guys who can do it is the most important thing in the league. I think we've hit the asymptote of pitcher development in terms of quantum leaps in technique and hitter dev is starting to catch on, but orgs can still use the pitching dev approach arm after arm.
Sailor's Draft
This is the second year in a row that the Mariners' pursuit of high school seniors meant they preferred older players to other clubs. While their 2023 class produced a lot of young players because they had so many picks, this year's second-round pick Ryan Sloan (he could be worth more than $2 million instead of a slot) led them to 23-year-old seniors and graduate students. on Tuesday. Kansas reliever Hunter Cranton (high 90s with a shiny slider – he'll go fast), Oregon righty Brock Moore (stepped into a starting role late in the season and went 94-96), and two-way player Grant Knipp ( one of the hardest throwers at the Combine, 95-97) is the standout of the six seniors they selected. I've written this before: It's important to be the first team to start taking these guys because you get the best. Usually when you draft high schoolers with a bonus, you end up with a heavy class and run the risk of being light on depth. The Mariners avoided that.
We Just Drafted Few High School Players, Ever
At least, within 20 rounds, excluding the five-round 2020 draft. Some of this is specific to the talent makeup of this class, which was easy for high schoolers. You know that feeling you get when you first open a bag of chips and see how few there are? That's what it felt like to evaluate this high school class last summer.
There are also other powers that exist here. Player development is more expensive now because of the necessary changes to how minor league players are paid and settled. MLB cut 60 minor leaguers from its clubs' farm programs due to rising per-player costs, and cut the draft in half, from 40 rounds to 20. A decrease in minor league roster spots and a lack of positions. -the draft, which deals with a short season (Northwest, Appalachian, and the old Pioneer Le League), where newly drafted college players often start their careers, creates the effect of blocking talent at the college level. Major League Baseball (note the capitalization – I'm referring to a corporate entity here) has an incentive to outsource player development to college baseball, and it's a symbiotic relationship because the NCAA would like to have a more capable and attractive “brand.”
I've asked people if the NIL deduction in college is part of the equation, and while it's about choosing a school and navigating the transfer portal, people with major league teams have been telling me that the money flying around college baseball hasn't really had an impact. theirs the ability to sign players. Colleges have offered some players a lot of money to transfer or stay at their school (the highest rumored amount is in the six figures), but even if, say, Texas A&M offers you $500,000 or more to stay around, if the Angels draft you in the third round, your bonus will be much bigger than that.
Brewers' Draft
The Brewers followed up their high school-heavy 2023 draft with a much younger team this year, and it's revealing an interesting strategy. Their first round pick, Braylon Payne, was often seen as a second round prospect. His bonus is likely to be well below the $4.5 million slot value of his pick, with some of the excess pool space transferred to the high school pitching prospects they selected in the second round and Comp B, New Jersey high schoolers Bryce Meccage and Chris. Levonas. They also came from the high school in rounds nine and 10, then took several on Day Three. Not all of them will sign but several of them will. Remember last year the Brewers got Cooper Pratt's contract for $1.3 million in the sixth round and signed several high schoolers for between $250,000-$550,000 on Day Three of the draft. Day Three picks don't have bonus slots that reduce your team's pool if a player doesn't sign, so, without the cost of a small prospect (a college guy they could have taken in the 14th round or whatever), the Brewers can now. interview a group of top high school players between now and the signing deadline and decide what combination of bonuses and players gives them the best overall class.
Several teams do a version of this every year, but none do it at this level. Whether it's because of the nature of this particular stage of the draft or how the board fell in the first round (ie the Brewers didn't like who was left on the board, so they voted for this strategy), we know.
High School Pitching Is The Rags
Could it be that teams have become more appreciative of the rise of high school as time goes on, and that it has now come down? In a program that was the deepest in high school arms among all player demographics, the best (in my opinion), William Schmidt, decided to withdraw his name and go to LSU rather than be drafted. The next best, Cam Caminiti, had an “unexpected” fall and was the first high school pitcher selected in the 24th pick of a weak draft. (I had Caminiti ranked 21st, so when my draft night discussion was losing its mind, he went where I was.)
The time it takes for high school pitchers to develop (both from a technical standpoint and from a fitness standpoint) and the risk that they won't (think how throwing a different pitch once a week for two and a half months versus a full-season pro workload) affects team morale. And perhaps under “group behavior,” it refers to “decision maker behavior.” You can't play if you don't have a seat at the table, and I think a lot of times the interests of managers are to drive away the interests of the teams. If you have a year or two to save your career, why take a high school player who won't be ready for another five? I don't think every team or executive behaves this way (Pittsburgh needs good big league players ASAP, yet they took Konnor Griffin and other high schoolers despite the risk/time factor because they believe in talent), but the number is growing.
Groupthink on the Rise
One common response from industry workers this year has been something like, “We all make decisions looking at the same data, and, increasingly, based on the same interpretation of that data.” This is in contrast to the college contact area above. Teams looked at fastball vertical approach angle and hitter contact and chase rate, and had regression models fed the same data as competing models, in part because MLB (and its cheap owners) wanted to avoid an arms race in this space. People in successful organizations move on to bad ones when the bad ones make a new GM or POBO hire, and the work style of successful orgs has spread to crummier teams. This is happening faster than each team can do scouting or dev, and we are approaching a kind of balance where competitive advantages will be mined from the nooks and crannies of the people of this process and the strategies that the teams choose. I think you could argue that orgs that don't like to stick to data-driven approaches are in a better position now than ever because more data-driven teams end up competing against the same players. If there's a science- or analytics-driven gap between teams, it's how player development is considered as they determine their targets in the draft.
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