2023 MLB Draft: How can the Chicago Cubs get a guaranteed producer?

Drafting is hard and that is no different for the Chicago Cubs. It doesn’t matter how many hours of live-action or film your scouts have watched, it doesn’t matter how many conversations your scouts have had with the player’s former coaches, there will always be some level of mystery associated with the draft process.

Drafting in baseball is even more difficult for several reasons:

Draftable players have leverage

In most sports, you draft the best player available. Period. In baseball, you can’t necessarily do that, because you have to try to build the best draft class you possibly can, and that could lead to drafting a different player than you may have expected at a given pick because the players left on the board have different demands for their signing bonus. That's not something you run into in the NBA or NFL which both have a rookie wage scale.

There is less consistency in the age, physical maturity and level of competition of draft-eligible players

Another added hurdle for the MLB Draft is that, unlike the NFL draft where all players are entering the league at least three years removed from their last year of high school, there is no consistency in the age or level of competition for the players that are available. 

How does Mike Trout fall to the bottom of the first round? Simply put: teams were uncertain of what kind of player he was. He played his highest level of baseball prior to the draft in high school in the northeast, which meant he had limited film for scouts to watch due to the cold weather and he was competing against significantly lesser competition than Jared Mitchell, an outfielder who was drafted two picks before him out of LSU or even Randall Grichuck who was drafted one spot ahead of him but played his high school baseball in Texas. 

There is almost zero instant gratification 

In the NFL, players have an instant impact on the team that drafted them. Brock Purdy led the San Francisco 49ers to the NFC Championship last season, and to those that said anyone could lead that team to victory, I offer the NFC Championship itself as exhibit A of what happens without him in the game.

In the NBA, players have a near-instant impact on the team that drafted them. A majority of the most popular players in the sport are under the age of 25. In fact, in some cases (Zion Williamson/Ja Morant), players manage to have an entire career, going from being an overhyped draft pick, to a potential MVP, to drawing the ire of their fans before some of the best baseball players even get their first taste of the majors. 

So with all of those things working against a General Manager, how do you draft the best player you possibly can put your team in a position for long-term success? That’s the question we’ll answer and finish up with a preview of the players the Cubs should target in the draft next month.

Question One: College or High School?

The Cubs have had more success with their first-round picks over the last twenty years than a majority of teams in the league. In fact, as of the time of this writing, the Cubs' first-round picks from 2003 until 2019* (we're not including Ed Howard, Jordan Wicks, and Cade Horton because they haven’t had the time to matriculate to the majors) have earned an even 150 WAR.

They’ve drafted sixteen players out of college and seven out of high school, and they’ve skewed slightly in favor of hitters rather than pitchers.

*not including 2020 SS Ed Howard, 2021 LHP Jordan Wicks or 2022 RHP Cade Horton

Regardless of whether you are looking at average WAR, highest overall WAR, or highest individual player WAR, the way the Cubs have had the most success is by drafting college players rather than high school players.

Even with the profound success of Javier Baez, who was drafted out of Arlington Country Day School in 2011, he’s only earned the third-highest WAR amongst players drafted in the first round by the Cubs, with the other two players both being college bats. 

The Cubs haven’t spent many first-round picks on high school pitchers, only doing so twice in the last twenty years. Of those two, one never got above AA and the other is Paul Blackburn who is currently the “Ace” of arguably the worst team in baseball history.

There is an argument to be made that there isn’t a large enough sample size to say that drafting high school players is an inherently dangerous thing to do. To that, I would point to the fact that of the six high school players that are referenced in the chart above, (not including Ed Howard) two of them never made it to the major leagues at all. That’s a 66% success rate where success is just making the league. We won’t get into whether or not Josh Vitters, Albert Almora, or Paul Blackburn have had “successful” careers.

Of the 14 college players referenced in the chart above, two haven’t made it to the league yet and one of them is 2019 first-round pick Ryan Jensen. That’s an 86% success rate.

Beyond that, based on average WAR the college position players the Cubs drafted earned an average of 13.5 WAR whereas the high school position players earned an average of 7.05. The college pitchers earned an average of 2.1 WAR and their high school counterparts averaged 0.5. 

Not only were both the college hitters and pitchers more likely to make the Majors than the high school players, but once they were in the league they were considerably more successful. 

Conclusion: If a college player and a high school player are rated similarly, draft the college player. 

Hitter or Pitcher?

The Cubs have drafted more hitters than pitchers over the last 20 seasons so the data may be a little skewed. Beyond those pieces of skewed data, they drafted hitters like the aforementioned Javier Baez (26.3 WAR), Kris Bryant (28.8 WAR), and Josh Donaldson (46.6 WAR).

Even in a world where we remove all three of those extreme cases, the argument is pretty strongly made to draft the hitter rather than the pitcher in a scenario where the scouts have them with a similar grade. 

The Cubs have drafted four pitchers in the first round that have a positive WAR. Outside of Andrew Cashner (10.9) they only have one other pitcher with a WAR over 1.5: Alex Lange (1.6) who they traded for a half-season of Nick Castellanos.

Even with the three outlier hitters removed from this equation the Cubs have drafted six hitters with a positive WAR and just signed two of them to extensions with Ian Happ (11.9) and Nico Hoerner (8.2).

You absolutely have to have pitching in order to win championships, but the 2016 Cubs proved that you can get that pitching without the risk of drafting it. That season the Cubs utilized a rotation that was made up completely without a homegrown pitcher:

1. Jake Arrieta (Trade with Baltimore)
2. Jon Lester (Free Agent signing)
3. Kyle Hendricks (Trade with Texas)
4. John Lackey (Free Agent signing)
5. Jason Hammel (Free Agent signing)

If you don’t like that, perhaps you’d like to discuss Marcus Stroman who leads the league in pitching WAR (3.1) this season and signed with the Cubs via free agency. Or maybe your favorite pitching prospect is Ben Brown (traded from Philadelphia), Caleb Kilian (traded from San Francisco) or Hayden Wesneski (traded from New York). 

I’m not even arguing against the idea of drafting a pitcher, I’m just saying that in a world where you have to hit on your first-round pick, don’t draft a pitcher with your first-round pick. Justin Steele is a tremendous pitcher that the Cubs drafted in the 5th round. Jackson Ferris may be the best prospect in the system and he was drafted in the 2nd round. You have to draft pitchers at some point, but you are allowed to limit your risk. 

Conclusion: If a hitter and a pitcher are rated similarly, draft the hitter.