The MLB draft is the key to any organization’s depth when the major league team has a bad or down year. Only one team per year can pick first overall, and every team has had their share of glory and failure at drafting in this sacred draft position.
Each year, hundreds of college and high school baseball players across the country wait anxiously by their phones to hopefully receive a call from a major league team through the MLB draft process.
The June amateur draft is held every year and is used as a system for teams to restock their farm systems with new and young talented players who could potentially contribute with the big league club. Now there is certainly a lot more prospects drafted by MLB clubs then there are who make it to the show, but for many players, being drafted allows them to continue playing baseball and even make a little money doing it (and I truly mean, a little amount of money).
Even with being drafted, there is no guarantee that a player will make it to the MLB if they are drafted in the high rounds. For example, since the 2005 draft, there are 11 players within the first round and competitive balance round who never made it to the show, and many of these players are no longer playing professional baseball.
Truth be told, drafting prospects is never easy, and teams are now starting to use advanced technology in order to scout prospects they are interested in. Things like velocity and spin rate can easily be recorded, and expensive cameras can slow down any players movement to look for any potential tweaks or future adjustments.
The 20-80 scouting system is still generally used by most scouting departments, but a lot of teams are shifting away from using old time scouts who have that special intuition on what makes a minor league player standout, and are switching to advanced analytics.
This article is going to examine players who were drafted first overall over the past 10 drafts and where their careers have gone since they were drafted first overall. We will have to take into account that players drafted in recent years may still be a few years away from contributing to the team, but nevertheless, we can still examine how their minor league development.