If you were to be drafted by a baseball team, would you want to be the first pick or the second pick?
Before you answer, consider more 2nd picks in the last 20 years have made it to the Majors than first rounders.
Of everyone drafted since 1988, the player selected with the second pick has been a MLB player 18 out of 20 times. 1 player didn’t make it to the majors, while the other didn’t sign and was re-drafted later on.
The first pick and the 10th pick both made it to the Majors at an 85% clip (17 out of 20). There has not been a first pick that didn’t sign. I expect this to go up since David Price will make it to the majors (although, people said that about Brien Taylor years ago).
The least successful place to be selected is the 18 pick (too bad for Mets fans, but at least they still have another first rounder); only 35% of the players here have made it to the big leagues.
Here are the full percentages for picks 1-30:
2 – 90% (1 did not sign)
1 – 85%
10 – 85% (1 did not sign)
22 – 80%
4 – 75%
3 – 70% (1 did not sign)
7 – 70% (1 did not sign)
12 – 70%
14 – 70%
16 – 70%
23 – 70% (1 did not sign)
5 – 65%
25 – 65%
9 – 60%
19 – 60%
6 – 55% (1 did not sign)
15 – 55%
17 – 55%
21 – 55% (1 did not sign)
13 – 50%
20 – 50% (1 did not sign)
30 – 50% (1 did not sign)
8 – 45% (2 did not sign)
24 – 45% (2 did not sign)
28 – 45% (2 did not sign)
11 – 40% (2 did not sign)
26 – 40% (2 did not sign)
27 – 40% (2 did not sign)
29 – 40%
18 – 35%
All of these could see a 5% increase except pick 6, since Ross Detwiler (#6 last year) was the only player to get a call up from the 2007 draft.
I don’t really think there is a reason for this; it’s not like a specific pick really has a better chance of making it than another one. I did notice that as the percentage drops, there are more players that didn’t sign. All we can take from this is the teams need to sign their draftees (I think this is true for the first 5 rounds – not just this one).
I looked at the supplemental first round picks as well, but there was even less correlation there. Since there are a different number of picks each year, it was hard to gage after pick 30 (for example, players taken with the 50th pick make it to the majors at a 67% clip, since there have only been 3 supplement picks going as high as 50 – 2007 had the most supplement picks with 64 first rounders total).
Picks 52 through 64 have not had a player make it up to the big leagues, but that’s because 2007 was the only year to have first rounders in pick 53 through 64.
So, the supplement picks are pretty much worthless in tracking like this.
