Giants' Draft Picks

With the sixth pick of the draft, the Giants selected high school pitcher Zack Wheeler out of Dallas, Georgia.  I know very little about Wheeler other than that he is a long and lean righthander (6′4″ and 180 lbs) and that he was highly regarded by the people who posted mock drafts on the internet, including Baseball America.

The Giants have had a lot of luck in recent years drafting high school pitchers, particularly those from the South.  Matt Cain pitched his high school ball in Tennessee, and Madison Bumgarner pitched his in North Carolina.

High school pitchers are the riskiest players to take with first round draft picks, mainly because of the greater injury risk than with high school position players.  College pitchers selected in the first round have proven that they can handle the much heavier college baseball schedule for three years without major injury, while high school pitchers have generally never pitched anything close to a professional season schedule.

High school pitchers are also a long way from the Majors, much further than college pitchers, so you have to project them further into the future, which is hard to do.  Also, unlike college, the high school statistics mean very little.  With high school players you are selecting them solely on the scouts’ opinions of their physical skills.

For these reasons, the money ball teams rarely draft high school pitchers in the first round. The Giants, however, obviously have a lot of faith in their scouts.  The fact is that college players as a group have more Major League success than high school players as a group when picked in the same spot in the draft.  In other words, college players who have been selected with the sixth pick of the draft have done better as a group than high school players picked with the sixth pick.

With their second round pick, the 55th pick of the draft, the Giants took high school catcher Tommy Joseph out of Scottsdale, Arizona.  Again, I don’t know much about Joseph, except that he’s young and certain to be a long ways away from playing in the Majors.