The 2013 June MLB Amateur Draft wrapped up but a few days ago. Quite naturally those that follow baseball in general and the drafts specifically are attempting to rate how well teams have done in the draft before even one of those young draftees reports to his first professional team. Although no definite rankings of the draft have been made there have been musings that the Dodgers did not have a particularly strong draft, especially when compared to the 2012 draft.

The second guessing came as early as the Dodgers second round selection – Tom Windle. Keith Law’s assessment of Windle is that he profiles as either a back-end starter or good reliever. He describes Windle as a command/finesse pitcher with average stuff but very good feel. John Sickels offers a similar assessment : “Windle is a potential fifth starter or relief option who could advance quickly.” That is not high praise for a second round selection, not drafted as a reliever.

In looking at the draft it is difficult to know what the overall plan was for the Dodgers, or is it? Perhaps that is because some thought that Logan White – Dodgers Assistant GM and Director of Amateur and International Scouting – had established what was thought to be a pattern of drafting in the past and the team deviated from that pattern. Personally, I could not see any big change away from the usual trend. Since 2003 White has drafted a pitcher with the Dodgers’ first pick every year except 2012 when Corey Seager broke that pattern. Six of those first round selections have been high school pitchers – Chad Billingsley, Scott Elbert, Clayton Kershaw, Chris Withrow, Ethan Martin, Zach Lee.

In the most recent draft White again drafted a pitcher with the team’s first pick, eighteenth overall. Chris Anderson, at 20, is a year young for a junior college player, but has a powerful, projectable 6 foot four inch , 225-pound frame – the kind of frame Logan White and staff look for in a pitcher. With the second selection, the Dodgers drafted the aforementioned Tom Windle, a left handed pitcher, who also stands six foot four inches and weighs in at 210 pounds. The Amateur draft was reduced to 40 selections in 2012. With this year’s selections the Dodgers drafted the following mix of players : 21- pitchers, 6-catchers, 1- 1B, 2- 2B, 3 -3B, 3 SS, 4- OF. Six of the first ten picks were pitchers. One of the catchers, Kyle Farmer, previously a shortstop, was selected in the eighth round. There were only eight high school players drafted by the Dodgers – three in the very later rounds – so that suggests the draft team was concerned about signability issues with high school players.

The Dodgers first and second round draft picks Chris Anderson and Tom Wilde.
(Photo credit – Stephen Dunn)

Logan White- in an interview with Baseball Prospectus – explained why he feels that each draft must emphasize pitching: “I’ve done studies on it and you have to look at what I call the two-four rule. I’ve told people this in the past, and basically what I’m saying is that 50 percent of the time you’re going to have an injury of some form or another where they have to have a surgery. Then you have the risk of how many of those 50 percent that break down are going to come back. About 20 or 30 percent aren’t going to come back to the same level, so you have to factor in that maybe 30 percent of your pitchers are going to get wiped out by an injury that you have no control over. That is one reason that we draft a lot of pitching and why you have to draft a lot of pitching.”

In the same interview, White, explained the difficulty in drafting hitters as compared to pitchers. “With high school kids, you might only see him swing a bat four times (in a game). You might only see him swing twice if he walks a couple of times. A pitcher, even if throws an inning or two, you’re going to get to see him do his thing 20-30 times. You get a better feeling for his mechanics… You don’t get a feeling for hitting mechanics at a game as much.” With hitters scouts simply have to try to spend more time observing certain players hoping to unearth an offensive gem. Perhaps that is why players like Ethan Martin, Allen Webster and Aaron Miller, good two way players, were drafted as pitchers, as was J D Underwood (fifth round) a first baseman and RHP in this year’s draft. By drafting those players as pitchers it is clear that Logan White likes pitchers who display athleticism as well as a strong arm. A strong arm can be cultivated while athleticism can’t be.

It has been obvious for a few years that major league baseball teams, and particularly the Dodgers, pay attention to bloodlines. I believe that it is not just that a young player may have inherited baseball genes, but has a home grown knowledge of what it takes to play baseball at the major league level having experienced the successes and failure of baseball through their fathers, grandfathers, brothers, uncles, nephews. The 2013 Dodger draft roster includes eleven players with MLB connections. That is, bloodlines: Cody Bellinger, JD Underwood, Nick Keeper, Adam Law, Andrew McWilliam, Greg Harris, Blake Hennessey, Michael Ahmed, Tyger Pederson, Dillon Moyer, Jake Sidwell. Some of those names are quite familiar to baseball fans .

Baseball – the most wonderful of all team sports – can also be the most frustrating. Where else in life can young men be paid to fail 70% of the time when they are striving daily to be successful 100% of the time. Dealing with that failure may well be the key to success. Logan White has developed a system that he uses with his scouts to try to develop a composite “make up” of players. “There are certain things we ask the scouts to find out about the players that we have to know. Examples are GPA and SAT scores. We find out if their parents are married or not; we find out their birth order. We find out all of that stuff and put it together in a matrix, and it gives me a composite score that tells me an order of makeup. When we go into a draft, we know where guys rank from a makeup standpoint.” While most of us live through baseball statistics, the Dodger scouting and development staff look beyond eye popping numbers and try to find players who seem like good bets to live their lives properly and to develop the work ethic necessary to develop into MLB players.

I don’t think that Logan White deviated from his overall drafting plan in 2013 – drafting a high percentage of pitchers, taking the best player available, looking for athleticism, bloodlines and make up. Oh yes, trusting that gut feeling.

How successful will the 2013 draft be? How many players have to make it to the big leagues to make the draft a success? Of the thousands of high school, college, and unaffiliated players, probably about three percent of those drafted or signed ever make an appearance at the Major League Baseball level. Logan White, in looking back discovered through their successful decades the Dodgers produced about 30 major league players per decade. Starting in the 1990’s the number dropped to 12. He concluded: “I found out by looking at that that the key to success—at least getting to the World Series and having championship teams—is that you need to produce about 30 major-league players per decade. And when I say 30, what I mean is that they need to have five years of major-league service time or better.” We may well have to wait a while to measure the success of this draft. There will be sleepers, surprises and disappointments. In the meantime, I very seriously doubt that Logan White and company came into the draft ill prepared.