HOW MANY MAKE IT TO THE BIG'S?

Every once in a while looking at all the names of players to come and go while following minor and major league baseball, I set out to find the real numbers. Not being a database expert and without spending a lot of research time, little could be found. There were rough percentages of the number of players to make the majors from high school and college, but no detail and the numbers varied quite a bit.

So I set out to find the truth. Since I do not have a giant database, I did it the old fashioned way. My first attempt is for 1st round picks only from 1999-2005 (excluding the supplemental or sandwich round between the 1st and 2nd rounds). The reason I selected 2005 as the final year is because that seemed a logical amount of time from 2010 to allow a 1st rounder to get to the Majors. In addition, going backward I stopped at 1999 because I figured 11 years was a reasonable amount of time to allow a player to make it or be out of baseball.

The results are about what I expected, just around 64% of 1st round picks at least make it to the Big’s for at least a cup of coffee. Many of the names are still active including MLB all-stars, but note that 40 of the 207 drafted and signed are out of the game entirely. Since I have started I’ll next go to the 2nd round for the same seven (7) year period and over time go prior to 1999 and into future rounds. Below is a table with the raw numbers and the percentages. I had a pretty excel graph, but could not download it.

Enjoy and let me know your thoughts,

Rich Valle

Year.....# of Picks.....# signed:....MLB.....AAA.....AA.....A.....Out of Baseball

1999..........30.................30.........13..........8..........6...... 3........16
2000..........30.................29.........15..........7..........3.......4........12
2001..........30.................29.........20..........7..........2.......0........13
2002..........30.................29.........23..........3..........1.......2.........6
2003..........30.................30.........21..........4..........4.......1.........4
2004..........30.................30.........20..........7..........1.......2.........3
2005..........30.................30.........20..........6..........2.......2.........2

TOTAL....210...............207......132........42.........19.....14.......40


Percentage of Players drafted and signed to:

Appear in "A" ball was 100%
Appear in "AA" ball is 93%
Appear in "AAA" ball is 84%
Make MLB appearance is 64%