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The New Big Three Using college statistics as an indicator of major league success is something that is being practiced by the "sabermetric" school of general managers over the last few years. While GMs for a long time have likely been using statistics in their calculations for the future success of draftees, recently general managers such as Billy Beane and JP Ricciardi have been emphasising statistics to a much higher degree than traditional schools of thought did, which usually focused much of their projection on a player's tools and potential. Obviously they believe that statistics are valuable in projecting a player's future success based on their drafting patterns, as I'm sure many are familiar with the story of Jeremy "He Won't Sell Jeans" Brown. Many have done studies that have found a relatively high degree of correlation between college statistics and major league success. I don't have the resources to conduct any sort of large study to attempt to verify the results of these studies; however, there is a college phenomenon which I would like to look into. If anyone is familiar with college baseball they would know that Rice University has three pitchers who rank among the best college pitching trios in university history. Wade Townsend, Jeff Niemann and Philip Humber put up some excellent stats for Rice last year, going a combined 39-5 record with 458 strikeout's in 429 innings and should be even better this year when they are all a year older. These three are apparently all potentially top five draft picks in the amateur draft in June this year and should become only the third trio of college teammates to all be selected in the first round in history, and the first composed of all pitchers. Baseball America had an interesting article yesterday about the Rice University trio and it had a little box which compared the three of them twelve of the top college pitching trios in history. I decided to take a look at these trios, and see what sort of major league success might await Townshend, Niemann and Humber. Unfortunately, this study will be somewhat mitigated by the fact that I don't have access to college stats of many of these players, so I cannot draw a great comparison between the Rice Three and the others. Also, obviously each pitcher is an individual case and there are many other factors at play like the development practice of the team a pitcher is drafted by and new, and in theory, improved, medical techniques. However, I think this will be interesting, and therefore let's dive into it. Southern California, 1968
Gray Ink, if you are not aware, is a standard devised by Bill James which gives pitchers points for top 10 appearances on leadersboards for various pitching categories. The average Hall of Famer has a score of around 185 in Gray Ink. The alma matter that would later turn out some pitchers who should have very nice careers in Mark Prior and Barry Zito, along with Randy Johnson, Tom Seaver and some red-goateed slugger, saw Barr, Lee and Strom lead the USC Trojans over Southern Illinois in 1968. However, Lee lasted until the 22nd round, and Brent Strom, who was drafted 3rd overall by the New York Mets had one decent year with the Padres in 1975, but otherwise had a very undistinguished career, the worst of the big three. Barr and Lee both had longevity, and "Spaceman" Lee had some great quotes and devised the cosmic snowball theory, however, neither was particularly better than average over the course of their career. Still, this may turn out to be one of the most balanced classes on the board. Arizona State, 1969
Arizona's College World Series victory of 1969 would be the only one between 1968 and 1974 that USC didn't win, and they rode three arms, mainly Larry Gura's it looks like, to the title over Tulsa 10-1. Ken Hansen never pitched in the big leagues, and I am unsure why; the two obvious, and pretty much only, suspects being injury or really subpar minor league performance. There is some confusion as to the round LaGrow was drafted in as Baseball America has round 6, but Baseball Reference says 32. Regardless, he had a very average career, and while Gura was slightly above average, none of the three of them were noticably above-average players. Arizona State, 1972
Arizona's second draft class is no better than their first, and is, in fact, worse in most people's opinions, I'd imagine. None of the pitchers put up adjusted ERAs better than the league average and their careers were fairly short, except for Swan's. The team lost the College World Series 1-0 to the Trojans, but none of them could translate their college success into professional success. Bane posted the beststrikeout rate we've seen so far by far, but he couldn't control his pitchers at the major league level. I don't know if this was a problem for him before, but Bane went right to the majors in 1973, so perhaps it was a case of too soon, too fast and he never was allowed to spend the proper time refining his pitches in the minor leagues. Texas, 1975
Well, not much to say about these three from Texas University other than they hit their high note when they helped Texas to the championship over the "I Don't Want to be a Gamecock"s from South Carolina. Not much too say here, except none of them had particularly good peripherals, i.e. K/IP ratio which is about all I have to go on at this point. Also, if anyone on the subway asks you to name a pitcher who had an undefined ERA in the last year of his career, you can answer Rick Wortham. Southern California, 1978
Worst very successful American college trio that led their school to the national college world series championships in terms of their professional career. Ever. Wichita State, 1982
The first team to appear here that lost the championship game. Oooooh, "unknown transaction", not so smart are we now, baseball-reference? Yep, more pitchers who did basically nothing at the big league level. Texas, 1983
Who knew Roger "Let's Obnoxiously Name My Kids Like a Demented Klansman" Clemens was striking out batters at the major league level at a better rate than he was in college? I didn't. I wonder how many teams were going to pick Schiraldi over Clemens. Obviously the best class we've seen, and likely will see, by virtue of the presence of ChuckaBat McGee. However, if you were looking at overall balance as a necessity, than I'd hand it to USC 1968 so far, with Texas coming second. Florida State, 1986
Nope, this one didn't work. Try again in the future, Florida State. This team, which also lost the championship, had Paul Sorrento and Luis Alicea, on it. That's right Robert Ripley, Paul Sorrento and Luis Alicea did play together in university. Fresno State, 1988
That's really interesting. Salles and Crain had the same record, and basically the same ERA and K/rates of 7.5 and 7.7, respectively. They played for the same school, which while it didn't even reach the national championship, must have done well based on the records of the three pitchers. That meant they got the same exposure and faced roughly the same competition. Now, I can see team's preffering one pitcher over another even though they have equal stats based on projectability or build or whatnot, but it still suprises me that no team can think Crain, who basically equalled Salles' stats, was worthy of a pick befor the 62nd round. Now, neither pitched in the big leagues, but I'll bet Salles got many more opportunities, being a 5th round draft pick, then Crain did. Louisiana State, 1989
This is certainly one of the better trios, as McDonald had some good years as a starter before he was derailed by injuries, I believe. Leskanic has quietly turned into an above-average major league reliever, and Springer is still floating around, being servicable, but worse than average. Clemson, 1996
This could have been one of the best draft class if Kris Benson's career hadn't been somewhat derailed by injuries. He was above-average in his first two major league seasons, and he was getting better in terms of his peripheral numbers in the second season; however, since his injury he's had two seasons that didn't approach what he was doing in 1999 and 2000, and I doubt he'll ever be the pitcher he once was, or at least once could have been. I doubt we'll ever see Ken Vining again, but it's too soon to render judgement on this draft as Koch's career is at an interesting point, and both him and Benson potentially have several years ahead of them in the big leagues. This could have been one of the best draft class if Kris Benson's career hadn't been somewhat derailed by injuries. He was above-average in his first two major league seasons, and he was getting better in terms of his peripheral numbers in the second season; however, since his injury he's had two seasons that didn't approach what he was doing in 1999 and 2000, and I doubt he'll ever be the pitcher he once was, or at least once could have been. I doubt we'll ever see Ken Vining again, but it's too soon to render judgement on this draft as Koch's career is at an interesting point, and both him and Benson potentially have several years ahead of them in the big leagues. There is one more trio from South Carolina in 2000, but I feel it's too soon after the fact to render an effective verdict on them. It doesn't look particularly promising either as none of Kip Bouknight, Scott Barber or Peter Bauer is tearing up the minor leagues. Here are the stats of Townsend, Niemann and Humber, just for comparison Rice, 2003
First of all, I know there is no such thing as a pitching prospect, and that predicting pitchers is a high-risk activity, but I was still suprised to see some of the huge failure rates, especially when you have multiple pitchers involved. I know this selection is somewhat biased by the fact we are looking at great pitching trios, and not individual pitchers themselves, but still I was suprised to see only 8 of 33 (if we discount the 3 from the 2000 South Carolina class) managed to finish their careers with adjusted ERAs better than the league average. If you define that as "success", then even some of the best college pitching tandems have a success rate below 25%. Also, 10 of the 33 had adjusted ERAs below 50 or never pitched in the majors, which you could certainly define as an outright failure. Obviously, Clemens is the best pitcher of the 33 looked at, and is the only one to reach a consistant all-star status. However, if you want to look at a class that is balanced throughout in which all members acheived success, than the 1968 Trojans, who I wasn't even overly impressed with when I first looked at them, are probably the best of the bunch. Well, possbily the 1989 Louisiana State group is the best, depending on how much weight you want to give to longevity. I know I'm going to extremely simply things here but you are basically debating between 4,000 innnings of 106 ERA+ or 2,000 innings of 116 ERA+. These are definately the two most balanced classes, and I'd argue in favour of the Louisiana State one, come to think about it, trusting my ability to find average, or near-average, pitching through cheap means. It's tough to say what the future holds for the Rice Trio. I can't tell you what they need to do to become the best college pitching trip ever, as I don't follow college baseball enough to know different divisions and schedules, and I think that would have to be considered in one's evaluation to some degree. Based on the stats here, and all the pitchers should improve, or at least stay the same, they are better than, or match up equally well, to any of the trios listed. I do encourage you, if you are in the area, to go take a look at any of these three pitchers. I'd certainly jump at the chance. I do think that all three will be drafted in the first round, and the first half of the first round if they all have reasonably successful years, and will become the first set of three pitcher college teammates to do that. Looking at the above it seems improbable that all three will go onto successful careers in the major leagues, but its quite possible that they all will at least get a cup of coffee in the major leagues, barring injury. I don't forsee them becoming the Trojans of 1978, and I think at least one, and I might guess two, of them will go onto have a successful big league careers, but I couldn't tell you which one at this point. A large part of determing that probably lies with projectability and mechanics, neither of which I have immediate access to, nor great knowledge of. That decision is what people getting paid a lot more money than me, and with more time on their hands, have as their job. And hey, I was really high on Bobby Bradley a few years ago, so what do I know? Thomas Ayers welcomes any and all feedback on this, or any of his other articles. He encourages you all to vote for Dennis Kucinich, or failing that Howard Dean at the very least. Don't let the media determine your choices, or the issues, for you. Sorry for the unsoliticed political commentary. |
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©Copyright 2003
Phil Orr
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