How much stock can you really put into baseball class rankings?

[57stratdawg]

Rosebowl's article got me to thinking. Dallas Braden threw a perfect game the other day and he was like a 25th round pick. Mark Reynolds and Ty Wiggington are tied for 2nd in MLB in HRs and both were drafted after the 15th round.

Baseball has to be the hardest of the 3 major sports to evaluate a players potential. Doesn't baseball recruiting rankings seem like much more of a shot in the dark than basketball and football?

 

[Todd4State]

You take it with a grain of salt, and I think that you will really know the answer as to how good that class was after they leave- or probably even before then.

I saw the comment that I think you are getting at- where he said he puts more stock into them because they are compiled by professionals. I have to agree with you- it's still an inexact science.

At the same time, much like football, I think there is a probably at least some correlation between the schools that win and have good recriuting rankings. Our team has classes from three that were not ranked very high, and we're not very good. So, they're probably not totally off the mark either.

Also, with scouts vs college recruiters- they're looking for two different things to a degree. The scouts, as you say, are looking more for potential and are trying to project where a guy is going to be in 4-5 years. College recruiters, who don't have the luxury of four levels of minors to devlelop talent- are looking more for guys that can come in and play immediately at the college level. Of course that doesn't mean that the scouts don't know who is or isn't a good player as well.

But yeah, I saw that comment, and I don't think that I really agree with it.

As far as them being more of a shot in the dark- maybe- it seems about the same to me.

 

[independencebowlmainstay]

Baseball recruiting is a joke. Perfect Game and some other sources for baseball recruiting have absolutely bogus rankings after the Top 25 or so players. It's all about who's momma or daddy paid the most to have their kid pimped on the PG website.

The deal is that most schools have VERY small recruiting budgets for baseball. Even good D1 programs like a South AL, Tulane, USM, etc....schools like this have a budget of about 18-20k in which to recruit. Hell, sometimes schools like South and Troy sign kids they have literally never seen play based on someone's opinion that they know and value. They get a little film and make an offer. True story.....South AL never saw David Freese take an AB. Not even on tape. Now the guy is a 320 hitting big leaguer 5 years later.

Baseball recruiting is just a different animal. The one thing that I agree with that Todd said, in many cases college coaches and ML scouts aren't even after the same players. With the new scholarship restrictions, colleges really can't afford to miss out on high end HS players. Schools that aren't willing to spend the money to find these guys will get passed by those that will.

In other words, you can put about as much stock in baseball recruiting rankings as you can baseball polls. None.