Cubs make "safe" pick in 3B Bryant at #2 over highly-touted pitchers

The Cubs used their #2 overall pick in the first-year player draft Thursday to take 6’5” third baseman Kris Bryant from San Diego State. Reports call him the best hitter in the draft, and his 31 home runs this year – in only 62 games - were ten more than anyone else in Division I and more than something like 200 entire teams hit.

Harold Reynolds called it the safest pick in the draft, and I agree. With half the Cub infield locked into long-term deals, no need to futz with Darwin Barney’s hold on second base and a pair of their top minor league prospects being outfielders, it’s a happy coincidence that the top power hitter in the draft plays the position that was the organization’s biggest question mark.

Beyond the home runs, he drove in 62, scored 80 times and drew 66 walks while batting .329 with an OBP of .493. Either he has good plate discipline, pitchers were afraid of him, or both. I'll take that. If Bryant really is the top position player in the draft, by playing a position where the Cubs aren't committed for the long haul, it was a good call. I like when players can jump straight to the majors, which doesn’t happen often and I wouldn’t expect it, but I do expect Bryant to be fast-tracked, and Dale Sveum said he expects to see him at Wrigley before too long. A player who dominates like that at a major university is wasting his time in Rookie ball facing the same kind of players he’s already outclassed.

Pitchers Mark Appel and Jonathan Gray got most of the headlines as the top names in the draft, and Appel was in fact the top overall pick by Houston, but history isn’t on the side of pitchers who go at the top of the draft. I say go ahead and load up on arms further down and hope you strike gold, and the Cubs did that through most of the rest of the draft, but if there's a future Hall of Famer near the top of the draft, it probably isn't a pitcher.

Among players selected among the top-four-overall picks in the draft since its inception in 1965, here’s the list of Hall of Famers: Reggie Jackson (#2, 1966), Robin Yount (#3, 1973), Dave Winfield (#4, 1973), Paul Molitor (#3, 1977), and Barry Larkin (#4, 1985). Ken Griffey (#1, 1987) will soon join them, Chipper Jones (#1, 1990) wouldn’t be a bad bet, and Alex Rodriguez (#1, 1993), well, we’ll have to see how his reputation plays out, but the numbers are there.

That’s not a bad percentage of upper-echelon talent representing 126 picks in the first 29 years of the draft. We’re not talking Veterans’ Committee selections here, Larkin might wind up the only one of the lot who wasn’t inducted on the first ballot, and he didn’t have to wait long. A-Rod’s 2,901 hits so far only ranks fourth among them. Reggie’s 563 homers are good for third. All except Molitor won at least one MVP award, all except Griffey played in a World Series.

And none of them are pitchers.

In fact, not a single pitcher in the Hall was even picked in the first round. Roger Clemens (#19, 1983) is the only eligible first-round pitcher who pitched like a Hall of Famer throughout his career out of at least the first quarter century of the amateur-draft era, and the voters haven’t proven to be too keen on alleged Mitchell List types. Dwight Gooden (#5, 1982) looked like a lead-pipe cinch at 26 with a 132-53 record, but was only 62-59 after that as injuries and his personal demons began to catch up with him.

There isn’t even a second-round pitcher in the Hall. Greg Maddux (2nd round, #31, 1984) would pretty much have to drive over a playground full of children and be found passed out drunk behind the wheel with a trunkload of smack not to snap that streak when he becomes eligible next year, and Tom Glavine (2nd round, #47, 1984) will almost certainly go in with him, but Dennis Eckersley is currently the highest-drafted pitcher to go to Cooperstown, a third-round pick at #50 in 1972.

Think about that. In eighteen years of drafts from 1965-1982 (giving Clemens the benefit of the doubt), through the first 49 picks of each, that gave 851 opportunities for major league scouts to identify a future Hall of Fame pitcher and convince their GM to take a chance on him, and they didn’t find a single one. That doesn't count the old January amateur drafts or supplemental picks, and no Hall of Fame pitchers came from those, either.

Should that really be all that surprising?

How many times have you heard a commentator talk about a pitcher who finally found success when he went from being a thrower to being a pitcher? That’s not something you see in top-rated pitching prospects. If you’re 6’6” and 230 and can rear back and bring the heat at 95 mph against high-school or college kids, you don’t need the same toolbox of skills that you’ll need in the majors. You don’t need to be smart or crafty, you don’t need to mix up your pitch selection and your speeds to get guys out when yours may be the only 95 mph fastball they’ll ever see. Most significantly, if there’s a fundamental flaw in your mechanics, you probably haven’t thrown enough yet to wreck your elbow and/or shoulder.

It’s not the same with non-pitchers. Their livelihood doesn’t depend on repetitive strain on the same muscles and tendons 100 times a day where they’re pushing their bodies to the limit. Yet those are the guys who light up the charts with their stats and get the big press leading up to draft day. Those are the guys where teams don’t want them to fall to someone else first. Kerry Wood (#4, 1995). Mark Prior (#2, 2001). Stephen Strasburg (#1, 2009). Wood had Tommy John surgery after his rookie season, hit the disabled list 14 times in 13 seasons, and made his last start at age 29. Prior made his last major league appearance at 25 and hasn’t thrown more than 25 innings in a season in seven years, still trying to fight his way back. Strasburg, having already had Tommy John surgery and subsequently been shut down in the stretch drive of a pennant race as a precaution, is now back on the disabled list.

That’s not to say the Cubs didn’t benefit by picking Wood and Prior, at least through five games of the 2003 NLCS, but like too many top pitching prospects, they peaked early. Randy Johnson was the #36 pick in 1985, the 17^th pitcher selected, and he didn’t become an impact pitcher until an age where the book was already closed on Prior. Seven pitchers selected ahead of him never made it to the big time, and the best of those who did was Bobby Witt (#3 overall), who wound up at 142-157. Yet in the same draft, ten of the first 14 position players drafted played at least 1,000 games in the majors, including Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro and Will Clark.

So I'm glad the Cubs resisted the temptation to grab Gray. Not just to have a guy who might impact 150+ games a season instead of 32, but to have a better shot for that high-level pick to still be impacting the team ten years down the road.

To Kris Bryant, best of luck, kid. I hope we see you soon, and I'll be following the numbers until we do.