 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
February 7, 2007 Hello and welcome to an all-new feature at
the Diamond Mind Baseball League: Prospecting with
Jack Cust! I've spent a lot of time among the league's farm teams
-- four years, in fact -- and I've got the inside scoop on the
will-be's, coulda-been's and never-were's of the DMBL. 
With the 16th annual Diamond Mind Baseball
League draft just around the corner (Saturday, Feb. 24), it's a good
time to look back at how many ineligible players have been drafted over
the past five years. (We used 2002 as the cut-off because before that
year, teams were allowed to draft as many ineligible players as they
liked, and guys like Phil Rizzuto would get
picked in the later rounds.) Does it seem like, every year, more and
more ineligible players are getting drafted? Well, yes and no. We found
the number of ineligible players drafted every year since 2002 has
remained more or less consistent, save an inexplicable down year in
2004.
Perhaps that big dip in the 2004 season is the reason why some owners feel more ineligible players have been drafted in recent years. Maybe the owners were just taking a break after 2003's record 51 ineligible selections! However, while more ineligible players aren't getting drafted, the draft picks used to select them have been improving steadily over the past few years. In fact, last year saw the most ineligible players ever taken in the first five rounds, including the most players ever taken in the first three rounds (5). The previous high, set in 2003, was just 3 players selected by the end of the 3rd round. Just two players were taken in the first three rounds in 2002, and just one was taken in 2004 and again in 2005. However, no ineligible player has ever been
selected in the first round. The earliest pick ever used on a CORRECTION! Reader Mark H. of Rahway, N.J.,
points out that an ineligible player has been taken in the
first round. We should have noted above that we were only talking about
the five drafts in our study period (2002-2006). Jack Cust has been drafted four times, but has never been eligible for the DMBL. More Prospecting articles can be found in the Prospecting Archives. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
prospect
was the 15th pick -- the first pick of the second round -- in 2003,
when the Harrison Rats selected Jose Contreras.
There have been just five other second-round selections since 2002: Kazuo Matsui (Harrison, #16, 2004); Josh Beckett (Tijuana, #20, 2002); Francisco Liriano (Las Vegas, #20, 2006); Francisco Rodriguez (Columbia, #21, 2003); and Hideki Matsui (Newark, #28, 2003). Astute readers
will note the Harrison/Las Vegas franchise has used a second-round pick
on a prospect three times in the past five drafts!
In 1999, J.D. Drew was
selected with the 4th pick overall by the Philadelphia Eagle Wings (now
known as the Endzone Animals). Philly had back-to-back first-round
picks that year, and used the first one to take Drew, then a
highly-touted prospect holding out for a mega contract on the advice of
agent Scott Boras. The two sides eventually
came to an agreement and J.D. played for the Eagle Wings/Animals for
six seasons. After a monster '05 (.322/.434/.561, 34 HR, 115 RBI), Drew
used his player option to void his contract and signed with Vancouver,
where he remains today.