Saturday, July 14, 2012

MLB and College Baseball

Why is it that when you watch an NFL game, you can pretty much associate all the best players to the college they played for, but when it comes to baseball, you can probably only name one or two players' respective schools?  I know Ryan Braun went to Miami, that's about it.  So, why is this?  I can come up with a couple of reasons:
  1. The obvious answer is that most players are Latin American and in all likelihood came to America on a floating piece of wood so that they could get their chance at playing baseball in the states.  Oh, and they probably went straight to the minors instead of bothering to learn anything at a college, especially English.
  2. With football, there is a rule in place that all players have to have been out of high school for three years before they are eligible to enter the draft.  In baseball, there are a multitude of weird rules concerning draft eligibility.  First, you can enter the draft straight out of high school.  However, if you enter college, you are then required to stay at that school for a minimum of three years before you can enter the draft again.  That is unless of course that player goes to a junior or community college, in which case, they can enter the draft after only one year.  In other words, all the best players go directly to the majors and bypass college.
  3. The players that are drafted out of college are generally not that good.  I looked it up and between 2000 and 2009 (I picked those years b/c it takes a few years to get to the majors and the usual MLB career isn't much longer than 10 years), 243 1st Round picks were drafted out of college.  Out of those 243 picks, 26 made the All-Star team.  That means that only 11% of 1st round college players made the All-Star Team which isn't very good if these guys are supposed to be the best players in the draft and considering that All-Star rosters are huge.
  4. Unlike football, baseball players spend a couple years in the minors, therefore, you forget about them by the time they make it to the majors and/or they never actually make it to the big league.
I guess in the end you don't identify MLB players with their college is due to a multitude of reasons.  What I didn't add in that list is the fact that almost every college football game is broadcast on TV and if it weren't for ESPN showing the College World Series, I doubt people would even know there is college baseball.

"If you are going to pay that much money to sit behind home plate, then at what point would you think that bringing a book would be a good idea?"

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