The Astros have more than their share of highly talented young players, but one player they don’t have in their system is Cubs masher Kris Bryant. Houston had the chance to take Bryant with the first pick in the 2013 draft, but they decided on righty Mark Appel instead, and the Cubs snagged Bryant with the next selection. Appel, now 25, has yet to make his big-league debut, and was traded to the Phillies in the Ken Giles deal last offseason. Bryant, meanwhile, leads the NL in home runs, runs scored and OPS+ while anchoring an intimidating Cubs lineup.
The Cubs and Astros are currently playing a series, so Astros GM Jeff Luhnow fielded questions about the Bryant-Appel decision. Here’s some of what he had to say, courtesy of Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times.
“There’s a history lesson to be learned about the risk with pitchers vs. position players,” says Luhnow, referring to the tendency of position players to be better bets in the early stages of the draft. “[T]hat’s a history lesson that’s been laid out over a long period of time. Having said that, if you want an impact pitcher, you have to gamble.”
The Astros have had plenty of experience selecting both position players and pitchers with top picks in recent years. Of their ten first-round picks from 2011 to 2016, six were position players, and three of those (George Springer, Carlos Correa and Alex Bregman) clearly look to be significant parts of their future. Another, outfielder Derek Fisher, was a later selection who doesn’t look like an impact player, but who has consistently hit well in the minors. The others, Kyle Tucker and Daz Cameron, were drafted last year and are still teenagers. Cameron has struggled so far in his pro career, but Tucker’s is off to a fast start, as he’s already advanced all the way to Class A+ Lancaster.
Meanwhile, two of four pitchers the Astros have selected in the first round, Appel and Brady Aiken, have suffered significant speed bumps even though they were both first overall picks, and the Astros famously didn’t even sign Aiken due to a disagreement regarding the Astros’ concerns about his health. One of their other first-round pitching picks was this year’s 17th overall selection, Forrest Whitley, about whom it’s way too early to pass judgment. Even granting the Astros’ success with 2012 supplemental pick Lance McCullers, their experience does seem to bear out the maxim that there are considerable risks to selecting pitchers at the top of the draft.
Nonetheless, Luhnow says the Appel/Bryant decision doesn’t keep him up nights. “We’ve got Carlos Correa. We’ve got Alex Bregman. We’ve got Lance McCullers. Our scouting department has done a nice job with the draft,” he says. “You can always look back and say I should have taken this player instead of that player, but there’s no reason to really dwell on it.”
can’t figure out why you would ever take a pitcher over a position player with top pick. pitchers play like 30 games a year and at best get you 20 wins. position players play like 140 games and should get you a couple more then that. pitcher are way more injury-prone. maybe it just me but i think I would alway take the position player with top pick.
Pitchers also have a direct impact on every single pitch/play of a game, which can’t be said about position players (with the possible exception of catcher). You can feel that position players are more valuable, I suppose, but there’s a reason that quality pitching is always in such high demand in the offseason, at the trade deadline, etc. It’s incredibly difficult to find, and while the frequency with which a starting pitcher appears is smaller, the amount of control they have over the individual games in which they appear is significantly greater than that of any one position player on a day-to-day basis.
This is true. But also because they are injury prone you need more of them!
It’s interesting some teams just stock up on pitching. Remember the Cubs stocked up on short stops knowing they could convert them or trade them for whatever they needed. I think teams maybe do this and maybe they make decisions based on the types of players they are good at developing. Like say an organization feels like they develop pitchers really well, they stock up knowing they can be powerful trade chips. Man it’s so interesting to think about and I like this article. I wish there were more of it.
Pitching has better trade value though as well -pitching, because it is more prone to slumping and injury it is always needed.
This. In the vast majority of trades in baseball the featured player is a pitcher. That alone cancels out the injury/bust dynamics of pitchers vs position players.
The reason why “pitchers break”, to quote Vin Scully, is that throwing a baseball overhand is the most unnatural motion for the human shoulder
I would go with the best player if I was the one picking.
“I would go with the best player if I was the one picking.”
And if you ranked/graded them evenly? Whom do you take?
who ever will sign for less money
Well, great pitching beats great hitting most of the time… And come postseason, pitching gets better and hitting becomes tougher…
“can’t figure out why you would ever take a pitcher over a position player with top pick.”
Imagine you’re “drafting” a team to play in the World Series right now, a 7-game winner take all series. Every MLB player is available to you. Who do you take first…Kris Bryant or (a healthy) Clayton Kershaw? Bryce Harper or Max Scherzer? Mike Trout or Chris Sale?
I think most sane people would take the pitcher every single time, which is why you potentially draft a top of the rotation starter over a position player. There is more risk with the pitcher obviously, and he cannot impact as many games as a position player, but with a team that’s trying to win a championship, in short series it’s often pitching that makes the difference.
I agree with you, pitching is the key in short series. If one does not believe this, calc the WAR per game average for an ace SP and compare to a hitter, it is not even close, the SP has a huge affect on any one game.
For that reason, I have grown to hate seeing people say that position players impact many more games. Because they are “there” for the whole game, they get credited with doing more on a game by game basis, but when you get down to an PA basis, you get to 4-5 PA plus 1-9 plays made on the field, while a pitcher has an affect on 6-9 IP worth of PA. The position player impact is roughly the same as a SP on PA basis, just spread over the five games, whereas the SP does it all in one game.
I agree that pitchers can control a short series. However, I do find a bit comical that of the three pitchers you listed, none have won the World Series and one has never even pitched in the postseason. None of the batters have either, but at best that makes your choices a push.
Pitching might be a key to a short series, but it isn’t infallible either. The Royals beat the Mets and the Mets pitching was far superior on paper. Arguably, the two best pitchers this decade, Verlander and Kershaw, have never been that successful in the playoffs either. Also never forget that a well balanced team is key to even getting to that short series. That is a big reason why the Sale/Quintana tandem have not ever seen the playoffs.
“However, I do find a bit comical that of the three pitchers you listed, none have won the World Series and one has never even pitched in the postseason. ”
I wasn’t attempting to name pitchers who have dominated and won World Championships, just comparing arguably the top pitchers in today’s game vs. the top hitters and which one you’d take in a short series. But since you pushed it…who would you take to start a post-season series…
Madison Bumgarner vs. Mike Trout OR
Prime Curt Schilling vs. Prime Albert Pujols?
“The Royals beat the Mets and the Mets pitching was far superior on paper.”
I don’t agree that the Mets pitch was far superior on paper. They were pitching extremely well, but they were also riding very young and inexperienced pitchers as well. The Royals had gone into that series with a couple of battle-tested starters (Shields, Cueto) who’d been under the bright lights of October before, and neither of whom had drastically increased their career-high innings total. Secondly, the Royals did not need their starters to be as great as the Mets did in order to win the series because their bullpen was outstanding, and they had a better all-around team. And as it was, the Royals significantly out-pitched the Mets, thus the reason they won the series.
I am not saying that a pitcher can do it all by himself; my point is that if you’re a team that’s good enough to be in the world series you already have legitimate talent all over your roster, and if you have to make a choice between the best position player, and the best ace-starter, that in a short series it’s almost always better to go with the pitcher.
James Shields was a Padre when the Royals won the world series.
Bryant or trout or harper any day over any 1 pitcher who only can pitch once a week sorry but I will take 7 games in the series to 2 games in a series. one dominant pitcher is not better then 1 dominant position player
You ignored the arguments given directly before. Why do you disagree? You could be right, but please advance the convo in a meaningful way.
“Bryant or trout or harper any day over any 1 pitcher who only can pitch once a week sorry but I will take 7 games in the series to 2 games in a series. one dominant pitcher is not better then 1 dominant position player”
Bryant, Trout or Harper could all have the greatest series of their lives, going 5-5 with 5 home runs and all make outstanding defensive plays, and his team could still get swept. That’s not going to happen with an ace pitcher who has the greatest series of his life and dominates completely, pitching two perfect games and striking out all 54 batters he faces.
and your teams scores 0 runs and you hit your pitch vount
and your team scores 0 runs and you hit your pitch count
If someone picked Chris Sale over Mike Trout something is wrong.
“If someone picked Chris Sale over Mike Trout something is wrong.”
Why? I’m not talking about a season, a career or anything like that…I’m talking about a short series…who would give you a better chance to win? Trout could play an entire series and not have any impact at all. He could make an out every time he is up and not have any balls hit to him in the outfield. However, Chris Sale taking the ball and throwing it to the batters on the other team has a definite impact on the game.
And he could be bad and impact the game negatively, just like you’re saying about trout. For an example of this, look at Clayton Kershaw’s career post season numbers. He has a post season ERA that is 2 runs higher than his career regular season and a fip that is 1 run higher
No one saw Mike Trout as much as they would have liked. It snowed a lot in Jersey that year.
we are talking about drafting a player for a team. a career not a game 7 of the world series. you need a good player for your shity team that has lost over a 100 games. who do you take to make your team better a pitch who usually doesn’t pan out or blows out his arm and plays 30 out of 162 games or a position player who plays 140 out of 162
If you’re losing 100 games, you need all the help you can get, whether it’s pitchers or hitters. Obviously, you go for the best athlete available. IF you’re losing 100 games and probably draft #1, In 2009, it’s a no brainer. You take Strasburg who did indeed receive a great deal of hype about his great heater. But again, as so many have pointed out, who else rated that high in 09 has done better? As mentioned, Trout was the 25th player selected! He was hardly thought of in the same league with Harper, ARod or Griffey.
See Bummgardner , Madison 2015 postseason
Good Answer Red Sox should trade for Sale but there 6 top prospects are off limits they might entertain Henry Owens and Doug Mirabeli
ib6ub9: So are you saying that think it was a bad idea for the Nationals to have drafted Stephen Strasburg 1/1 in 2009? Yes in all hindsight Mike Trout is the better player now, but I don’t think any organization would had picked Trout over Strasburg at the time. Sometimes a pitcher is the odds on favorite based on all known factors, but yes there is more historic risks in drafting a pitcher at the top of the draft. The bottom line is an organization has to weigh the info available to them at the time and make the best decision based on that info at the time. Some organizations are just better at interpreting the data than others in my mind.
And the consensus top hitter at the time was not even Mike Trout; it was Dustin Ackley. If the Nationals had followed ib6ub9’s methodology in choosing a position player over a pitcher, they would have ended up with a bust.
which they have with Strasburg who has done nothing but get hurt. so what is the difference
Strasburg has produced 4 fWAR to this point in the season, that’s an interesting definition of a bust.
nothing? he was having a monster season for WASH. there was a great chance he would have won the cy young in fact. he has one of the better winning percentages of any starting pitcher in baseball today. has he been the superstar people were thinking he would be? no. but hardly a bust, either.
Strasburg was having a decent season, not a monster one. Much of the “greatness” of Stephen Strasburg is still hype. He’s not even close to being the best pitcher on his own staff.
Please explain what you mean by decent vs. monster and why you classify him as such.
I’m not sure it’s strasburg’s fault that he happens to be in the same rotation as one of the best current pitchers in MLB. That said, he is actually pretty close to Scherzer, he has a better fip and xfip.
but his mechanics suck keeps getting hurt. thank god he signed an extension before he can’t pitch anymore
15-4 is just “decent?” Scherzer is of course having a marvelous season as well. So is Rorak. I’m not saying he’s going to be in the HOF and he’s not even close right now. But there’s a reason the Nats extended his contract for huge $$$. Teams understand the need of having great pitching. That’s why Scherzer, Price, CC, Felix, Lester and Kershaw make so much money.
No, he means they would have ended up with Ackley, and he is a bust indeed.
There are pitchers with good mechanics who get hurt and pitchers with bad mechanics who never do.
Obviously there is more to pitcher injuries than just mechanics, or every team/coach/college/hs/little league coach would be teaching pitchers 1 specific way to throw a baseball.
Wins mean nothing. It’s the stupidest stat in baseball and I wish people would stop using it. Quality Starts and ERA are way more important. A pitcher could have an ERA of 1.00, get no run support and lose. Another could give up 6 runs and the team scores big and they get a lot of wins. I want the first guy. Wins is such a crap stat and it’s unfair to judge a pitcher on that stat. Sure it’s a rough indicator of a season a pitcher is having but it’s outdated and should never, ever be used next to someone’s name.
I’ve interviewed hundreds of football coaches over the years who, after a loss, will come up with dozens of excuses to cover their butts: “we had more first downs. we had more yards passing. we controlled the clock. it was just that one turnover or bad call that cost us the game.” Well, it IS about wins. quoting stats to your owner or athletic director instead wins will wind up in you looking for a new job. Terry Bradshaw is often criticized as just being a “bus driver” and not deserving of his status of being one of the great QB’s in the NFL when compared to Marino, Fouts, Moon, Tittle, Kelly or Tarkington who put up record breaking passing stats but never won a ring. Sure, the Steelers had a great defense but Bradshaw did what was necessary to win games and more importantly, not LOSE games. Some pitchers don’t work as hard if they have a big lead so they give up 4-5 runs if their team is winning by ten. The ERA suffers. Colby Lewis was a classic example of that last year for Texas. I seriously doubt the Rangers would have won the west without him. Yes, he had a 4.55 ERA. So what? In several games he lost, he was left on the mound to eat innings and save the bullpen. In four of his games, he gave up 33 runs! Yes, he wasn’t on the playoff roster—but he wore down at the end of the year and Texas decided to go with the “hot” pitchers at that time. Lewis pitched well when it counted and won more games than any other pitcher on the staff who had benefit of the same offense. I would much rather have had Colby’s 17 wins last year than Shelby Miller’s 3.17 era and a record of 6-17. Shelby’s “WAR” was much better but that just serves to reinforce the BS that “WAR’ is. The bottom line is Miller made more mistakes than Lewis did when it MATTERED.
if there is no dominant position player go ahead and take dominant pitcher. if no dominant pitcher or position player I would take best position player over best pitcher so that is my opinion sorry if you don’t like it but it is just my opinion which doesn’t mean much seeing I’m not a GM. just think position players have a better upside then a pitcher who pitches once a week
What you said THIS last post makes more sense than what you said in your original post that I replied to where you said:
“can’t figure out why you would ever take a pitcher over a position player with top pick. pitchers play like 30 games a year and at best get you 20 wins. position players play like 140 games and should get you a couple more then that. pitcher are way more injury-prone. maybe it just me but i think I would alway take the position player with top pick.”
There is a big difference in those two posts. Your first seemed to rule out EVER taking a pitcher with the first pick even if there was no dominant position player. You may not have intended it that way, but that was what you had typed without clarifying until this last post. That I believe is why so many took exception to what you were saying.
sorry I wasn’t clear. I understand taking Strasburg in that draft but if it was Strasburg and Harper and both are standout prospects in that draft and I was the nationals I would take Harper everytime
because it takes at least one good/great starting pitcher to get you to the championship. Think SF regrets picking Madison Bumgarner with their #1 pick? Or the Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw? Pitching is just too important. Yes….many failures with top picks. Appel is a big question. Bryant may be the NL MVP. But the rest of that 2013 draft….a few are in the majors but not many are in the majors including the position players. It’s just a huge crapshoot when you’re selecting players. Even the NFL has misses and those are generally guys with plenty of experience and training in college. Many MLB players drafted are 18 year olds out of HIgh School. Who really knows?
there were 5 pitchers that were taken before both of them making them both the 6th pitchers taken only 1 was good 9 not
Which maybe explains why you need to get a lot of them? It would be interesting to look at drafts over the years. See how many top 10 pitchers made it to the bigs and what kind of careers they had and the same for position players. Not arguing against you just curious.
My guy tells me that if I had a team. I would pick as many decent pitchers as I could and load up. Teams always need pitching and you can always trade them for a good position player. But because of the high level of injuries and the boom/bust nature, I think teams need a lot of them. Having said that. I think it’s a tough argument either way and can see both sides. I think in the end it does come down to gut feeling. If you are pretty sure someone is gonna be the next Mike Trout as opposed to a risky pitching choice. You gotta take the position guy. But if you think the pitcher is going to be the next Kershaw vs Trout. Man that is a tough choice.
because a top-of-the-rotation pitcher will cost you the baseball equivalent of you first born child on the trade/free agent market.
If you honestly believe you have the chance to draft one, you should jump all over it even with all the inherent risk involved.
All great points above. An Ace pitcher also helps rest your bullpen. A strong core of pitching wins you a baseball series. Yes, you sometimes run into a team that is just so hot that they can hit anything but they too probably have two quality pitchers in their rotation as well. As an Astros fan I can’t imagine having an infield of Bryant, Correa, Altuve, and Reed (If he were hitting) as the core of the team.
What people are conveniently forgetting is that the debate in 2013 was not over Appel vs. Bryant. The debate was over Appel vs. Jon Gray with Kris Bryant being considered a long shot at best to go #1. Mock drafts almost always had Kris Bryant going 3rd. I remember that distinctly because the Rockies were picking third and I was hoping that one of the two pitchers somehow fell to them at 3. I was thrilled when the Cubs took Bryant. I honestly still am happy about it because Bryant would no doubt be called “just a product of Coors Field” if the Rockies had drafted him.
This article could just as well be about the Nationals taking Trout over Strasburg in 2009. No one questioned that at the time, but in hindsight it looks like what they should have done. No one even considered Trout that high. Check out some old articles about that draft. His comparison with a “current” MLBer was almost universally Aaron Rowand. The draft is just pure luck and no one will ever convince me otherwise..
My thoughts exactly. Nobody can predict the future. Had Kris Bryant been a washout or just average, this article wouldn’t even exist. The draft is pure luck because there’s so many moving parts that make a player a success. Everything from the hitting/pitching coaches to their teammates and clubhouse atmosphere. Plus injuries are almost always unforeseeable. There is never a sure-fire pick in the draft. Plain and simple.
Exactly Ray………..”Mike Trout was taken with the 25th pick in the 2009 draft.”…………21 teams selected other players.before him. Do you think those GM’s lose sleep over that? I doubt it, because Ray is correct…………..No one had any inclination that Trout would be “as good as he is”. The Astros have done a great job of performing a complete rebuild. They’ve chosen several “home runs” with their picks. That’s a winner right there!
Ray is right….it IS pure luck. There have been very few “sure bets” like ARod, Harper or Junior. Josh Hamilton was thought of as a future great and he eventually proved he WAS exceptional. But Tampa sure didn’t get use out of Josh for obvious reasons. But that’s the risk of giving players big money. You don’t know how they will handle it and will they work hard after getting it. In the case of Colorado, they never seem to run short of good/great hitters. Scoring runs has never been a problem. Yes, a lot of their offensive stats are aided by Coors but that’s besides the point. Denver MUST keep taking pitchers because their record of developing good arms has been dismal. Hampton, Kile & Nagle didn’t work. And the Rocks had to overpay to get those guys because pitchers and their agents know what a chamber of horrors it has been for Colorado pitchers.
Ray Ray you just made me think of something. If you’re the Rockies. You HAVE to pick pitching because few tier one FA pitchers will sign with them (unless you overpay badly). Same with SF. A lot of hitters don’t want to play there but pitchers do. I always said about the Sandoval thing… A big part of his thinking had to (or should have been) playing games as a hitter at ATT vs Fenway. His numbers should have been inflated at Fenway (plus playing a lot of games in Toronto, NY and Camden). The media rarely says “this guy is a 20 home run a year guy but he plays in a hitter friendly park”. They just quote the numbers because nobody cares how the sausage is made! If Brandon Belt played for Boston he would be a 30 HR a year guy and people would be throwing rose petals as he got off the bus.
Deke, I think you’re wrong. For years, people/media diminished Mel Ott’s career because he was a great pull hitter in the Polo Grounds, a place where the right field foul pole was only 257 feet.. Ott hit 135 more HR’s in NY than on the road. Look at all the criticism heaved at Denver hitters. Todd Helton had some incredible stats but if you look closely, Helton hit 60 points higher, had 85 more HR’s and 300+ rbi’s at home than on the road. Those are significantly different numbers. Larry Walker is another….he hit .383 with a at Coors and has a lifetime 315 average. Take away Coors, and Walker is a less than a 280 hitter. Slugging percentages are similar. There are several other examples of this which is why the media dismisses the hitting stats of Colorado hitters and why Helton/Walker and others will have a difficult time getting in the Hall of Fame in spite of some great numbers. Writers speculated for years in the debate “DiMaggio vs Williams” about what would have happened if Ted had played in the Bronx and Joe would have played at Fenway, which had the relatively short distance to the “Green Monster” and a deep right field while the Yanks had the very deep fence in left and especially left center and the short right field porch. DiMaggio did hit .344 in Boston and had a slugging percentage of nearly 60 points higher than at home. Williams on the other than hit 50 points higher vs NYY and had a slugging % nearly 100 points higher at Fenway. Granted, Ted had to face Yankee pitching which was generally much better than the Red Sox. But Williams had a career 345 record vs NYY and his lifetime average was .344. The Clipper was about ten points higher vs Boston than his lifetime average of 325. Joe was a MUCH better hitter on the road than at home.
I would agree that the draft absolutely takes some luck, but I’m not willing to say that it’s 100% luck based. I think there is an amount of credit that goes to a team’s scouting and development teams.
I agree. Also teams look at a player and say “he has a hole in his swing but he has power and we think we can fix that”. They do that for the draft, for trades and for FAs. So much goes into what a team thinks they can do with a player based on scouting.
Before condemning the Astros over the missed opportunity, lest we forget that the draft that year was all about Mark Appell and Jon Gray. Kris Bryant was a fly by night who showed up out of nowhere and started mashing. In fact a lot of people were kind of shocked when the Cubs picked Bryant over Gray when Appell was off the table. Also, Gray had been suspended for use of a PED, which ended up being something like Adderall a few weeks before the draft, and if not for that, consensus is that the Cubs would have picked Gray, and even then, there was no guarantee that Bryant would have been picked next.
As a Cubs fan, I’m beyond thrilled that it went down the way it did. But the talk of Bryant being the Strasburg or Harper of that draft is completely false.
To be fair there were questions about Bryant’s swing and miss in college and his ability to stick at 3b
Maybe some. But I know that the Rockies, who were drafting 3rd, were literally begging the Cubs to go somewhere else they wanted Bryant so bad. And they’ve got Arenado at 3rd. IIRC, so did the teams drafting 4th and 5th.
Interesting article. Such errors in judgement haunt me for months when playing fantasy baseball. Operating under a similar poor choice in reality would be altogether difficult to manage, the matter would consume my thinking day and night.
First person to mention fantasy. Totally fair comparison.
Baseball is a game of failure. I think GMs just know it and move on. They have the coolest jobs in the word. Why live in regret?
Obviously Appel was a bust, but Lance McCullers (when healthy) is everything we wanted. The pick didn’t work out, but so what?
I’m a Cubs fan, so obviously i like the way things played out
however i think it was an entirely defensible choice by the Astros given what both players were seen as at the time
Appel was considered a very advanced, very successful college pitcher with little injury concerns and few, if any, ‘red flags’ when it came to his delivery.
Bryant on the other hand was considered more or less all bat with major question marks about his ability to play defense at 3b, with a good number of teams reportedly more interested in him as an OF. He also had huge k numbers in college, which inevitably lead to questions about how viable his power would really be in game situations
Appel is obviously a disappointment so far, and Bryant has somehow managed to exceed the expectations most scouts had at draft time… but i don’t think it’s fair to judge the Astros with that much hindsight.
I would love to hear Kenny Williams take …… He likes to take 8 tool players that are good at Football and Soccer then Hit 200 in AA with over 200ks
They had 3 1/1 picks and only got one right, Bobby heck got it right then was fired hmmmmm
Hard to consider the Brady Aiken pick to be an ultimate failure. It didn’t look good at the time, no doubt, but they got Alex Bregman a year later as compensation, and he sure looks fantastic