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Every year hundreds of players are drafted by MLB clubs, and every year we are treated to tons of analysis by bloggers and Baseball America telling us just how good all of those players are and how they all rank amongst each other. Now, everybody knows that the development of young players is extremely volatile and we all giggle about how wrong the experts were about most of the players in years past. Yet when the next draft comes about, everyone spends hours talking about whether a guy deserved to be drafted with the 17th pick or the 24th, and we get all angry and flustered about who the team picked or who they passed up.
This is all really absurd. We don't have a clue how any of these guys will develop. What we do know, what we can be absolutely positive about, is that our expectations will turn out wildly wrong. So I get really tired when people bash the team over the draft and act like they know so much more than the professionals. While there are certainly some picks that are worthy of criticism, for the most part we should reserve ALL judgment for a couple of years.
Nick Franklin is a perfect example of this. At the time of the draft most M's fans were upset because he wasn't viewed as being real good and there were a bunch of guys available who were SOOOO much better. Well, one year later and we can see that flatly is not the case.
It also needs to be pointed out that the teams know FAR more about each of these players than any of us. I respect people like Jason Churchill and John Sickels, but they are operating with a fraction of the information of a MLB scouting director and we need to keep that in mind. Also, teams don't get ahead of their competitors by going along with the consensus. No, they need to BEAT the consensus which necessarily means evaluating players differently from others.