No, they don’t.

Just eyeballing the B-Ref tables and grabbed some of the wrong digits. Barnes’s H/9 is 8.3, and his K:BB is 2.82. Drabek’s K:BB is 3 even. I think the larger point, such as it is, holds up.

Our last two Cy Youngs came from HS drafts. But that’s just us. I think indiansfan was just weighing the balance.

My main point was you can’t constantly take college picks and expect to have high-ceiling players come from them, especially since we’ve had none since that 2002 draft when we started to exclusively pick college draftees in the 1st-round (Chisenhall and others that have been picked over the last 2-3 years at most get a pass, as they need more time to pan out or flame out, but before 2007, certainly you can judge those picks as flaming out, such as Guthrie, Aubrey, Snyder, Miller, Sowers, Drennen, Crowe, Huff (he gets a slight pass, but looks to be no more than a mid-rotation starter at best, and might only be a #4-#5, but I might give him 2010 to prove himself, but the others have been disappointing to say the least).

I realize Miller and Drennen were HSers, and Miller’s career never got off due to injuries (you could make a case for Aubrey, though Aubrey wasn’t as impressive as was hoped when he did play, whereas Miller was impressive when he was on the field), but as bad as Drennen has been, the 4 college draftees have been equally as unimpressive and unimpactful, at older ages no less.

I understand there are significant risks with a HS-pick in the 1st-round (or any round for that matter), but at the same time, when the results don’t work, you can’t just keep sticking with college players, unless you can pick college players who pan out better than they have of late, and college picks are supposed to be safer picks with lower ceilings, yet we’ve had NONE make any meaningful impact at the ML level from 2002-2006.

If we’re going to keep picking college picks that flounder, I’d rather take a chance on a HSer who might flame out, but at least give you a chance to hit a home run in terms of impact talent, something we could use more of in our farm system when it comes to drafting players. We’ve done a good job with trades and international signings, but our drafting has been poor by virtually every standard out there, and diversifying it would increase our chances of more productive drafts, unless you want to keep playing it safe with “safe, low-ceiling” college picks that haven’t been panning out – that’s what the results of late have been saying, and is something that can’t keep continuing if we truly want to give ourselves more stretches of being in contention instead of having these “lean, rebuilding” years.

That was my point, not going to an all-HS draft or just picking HSers for the sake of it, but you can’t tell me that no 1st-rd. HS-ers haven’t developed; either the Indians are not analyzing them in a way that convinces them that they can be developed in a way that will make them impactful or they don’t feel that they can turn them into an impactful talent, but other organizations have been able to. Certainly, the Indians have NOT been able to turn the college draftees they’ve drafted in the 1st-round into impactful or even useful players at the ML level.