that citing a single rule also ignores all the other ones. like how college hitters in general are best. and what did the sox draft?

Between 1984 and 1991, nine college first basemen were drafted in the first round. Two of them rank as the biggest busts in this era, Dave McCarty and Joe Vitiello. Scott Stahoviak was the Doug Mientkiewicz of his day, a great defensive first baseman (he played 41 games at third base in the majors, with an average fielding rating according to our DTs) who could get on base but had no pop, and was finished at age 28.

The other six players, in increasing order of draft value: Tino Martinez, Mo Vaughn, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Will Clark, and Frank Thomas.

It’s a very small sample size, but if you were drafting a first baseman out of college in the first round, you had a 2-in-3 chance of drafting a perennial All-Star, and a 4-in-9 chance of drafting a Hall of Famer or near-HoFer. Throw in John Olerud, who was a third-round pick because no one thought he was signable, and your odds of getting a star/superstar player out of the first round was 50-50.

The returns on first basemen dropped in the 90s, but they still ranked as one of the most underpriced commodities in the draft. Only 15 college first basemen were selected in the top 100 picks from 1992 to 1999, but they included Todd Helton, Lance Berkman, Sean Casey, and Carlos Pena. Helton and Berkman were both first-round picks, along with Pena and three washouts (Peoples, Munson-who was really more of a catcher in college-and Jeff Liefer). Taken as a whole there were 15 college first-rounders from 1984 to 1999, 16 if you count Olerud. If you ignore the voting implications of steroid or alleged steroid use, five of those 16 are likely Hall of Famers, three more (Vaughn, Olerud, Clark) had a case for being the best first baseman in the game at some point in time, and three more (Martinez, Casey, Pena) were average or above-average first basemen in their prime.

That’s a hell of a return.

Because the sample size was so small-only 35 first basemen in the whole study-I decided to take a look at the first basemen drafted in the last five years to see whether the trend shows signs of holding up or not. Here are the first basemen taken in the top 100 picks between 2000 and 2005:

2000: None
2001: None (well, unless you count John VanBenschoten, Pittsburgh, #8)
2002: Larry Broadway, Montreal, #77; David Jensen, Kansas City, #78
2003: Michael Aubrey, Cleveland, #11; Vince Sinisi, Texas, #46
2004: Mike Ferris, St. Louis, #60; Adam Lind, Toronto, #82
2005: Stephen Head, Cleveland, #62

Gee, that wasn’t very useful. In the last six years, only seven college first basemen have gone in the top 100 picks, and only one-Michael Aubrey-went in the first round. Aubrey’s career got off on the right track-he was our #17 prospect a year ago-but he threw out his back last season, which is among the worst chronic injuries you can have if you’re a first baseman.

and here is what he said about drafting college SS:

Nothing really pithy to say here; college shortstops are a good bet overall, but pretty much in the middle of the pack as far as college hitters go. The nice thing about this position is that you have a lot of positional leeway if your draftee can’t handle shortstop as a pro. While a few draft picks have the leather to carry a sub-optimal bat (Walt Weiss, Adam Everett), far more college shortstops have major league bats but are forced to move down the defensive spectrum pretty quickly. Some still have the glove to shine at another key position, like second base (Brian Roberts, Alex Cora) or third base (Matt Williams). Others make you wonder how they ever played shortstop in the first place (Cory Snyder, Michael Tucker). If you draft the guy who can do both, as with Barry Larkin or an early-career Nomar Garciaparra, you’ve hit the jackpot.