One question has been rolling around in my mind. And no, it
is not Is Eli a better quarterback than
Peyton? Although that question will haunt me for all of my days, I have
different fish to fry today.
My question is: When a GM is looking at drafting a player,
how much do they take the conference that they play for into consideration? How
much of the production must be taken with a grain of salt because of the team
or conference that a player is associated with? I do think there are different
answers to this question for different sports.
MLB: Obviously,
when you are drafting a player, you want to look at how they perform is
pressure situations, and you want to see how they perform over the entirety of
their college/high school career. In baseball, I think that individual
performance and career numbers and potential play a bigger part than the
conference a player participated in. Baseball puts more emphasis on potential
and development than any other major American sport, so they look at a kids arm
strength, or the way he could add muscle to his frame and still be an athlete.
I don’t think MLB front offices care quite as much about level of competition
as the NBA and NFL. (If you don't know much about the MLB Minors, take a look at Keith Law's Top 100 Prospects article on ESPN.com
NFL: In direct
contrast, I think there is a major “conference bias” in the NFL. It may be
warranted, but the SEC is seen as the conference where the best athletes come from, and
the Big Ten is where you get solid offensive linemen. I wonder if these biases
hold any weight, and I do think there is an argument that the best conferences
attract the best talent. However, I think that football is a game where success is based
enormously on the quality and performance of the rest of your teammates. So,
sometimes a General Manager must consider how a player would perform on a worse team, or in
a situation where the player would have filled a different role, before they decide that player is a good fit for their team.
NBA: Thankfully,
the NBA is somewhere in between. Much like baseball, the NBA drafts players
based on potential. Jimmer Fredette scored 28 ppg in college, yet he was not this first pick in the draft because he didn't have the most potential. For those players with potential, t is amazing how much of a transformation, both physically and in their game, takes place in
the summer before a player's first NBA season. Players who show a bad attitude, or
a poor competitive spirit will be drafted high because of their athletic
ability or possible production. Players like Dwight Howard get drafted not
because their skills are refined and they are ready to dominate, but because
they have the potential to dominate for many years once they develop.
I don’t know how GM’s really look at the quality of
competition of the players that they draft, but I know it should at least enter
into their minds. A wunderkind putting up amazing numbers against St. Mary’s
School of the Blind isn’t as impressive as modest numbers against top
competition.
Thoughts? Potential over production or vice versa?
No comments:
Post a Comment