I have decided to switch gears prior to draft day and attempt to analyze where the best hitters come from.  To that end, my methodology is pretty similar to how I analyzed the sourcing of the best pitchers.  I have gone back to baseball-reference.com and looked at their career active leaders in OPS.  I did a quick sanity check with adjusted OPS+ and the numbers were very similar so I stuck with OPS. 

To start with, I compiled a list of all active major leaguers with at least 3000 PAs and a career OPS over .850.  There are 37 players who meet these criteria and most of them are the ones you would expect to see.  Given that there are probably about seven true regulars on each team, for a total of 210 players, this list represents about the top 15%.  I should note that I have included Barry Bonds, Mike Piazza, and Sammy Sosa as B-R still has them active on their list. 

The general breakdown is as follows:

High school draft picks              16        43.2%

College draft picks                    12        32.4%

Amateur fee aents                       8        21.6%

Junior College draft pick             1          2.7%

What really jumps out more than the source of these players is their draft position.  Nine of the twelve college picks were taken in the first round, with one other player taken in the second round.  Of the nine taken in the first round, seven were taken in the top ten picks and the latest one was at number 16.  Five of the top seven career OPS players were college picks with four of them having been taken in the first round.  The only exceptions in the top seven were Albert Pujols (at number 2 with a sweet 1.045 career number) and Manny Ramirez.  Six of the top seven high school picks were also first rounders.  Of the ten active drafted players with career OPS over .950, eight were number one draft picks.  Fifteen of the twenty-eight  (53.6%) players on the list who were actually drafted were taken in the first round and all fifteen were taken in the top 16 picks.  

There has been a lot of casual talk on the board about not picking players who can only play first base because Albert is going to be at that spot for a very long time.  I love Albert, and I hope he finishes the career with the Cardinals, but we need to be looking at first basemen anyway.  8 of the top 13 on the list are first basemen, with the lowest one having an OPS of .928.  If a guy can rake like that we can find a place for him or trade him for quality.

I didn’t want to overlook the table setters, so I cross-compared the OPS leaders with the OBP leaders.  There was not a whole lot of difference as only six players made the OBP list that were not on the OPS list.  They were:  Derek Jeter, Ichiro Suzuki, Jason Kendall, Kenny Lofton, Luis Castillo, and Luis Gonzalez.  They don’t really affect the sourcing numbers as they were divided evenly between college pick, high school pick, and amateur free agent.

I also did a top five OPS list for each defensive position with the average for the top five listed next to the position designation.  I have included ARod as a shortstop and tried to include players based on where they have played the most games.  I also included six second basemen as Hudson and Giles are nearly even and I am not sure whether Giles is really active or not:

First Base         0.997

Pujols               1.045

Helton              1.008

Berkman          0.983

Thomas            0.979

Thome              0.968

Left Field          0.941

Bonds              1.051

Ramirez            0.999

Dunn                0.902

Alou                 0.885

Klesko             0.870

Right Field        0.919

Guerrero          0.963

Giles                 0.918

Sheffield           0.915

Abreu               0.906

Ordonez           0.894

Third Base        0.888

Jones                0.955

Cabrera            0.922

Rolen               0.878

Glaus                0.855

Chavez             0.832

Shortstop         0.866

Rodriguez         0.966

Garciaparra      0.889

Jeter                 0.847

Tejada              0.820

Guillen              0.809

Center Field     0.864  

Griffey              0.923

Edmonds          0.903

Beltran             0.849

Jones                0.833

Rowand           0.815

Catcher            0.836

Piazza               0.922

Posada             0.859

Rodriguez         0.816

Varitek             0.798

Lieberthal         0.783

Second Base    0.800

Kent                 0.858

Vidro               0.810

Durham            0.786

Walker             0.783

Giles                 0.782

Hudson            0.781

As a final note, the Cardinals have drafted two of the 37 players listed – El Hombre and J.D. Drew.  The Astros have the most players with 4 and the Indians, Mariners, and Yankees each signed three.  Conspicous in their absence are the Cubbies, Giants, and Mets. 

I would be interested in your conclusions here.  It seems to be that hitters are easier to project than pitchers with a slight advantage to high school players. However, three of the top four high school players were the first overall draft pick, so obvious talents like Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey, and Chipper Jones probably skew the numbers a bit.