Plenty of factors feed the big draft machine and determine where players come off the board, but it all boils down to two things: tools and performance. Performance can mean traditional, surface-level stats like batting average and ERA. It can also mean the underlying numbers — whiff rate, chase rate, exit velocities. Tools are the physical and mental capabilities a player needs to translate to the next level.
Plenty of freshman seasons get discounted in the long run, and for good reason. That first year, players are still acclimating to college baseball, making physical gains, and maturing. Now more than ever, in the current landscape, not getting enough playing time to develop or build a reliable sample size can also play a factor in a valueless freshman campaign. So for the most part, players improve substantially from their freshman years to their sophomore and junior campaigns.
But some players post …