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Spurred by "The Great Debate," I've studied, once again, the relative worth of draft picks spent on high school pitchers vs. college pitchers (this seems to come up every time a scout gets locked into a room with a sabermetrician).

I decided to examine the first round of 10 drafts for each class of pitcher: 1989 through 1998 for high school pitchers, 1992 through 2001 for college pitchers. Why stagger the ranges of years? Because I wanted to compare roughly the same ages, and college pitchers are typically three years older, when drafted, than high school pitchers. Next, I entered each pitcher's major league wins, innings, earned runs, and career Win Shares (a measure of quality that adjusts for the differences in leagues and ballparks, and gives a bit of extra credit for saves).

Again, this is just the first round, but I stopped there because 1) that's where so much of the money is spent, and 2) going much deeper would have meant a few more days of data entry.

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