I've been trying to wrap my brain around something. The Astros hammered the Oklahoma/Kansas/Missouri area like crazy in the draft:
Ryan Bottger - UT Arlington (close enough)
Connor Goedert - Neosho County CC
Ramon Laureano - Northeastern Oklahoma A&M
Antonio Nunez - Western Oklahoma State College
Vince Wheeland - Oklahoma State
Joshua James - Western Oklahoma State
Robert Kahana - Kansas
Zach Davis - Central Missouri
Justin Ferrell - Connors State
Brad Antchak - Northeastern Oklahoma
That's one-quarter of the draft from that region, and one-third of the players drafted after Round 10.
Why?
Here are my speculative thoughts:
1.
Is there some data showing that with baseball prospects, you're more likely to get a couple superstars if you actually DO put "all your eggs in one basket" so to speak, rather than spreading around? Meaning, have they shown that from each major scouting region, you usually get one or two major league players from each draft class, and so the Astros have decided to maximize their odds of getting those guys by draining that scouting area, rather than spreading their picks nationwide and thereby minimizing their odds of "hitting" on a long-shot from a bigger basket?
Think of it this way. If you have ten buckets of marbles, and there are two red marbles in each bucket and the rest are blue, you have a much better chance of picking a red marble if you choose from the same bucket each time rather than trying to divide your picks among all of the buckets.
Resident TCB professor Tidewater Astros points out that this is the multiplication law of probability, which is way above my head, but definitely sounds impressive.
2.
Is this a historically productive region of the country, baseball-wise? If not, have the Astros perhaps pegged it as an under-utilized baseball draft region?
3.
Is this a bid to start slowly taking viewership away from the Rangers? Are they trying to make Oklahoma and Kansas into "Astros Country"? If so, does this mean that they might be thinking about investing more heavily into the OKC Redhawks instead of moving the AAA club elsewhere?
Wrap-Up
I think this aspect of the draft is interesting...there's a narrative here that's worth exploring. I'm not buying that it's a coincidence, or that they trust a particular area scout so much more than the others that they'll give him 25% of their draft and 33% of all picks after round 10. There's something here, and I wonder what it is.
I'm interested in y'all's thoughts.