Luck Run Amok—Part 15

Danny Goodwin was a power-hitting catcher at Central High School in Peoria, Illinois. In his senior season, in front of dozens of major league scouts who had come to Peoria to check out this phenom, Goodwin led off the game by hitting a 400-foot home run with a wooden bat. The scouts were impressed. The Chicago White Sox chose Goodwin with the first pick in the 1971 Major League Baseball (MLB) draft. However, Goodwin decided to take a college scholarship from Southern University in Louisiana, where he was selected by Sporting News as College Player of the Year his senior year.

The California Angels made him their first pick in the 1975 draft, but Goodwin hurt his throwing arm soon after, which hindered his ability to play catcher. Still, he was known more for his hitting than his catching and he played first base, pinch hitter, and designated hitter sporadically for three different major league teams over seven seasons, with a career total of 736 times at bat (equivalent to a full season and a half) and a lifetime batting average of 0.236. Goodwin was the only player to be the first pick in the MLB draft twice, but his professional career was a bust.

Goodwin was unique, but his story demonstrates that MLB scouts are not infallible predictors of how well high school and college players will do in the majors. Baseball is an especially interesting source of data because we can use the draft to gauge how well players are predicted to perform and we can use baseball statistics to measure how well they actually do perform.