During Sunday's 8-0 drubbing of the Tigers, 20-year-old Detroit rookie Jeremy Bonderman was summoned from the bullpen to try to stop the bleeding. He didn't, but his appearance prompted Jays' colour man John Cerutti to mention Bonderman's role in "Moneyball," Michael Lewis' book about the low-budget success of the Oakland A's. Bonderman was originally a draft pick of the A's, much to the chagrin of GM Billy Beane. Upon Bonderman's selection, "Billy, in a single motion, erupted from his chair, grabbed it, and hurled it right through the wall." Why? Because, as Cerutti explained, the A's prefer college pitchers to high schoolers like Bonderman.

Here was an excellent chance for a Toronto broadcaster to shed some light on the practices of Billy Beane's A's and, by extension, the Jays of J.P. Ricciardi, who is trying to duplicate the Oakland model. So why prefer college pitchers? According to Cerutti:

1) College pitchers are more mature than high schoolers.
2) They reach the majors faster.

Both of these statements are generally true, but Cerutti missed the main advantage of college pitchers. It's not that they reach the majors faster, but that they reach the majors at all.

There's a basic truth about young pitchers. They get hurt. A lot. Between the ages of 18 and 22, the ranks of promising young pitchers are decimated, as scads of young arms end up on operating tables, never to be the same again. When a club selects a college pitcher, the college has assumed the development cost and injury risk for that pitcher over those years. In the case of high schoolers, the club assumes the risk. And it's a huge risk. High school pitchers just don't pan out with nearly the regularity of their college counterparts, to the point that high draft picks should never be spent on such players.

For every Dwight Gooden, there are dozens of Brien Taylors. If you just said, "who?" well, that's the point. Clubs with strict budgets, like Oakland and Toronto, simply can't afford to throw away draft picks on such low percentage players. Cerutti's analysis made it sound as though all pitchers have an equal chance of getting to the majors, and that's simply not true.

There's a lot of good stuff in Moneyball; plenty of sound justification for the methods behind Beane's (and Ricciardi's) madness, including why it makes sense to whittle down scouting departments. If Jays announcers could effectively communicate some of these ideas to the casual fan, it could only benefit the ball club. Based on what Cerutti seems to have gleaned from the book, I have to wonder if he's actually read it.