I've posted this before, but I think I will repeat it again. I had the opportunity to have a semi-private discussion with Buddy Bell. Buddy is now in charge of scouting for the White Sox. One of the topics he talked about was specialization in sports. He was very much against is and said that he preferred athletes who played multiple sports. Main reasons were, they have seen way too many overuse injuries, burnout, kids were coached up way too much leaving little potential upside, and he felt multi-sport athletes were more competitive then a single sport athlete. In the end he said when they are making draft decisions it comes down to can the kid play and whats his upside. If they are looking at two equal athletes and one is multi-sport and the other is baseball only they are going to go with the multi-sport athlete. That is not to say they are not going to take a baseball only draftee if they feel he can play and has upside.
To follow up on PGStaff's comment about Latin American kids, I hear folks like Bell say positive things about multi-sport athletes, but when you look at the draft it sure doesn't seem like MLB is giving much weight to the whole multi-sport angle. For instance, this year the top draft picks out of HS were:
3. Brendan Rodgers
5. Kyle Tucker
10. Cornelius Randolph
11. Tyler Stephenson
12. Josh Naylor
13. Garrett Whitley
I'm not sure about Naylor since he is Canadian and MaxPreps didn't have him in their database, but the other 5 played only baseball in high school (per MaxPreps). I stopped looking after the first half-dozen, but in the past couple of drafts the first round has been heavily weighted (around 70%) with baseball-only kids, at least with respect to the high school players drafted.
At 2019Son's school, by the time they get to junior year there are very, very few multi-sport athletes, in the range of just a couple of kids. And that is across the board, not just with respect to baseball. OTOH, they have a lot of talent (e.g., in baseball over the past two graduating classes, 16 kids went on to D-1 baseball), so part of it may be that the kids feel like they have to specialize in order to compete . . .
Your chances of reaching the majors
Round 1: 66%
Round 2: 49%
Round 3-5 32%
Round 6-10 20%
Round 11-20 11%
Round 21+ 7%
Non drafted 4%
Its all about development and projection. The more you play the
better you can be. The better you are, the higher you get drafted.
The higher you get drafted, the better your chances for making it
to the majors. Why would a very talented 6'4" pitcher want to break
his ankle or dislocate his shoulder playing basketball, when he has
a chance to be a top round draft pick? I can see why some of these
top players give up other sports.