Posted By:
Dan BrettaStrawberry played almost 4 years in the minors before playing MLB. Pete Incaviglia went straight to the majors out of college.
This is an interesting subject and I'm sure one that's been studied by some SABRite in the past. Did Eddie Collins ever play minor league ball? It seems to me that he may have been one that jumped straight from college to the majors. Didn't he lose his college eligibility because he played MLB at the same time he was still in college? How about Christy Matthewson??? I think when looking at the prewar and deadball era when the minors were not really tied into the major leagues like they are today that odds are likely that you would have had to have been a college player to make the jump. The scouting system just wasn't in place to "discover" a high school phenom. I'm not saying that it didn't happen though...I just don't know.