BBD: Voros: Chris Lubanski and Billy Butler

If I’m not mistaken…I once saw Butler Lubanski whip up on Baron Mikel Scicluna at the Garden in 1970.

An interesting thought struck me today watching the Royals play the Diamondbacks. In 2003 and 2004 the Royals selected a pair of High School sluggers with their first round picks: Chris Lubanski (5th - 2003) and Billy Butler (14th - 2004). In the game Butler homered to center and Lubanski hit a medium deep fly ball to right.

The interesting thing about them is how vastly different their builds are. Butler’s got short legs with a whole bunch of weight gathered in the center of his body. Lubanski has the classic athlete’s body, long and lean with broad shoulders. Butler doesn’t move real well, and Lubanski sort of glides around. In Moneyball terms, Lubanski is selling blue jeans and Butler is not. However I think it’s unfair to then draw some sort of conclusion from Butler’s higher level of success so far (though Lubanski is still a prospect). What’s more interesting to me is that the same organization and same GM took such radically different looking type of sluggers with first round picks in consecutive years.