June Draft Order

I'm glad your following the June draft. No doubt in my mind it affects trade rumors, plus the draft and team's farm systems fascinate me.

I say that the Rays go after either Crow, Matusz, or Beckham. Just think of how many great young pitchers they'd have if they took one of the college arms: Kazmir, Shields, Price, McGee, Davis, Garza, Niemann, Hellickson, Morlan, Sonnastine, Mason.

Or if they took Beckham, the Georgia HS shortstop, then they'd be set at pretty much every position long term:

C- Dioner Navarro or John Jaha
1B- Carlos Pena
2B- Reid Brignac
3B- Evan Longoria
SS- Tim Beckham
LF- Carl Crawford
CF- Desmond Jennings
RF- B.J. Upton

Or they could very well take Alvarez and make him their long term first baseman and move Carlos Pena. This team has so many freaking options that even though they won't win much this year, I'm almost excited for this team even though I'm not fan. Actually ya know what, I'm endorsing the Rays as my new second favorite team in the majors, behind the Cubbies of course.

Yeah I forgot that I was gonna say that. The 41st pick in the June draft for Kendall. I didn't like the Kendall trade at the time, but the fact that we got a good draft pick for him as well makes it all worth it.

Essentially Hendry traded Jerry Blevins for 3 months of Jason Kendall and the 41st pick in the draft, which will likely provide them a better prospect than Blevins was. Yippee.

i dont think the jays are going to take a 1b in the draft ...

Zito, I've heard that the Giants are almost a lock for Smoak. They have scouted him extensively and love his bat

"Thanks for reading, Jason. I actually didn’t catch it on the first look, either." -- from the scouting perspective.

I'd just like to gloat in my nerdome and say that I noted the "funk" in Crow's delivery on the very first take.

If anyone's in need of a scout, I'm available. And cheap.

Thanks.

I think that if Alvarez is there at #5, Giants take him, espically if there's any chance he can play 3B in the pros. Wouldn't be surprised to see him get a Major League contract in the $6-7m range.

It's just that certain teams don't go for certain players, like the White Sox don't go for high school players, plus no 1st basemen will go before Smoak. And I'll eat my foot if Alvarez falls to 11.

Pedro will probably be taken first overall or in the top three, he's too good and teams won't care about a broken hand, a small injury. Smoak is almost certainly going to be the top first basemen off the board, there is no first basemen that fills the complete package like him. You won't find any lists that have Alvarez out of the top 3 or so, and have Hosmer before Smoak. You're really overrating the high school players in the draft.

Williams has never taken a high-school player 1st and won't start now. You're missing guys like Tyson Ross and you have too many catchers being taken in the first round. It's just not a very accurate list IMO.

I see the O's taking Pedro Alvarez 4th. They already have 3 outfielders and they have Wieters at C. If they sign Teixera to play 1st, and still have Roberts at 2nd, Alvarez would fill the 3rd base hole. They would need to fill SS and rotation. Any O's fans see them going out this winter and signing Teixera, Furcal, and C.C.? That would be a great winter (a la Cubs winter of 06) and it would truly make them a contender almost right away after starting a rebuild.

The Orioles just used a first round pick two years ago on Billy Rowell though. Not sure they would want to draft another third baseman so quickly. I think that at this point it would be more logical for the Orioles to use that pick to get a good college pitcher, like Matsuz or Crow. They have a lot of good pitching and position prospects, but I would argue that the probability that the position guys work out is far better. They already have guys like Wieters, Markakis, Jones, Reimold, Snyder and Rowell. They have Loewen, Liz, Spoone, Tillman, Patton, Albers, etc. Aaron Crow would look mighty fine at the top of that list of pitchers.

"Any O's fans see them going out this winter and signing Teixera, Furcal, and C.C.?"

I'm not an O's fan, but I would be utterly shocked. Thats probably over $300M for those three guys, considering that Tex is gonna get a MASSIVE contract, and Sabathia should get one as well. Furcal will get a bunch on top of that. The Cubs were pretty close to being contenders when they spent all that money, and a lot of it was to retain two of their big stars in A-Ram and Zambrano.

It'd make more sense for the O's to spend a ton of money in the draft and get the best player possible every time, like they did last year with Wieters.

And no, the Orioles wouldn't be contenders. Not with the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays and even the Rays all being legitimately good teams in that division. The Cubs are in a crappy division, so they were able to climb from the bottom to the top far more easily than Baltimore will.

Love the fact that the Brewers have 6 picks in the first 63 picks...
Have 3 first rounders..3 second rounders...back to back picks in the 2nd round.

This is the First time draft god Jack Z gets extra picks in a draft and boy this is a HUGE draft for the Brewers because most of these guys will be coming up and hitting the bigs by the time Fielder and the rest start getting close to Free Agency.

intger-
It takes a GOOD draft pick out of college 2 years AT LEAST to get to the Majors..

Roberts wont be on that team when your prospect comes up...plus your OF of Jones and Markais...will be 2 more years into service time...so Nick would be a year from Free Agency...

Thats why you dont base things off of need..unless you have 2 guys rated the same..

In 2005 for the Brewers it was between Bruan and Tuttolwiski...West coast scouts wanted Troy...East Coast wanted Braun...
Jack Z went with Braun because we had JJ Hardy starting his first season at Short Stop
But they were close to still taking Troy but both were so closely rated they went with the 3rd basemen which we did not really have one at the time..

"But nobody is gonna take a worse player because he doesnt fill a hole"

I meant nobody is gonna take a worse player because he fills a hole. You never know maybe that hole will be filled by then guys can come out of nowhere sometimes..

i know that you draft for talent and not need. if the option is available, pedro alvarez has to be the pick. he has the talent to be the #4 overall pick. look at how far teixera fell in 2002 because of injury. it is easy to research that hand injuries will take about 2 years to heal. if you draft alvarez this year and have him follow the path of wieters, let him play in winter ball and that is all. '09 you have him play in AA and AAA and you can brig him up in '10. you dont think wieters will be up next year? I think he will definitely be up. If the 's were willing to overpay on a few FA they can contend fairly quickly (they may not win the division or will card right away, but they wouldn't be that far off). I know this is a difficult division, but imagine a 2010 linup of the following.

OF - Reimold $1.25M
OF - Jones $1.25M
OF - Markakis $4.5M
1B - Tex $20M
2B - Roberts $8.5M
SS - Furcal $8.5M
3B - Alvarez $.5M
C - Wieters $1.5M

The O's farm system is not that great so imagine how long it will take the O's to contend if they dont take advantage of the very deep FA class coming up this winter.

scribbletone- what i am saying is that you dont play every game against great rotations. you are going to play 90 games against teams that may not have great rotations. if you go 55-35 against the rest of the league and lets say you only win 8 games each against the yanks, sox, rays, jays, thats 32-40. that puts you 87-75. if your outlook is that you need topnotch pitching without spending money on the FA market, you will chase your tail every year. Because when you finally have an ace your hitting will be down. when you finally have hitting your pitching will be down. if they can spend good money on this draft and get great talent and also spend money on the FA market they will shorten their rebuild calendar by a few years.
the O's are in a position the cubs were last year. you spend big on FA when you have a high draft pick. that way you rebuild your major league team and minor leagues without having to give up high first round drat picks.

scribbletone - there is one other thing i am glad you brought up. during the b. roberts trade rumors O's fans were willing to let him walk and take draft picks if they didnt get the prospects they wanted. but at the same time they said that only about 30% of top prospects ever pan out. so if the O's take the line of losing year in and year out and rely on high draft picks to come through the system and do something great, the odds of that are low. i would rather draft high a few times, and make a big splash on the FA market with guys you know can play at the big league level then hope and pray the players you draft make it to the big leagues and are the performers you hope they can be. How many players on the link below made a big impact for their teams so far. Lets face it, building through draft can be a crap shoot, especially when you have an over involved owner like angelos. http://www.thebaseballcube.com/draft/2002/Round-1-1.shtml

Thats quite a lot of if's. But then again the same can be said for rebuilding using all kids.

But to me, the biggest IF of all is whether or not Angelos would actually be willing to spend all that money in free agency after he wasn't willing to spend it on Bedard? If Angelos decided to try to win sooner and spend the money to do it, he would've decided to sign Bedard long term. Thats why I think that they won't be taking that direction.

The O's didn't sign Bedard because A)Bedard didn't want to and B) Andy Macphail wanted to rebuild. The O's have really done a good job taking the best players they thought were available in recent drafts, which took them a while to realize. They still have a long way to go, though.

The Rays are making a run in the next few years, and Alvarez certainly could play right field, even if he can't play it well. Somehow I doubt someone athletic to play SS in college can't play right, and if he can play left he's capable of playing right. Beckham would take several years to develop, and then you aren't 100% sure he can play SS in the majors when he fills out and his legs aren't as young. Alvarez is a much safer bet to become a perennial all-star and is being projected to go first overall. He has put up ridiculous numbers in one of the toughest college conferences in baseball. He is projected to go first or second by most draft pundits. The Rays already have a steady SS in Bartlett and a top SS prospect in Reid Brignac who reportedly handles the position well. They don't need Beckham, they need someone who can fill out the Rays line up as soon as they want to make a run for the division. They have long term spots filled everywhere but RF. Alvarez is a consensus top pick, unless the Rays want to go for a pitcher, but they are already stacked there.

Oh and just because someone can play LF absolutely does not mean they can play RF too.

Well, it's very possible that the Rays think differently than either of us, but lately they have been taking the best player available. especially the best college player available. If indeed they do take Beckham, the team would probably be a lot different by the time he got there. They recognize that they have a top shortstop prospect that by most account is very capable of playing short. If Alvarez hits anything like his off-the-charts college numbers, the Rays would find a spot for him. The Rays would have been plenty fine with pitching prospects even if they hadn't drafted Price, but they knew he was the best player in the draft. Same thing in 06- they actually had a deal worked out with Lincecum because they were hurting for pitching at the time, but they knew Longoria was the best player available. And since then Shields has developed into a #2, they've traded for Garza, and their high school arms have become very prospects. The bottom line is their style is to take the surest and best player and that happens to be Alvarez, unless Smoak eclipses him but I don't think that will happen.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=695

I dare you to find me a mock draft, projection, anything that has Hosmer over Smoak. Please. I could go on with so many more people who like Smoak to go 1 or 2 and everyone has him over Hosmer.