Draft Roundup

I rarely go to ESPN any more for anything. Between the constant slamming of ads on every page, the slow load times (mostly because of ads with alot of motion), and then the fact that anything worth reading is usually insider only its just not worth it. I actually consider signing up for insider but only if it would turn off the ads.

If ESPN went back to what it was five years ago I doubt that I would go back since I've since found sites like this one that are far better ran.

yeah, why goto espn to read stories about teams I don't care about. The MLB front page stories are the same. Guess thats one of the reasons I like this site so much.

I love Insider commentary - not a fan of paying for it though.

I landed a $4/year subscription with ESPN the Magazine. Comes with free Insider. Magazine is worthless but $4 for Insider isn't bad.

I think the blogger draft is one of the, if not the most accurate projection I have seen so far.

...Tim.

(grumbling)

friggin' Tim...
...talking...
Insider...
...'ooh so great, I love Insider, I'd pay a million dollars, la di da!...some of us don't have $40 to... Mexican orthodontics and...
...alimony...tranny prostit...like raving about how good your steak is to a starving child...'I like steak too!'...

Oh hi Tim! Didn't see ya there. What? No, I didn't read that ESPN Insider piece. Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. No, Ming Lau went back to Thailand, but that's kind of you to say; her adam's apple IS prominent.

Well of course paying for Insider makes sense for Tim, it would be hard to do his job without full access to ESPN. Same goes for paying for BA and BP, though to a lesser extent for trade rumors.

Anyway, my understanding from many articles is that most MLB teams are flush with cash right now and could easily spend more on free agents or the draft if they chose. Profit sharing combined with increased revenues have made everyone plenty rich these days. Teams choose to not spend the money on Porcello to try and hold down the asking price of other draftees. Owners' decision mind you, I'm sure all the GMs and scouting directors would love to have limitless budgets.

The amount of money spent on the draft is a drop in the bucket compared to what those players are worth once they reach the majors. Sure there is some risk in spending on Porcello. But if you spend $60 million on 6 Porcellos, there is a very good chance that at least one of the 6 will develop as hoped and that guy alone will be worth $60 million in savings when you consider 3 pre-arbitration years and 3 arbitration years. Plus there is still a chance at least a few of the other Porcellos return some value.

Just saying. Someone at BP (Silver? Can't quite remember who) wrote a great article a few years ago on the value of early draft picks. It was an awesome article.

I have a subscription for the Insider stuff, really because I like to read everything Rob Neyer writes in his blog (sue me, I'm a sucker for his books, so I wanna read his opinions), and a lot of the useless Jayson Stark trivia. The Buster Olney stuff tends to be interesting since he makes a point to say something about every team, and it helps that I can go back over the chat logs if I miss the chat itself, even though a lot of the questions are "how good is my team?"

Anyway, my Braves won't have a pick until #40, so his top 30 doesn't help... Honestly, I'm taking a purely defensive stance: I'll wait to see who they take and evaluate from there.