Draft Notes: Mize, Singer, Prospects, BA Mock

This past Thursday featured a high-octane pitching duel between draft prospects Casey Mize and Brady Singer, and Teddy Cahill of Baseball America has the intricate details of the story in his recent article. Both are expected my many to go within the first ten rounds of the upcoming June amateur draft, with Mize the current favorite to be selected number one overall by the Tigers. Two days ago in Gainesville, Florida, Singer outdueled Mize by allowing just one run while striking out eight, with a small army of scouts, GMs and other front office personnel in attendance. According to Kiley McDaniel of Fangraphs, there was at least one team with its President, GM and Director of Scouting all in attendance, with “about as many scouts as I’ve ever seen at UF”.

A pair of other interesting reads from Baseball America on the upcoming draft…

• Mize sits high atop Baseball America’s Top 300 MLB Draft Prospects. But while the publication seems confident in its pick to go number one overall, there are apparently “seven or eight players who could make a case to go second overall”. Six of the top ten are pitchers, and seven of the top ten are college talent. Obviously the list runs very deep, so those interested in parsing through the players most likely to go in the first nine rounds should definitely give the list a full read.
• Baseball America’s Mock Draft of the first fifteen picks, however, doesn’t assume that the first ten teams will draft based on pure talent alone. While they rank Georgia Tech catcher Joey Bart seventh in their rankings, he’s projected to go to the Giants at number two overall due to signability. BA mentions that he could perhaps be Buster Posey’s eventual replacement, though obviously that would be pretty far down the road. The mock features a pretty even split between pitchers (8) and position players (7).