Our brief preview post contains links to many of the best sources for draft information heading into the draft. We also wrote up the Tigers’ selection of Casey Mize with the first overall selection and tracked the first round, compensation, and Round A competitive balance picks (1-30; 31-43). Now, with day two of the draft underway, here are some other links and notes:
- If you want to catch up on the details of yesterday’s action, there are a variety of places worth a look. The Fangraphs team broke out the drafted players and offered capsules on each team’s early haul. ESPN.com’s Keith Law offers a look at “winners and losers” from the first day in a subscription post. MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo provides a preview of today’s action. Among the coverage at Baseball America, Teddy Cahill wrote about the unfortunate timing that saw several players drafted while playing in NCAA tournament games.
- As many of those evaluations reflect, the Rays were credited by many for taking advantage of their large overall bonus pool to snag top talent despite a mid-first-round position. As one example, Tampa Bay grabbed lefty Shane McClanahan with the 31st selection. The University of South Florida junior had notified teams he wanted a $3MM bonus to sign, per Kiley McDaniel of Fangraphs (via Twitter). Now, says McDaniel, McClanahan and the team will likely have to compromise a bit. His selection spot came with a $2.22MM slot allocation, but the Tampa Bay organization will also be working to sign another top talent who came off the board later than expected in first-round pick Matthew Liberatore.
- While those southpaws are expected to sign, a pair of highly regarded young righties appear to be headed to college after going undrafted to this point. Kumar Rocker strongly hinted in an Instagram post that he’ll matriculate at Vanderbilt, as Teddy Cahill of Baseball America notes on Twitter. And Cole Wilcox left no doubt in his own tweet that he’ll play for Georgia, as BA’s Chris Collazo passed along via Twitter. It seems reasonable to presume that both players simply were not presented with opportunities to earn bonuses sufficient to forego their commitments, if they were willing to do so at all. In all likelihood, those players will not end up being drafted in the first ten rounds, as failing to sign a player in those slots means sacrificing pool money, but will end up being plucked at some point in the later rounds (on the off chance that circumstances change for them and/or a drafting team).
- If there’s a player who looms large despite not yet being picked, it’s certainly Oregon State pitcher Luke Heimlich. As impressive as he has been on the field, Heimlich carries a particularly concerning past. Kurt Streeter of the New York Times was among those to take on this story recently, for those who are not familiar. Needless to say, his draft status is extremely controversial, and it was not particularly surprising to see him end up still available after day one. That probably will not last, however, according to Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports, who writes that Heimlich is likely to be chosen at some point. A “handful of teams” have not eliminated the left-hander from consideration, says Passan, who says there’s “basically zero” chance that Heimlick won’t join an affiliated organization, almost certainly via the draft. Notably, Passan also reports that the Orioles talked with Heimlich’s camp about signing him last year, when he was eligible to agree to terms after not being selected. There’s loads of interesting information and analysis in Passan’s article, which is well worth a full read.
Whoever drafts Heimlich is going to deserve every bit of negative pr that goes their way. The guy is a child molester and should not be drafted
To be fair, he was convicted at age 15, and I haven’t been able to find any information about when the crimes occurred. There’s a reasonable chance that he wasn’t immediately prosecuted and could’ve been even younger when the crime occurred. It would make a difference to me if he was, say 12 years old instead of 15. He would’ve still been a child himself and for me, it wouldn’t be forgivable, but I might be more inclined to give the young man a second chance.
He was 15 the victim was 6. Not hard to look up. Ken Rosenthal just wrote about him. Google it. Guy is a sick pervert
Read the link. He was 15 plain and simple but yeah go and forgive a pedophile
I clearly said, “it wouldn’t be forgivable”. Mike Vick wasn’t forgiven, but was given a second chance. I’m not going to damn a child for making a mistake his entire life.
I will damn him. He’s a pervert. She was 6 if you want to give a pedophile a 2nd chance go ahead. Let him around your kids not mine. He was old enough to know better.
To be clear, I don’t want him on my team and wouldn’t cheer for him. But I don’t care if somebody else wants to. Greg Hardy beat the Hell out of a woman, threw her on a bed of machine guns, and threatened to murder her and still played football after that. I have a much bigger problem with that.
One person getting away with something shouldn’t lower the bar for everyone.
If I were in charge of a team, there is ZERO chance I let Heimlich become part of the organization. Talk about a distraction and making everyone else around you uncomfortable.
You gotta like the White Sox top-2 picks from the first day of the Draft. Enough’s been said about their #1 selection Nick Madrigal who is considered the top bat in this year’s class with a 65 hit tool grade.
The White Sox second pick, Oklahoma OF Steele Walker at #46 in Round 2 is another player who’s best tool is his hitting. Like Madrigal, Walker is also said to have a high baseball IQ. It’s refreshing that the White Sox have actually been drafting baseball players since Nick Hostetler took over as Scouting Director and not just great athletes as they were accustomed to do when Kenny Williams was the GM. You also gotta love this guy’s name. As baseball names go, it’s right up there with #1 overall pick Casey Mize. It would also be a great name for a Chicagoan who constructs the famous skyscrapers downtown, the bare chested beefcake who adorns the cover of those trashy romance/vampire slayer paperbacks my wife and her friends enjoy reading so much or even a moniker/alias for the latest superhero!
I am in no way a fan of the guy but if I’m Colin Kaepernick, I’d have to imagine that I’d be pissed if a MLB team drafts and signs Luke Heimlich and not a single NFL team makes an effort to sign him.
One has nothing to do with the other.
Exactly. These are in no way related.
WTF does one have to do with the other. Please delete this guy!
Somebody always has to bring Kaepernick into everything
In the words of Randy Macho-Man Savage..Amen Brother.
And who would give that pile an upvote?
Orioles please don’t do this.
If Heimlick was smart he would forget about the MLB. It will bring more and more drama to his family. He needs to go to Japan or Korea etc. It will be the best thing for him and his family. Not sure being a convicted felon allows that but sure seems like a logical choice
News doesn’t travel? You think it’s ok for them to employ him but not in the U.S.? He’s a POS, no one in baseball should give him a job.
Agree with you whole heartedly. But being a realist he will have a job regardless of what you or I think. So as my post said, for his family sake, he should leave the states if he decides to play ball. Then it’s not in the news every time he travels to a new city.
portlandtribune.com/pt/12-sports/385703-274945-pen…
Read this article about Heimlich. I to would have steered clear from this kid until this read. It sheds light on how quick the public is to judge without knowing the truth. I believe in 2nd chances and believe he deserves one
Very kind of you to supply us with more of the facts. Sometimes, things are not as simple as they seem. It’s a shame what his niece has gone thru, and that he will have to live with the guilty plea, even if he didnt do it.
Its the family’s side of the story. Of course they want to protect the million dollar meal ticket
To hell with him
He’s not a convicted felon. Made a deal, fulfilled it, it goes away-as a juvenile which was supposed to be secret except the Oregon cops f’d him over.
According to the terms of Heimlich’s plea deal none of us were ever supposed to hear about any of this.
Too bad. The world knows now
By the way the world only gound out because that pervert failed to register and the media found out.
Reports indicate that his “failure to register” was due to a clerical error on the part of the sheriff’s office, not Heimlich’s himself.
Braves have had an excellent draft so far, especially for not even having a 3rd round pick!!
They were able to get THREE players that were labeled as 2nd round prospects or better..And again, for a team lacking a 3rd rounder, that’s an excellent haul..!!
Stewart very well could be the best HS pitcher to come out of this draft. The spin rate on his curve, is just absurd, and the fact he’s been able to get his FB up to 96-98..is awesome for him moving forward…
Also, who could have foreseen Beck falling so far?? What a break for the Braves!! He very well could be the steal of the draft, and Jenista has a very solid, all-around skillset, for a player of his size. If Jenista can tap into a little more of that raw power, then both he and Beck could be huge steals for the Braves…
Even with those 3 getting all the rave reviews, and my own personal votes of confidence for each, the draft chouce that I think could suprise fans the most is Trey Riley.
With his incredible fastball-slider combination, I think, at the very least, Riley could ultimately become a dominant setup man out of the pen…The Braves can afford to be patient with Trevor, and will most likely give him every chance to make his way as a starter, but if he “fails,” he may ultimately be doing himself a favor..As a starter, I can only see Riley having the realistic ceiling of that as a #4-#5 guy..However, if he’s moved to the pen, Riley could really male a name for himself, as a dominant force coming into some high pressure situations…
Excellent job by A.A., and especially Bridges and Co. on another excellent draft so far…Can’t wait to see who else the Braves are able to find, because it isn’t like their other 6 picks so far are chop liver…
Each of their picks so far, each individual player brings his own particular set of skills to offer to this organization..Both Bridges and AA are collectively kicking some arse!! If they can continue trusting eachother, working so well together, and finding more and more gems as each year passes, then they both are going to continue putting the Braves in the best possible position to succeed for the foreseeable future!!
#GO_BRAVES
#AA+BRIDGES=BOSS_STATUS
#NEXT-GEN_BABY-BRAVES
Maybe it’s GOD’S will that he gets picked so America can have this conversation FINALLY. There are so many mitigating factors here it’s unreal. He was a home schooled (poor socialization skills) child, the accusation came from a divorcing parent (no one lies in a divorce right?) who interestingly was not awarded custody, the Oregon police and his cheapo lawyer both failed him and the law, he was a juvenile, he has not re-offended in 7 years (they ALL do-that should say something) and he had to cut a deal since he didn’t have big bucks for lawyers and in a he said she said case he was taking a big chance on a much longer sentence. If the prosecutor thought he was a real danger to society there wouldn’t have been a deal, he would have hammered him. I think many commentators on this site have not had the wonderful experience of our money talks judicial system.
Experts have commented in and about this story the “choices” poor defendants are faced with every day. And before you draw and quarter me, I am a survivor of child molestation but I am also not a fan of witch hunts.
Juveniles make stupid mistakes. In this case I’m inclined to believe he didn’t even make that mistake. So there. Just sayin’…..
He wrote and signed a 7-page confession. Give it a rest.
Kids being strong-armed by their parents or lawyers into pleading guilty to a crime they didn’t commit isn’t as uncommon as you might think. Don’t know and likely never will know if that’s what happened here though. Perhaps the most egregious case of this happening was with Brian Banks (went to high school with a girl I know).