The 2018 MLB Draft Thread (Tracker in OP)

[ChiliIrishHammock24]

1 minute ago, hi8is said:

wtf kinda conflicting reports are those ?

Oh, you know, just your velo range of about 11-12 MPH.

[Jack Parkman]

OK, now knowing that Rocker, De Sedas and Siani are likely to go to school, I hope they go for their best available arms in the next 3 rounds. 

[Bruce_Blixton]

I doubt they go with a prep player this early given their recent track record of drafting signable HS players around round 6 or 7 (Michalczewski, Zangari and Curbelo come to mind) so I think we see a run on some college pitching in the next couple of rounds. Some pretty good names still left too, Pilkington is interesting, Dylan Coleman from Missouri State and Kyle Bradish from NMSU wouldn't be bad either.

[Dam8610]

43 minutes ago, ChiliIrishHammock24 said:

Oh, you know, just your velo range of about 11-12 MPH.

Standard stuff there.

[Jack Parkman]

15 minutes ago, Bruce_Blixton said:

I doubt they go with a prep player this early given their recent track record of drafting signable HS players around round 6 or 7 (Michalczewski, Zangari and Curbelo come to mind) so I think we see a run on some college pitching in the next couple of rounds. Some pretty good names still left too, Pilkington is interesting, Dylan Coleman from Missouri State and Kyle Bradish from NMSU wouldn't be bad either.

This annoys me. Sometimes, teams should take a shot on HS players in the 1st 5 rounds. It is like only buying blue chip stocks. More often than not, you get a good return but you take out the potential to make a fortune. 

Edited June 5, 2018 by Jack Parkman

[caulfield12]

3 minutes ago, Jack Parkman said:

This annoys me. Sometimes, teams should take a shot on HS players in the 1st 5 rounds. It is like only buying blue chip stocks. More often than not, you get a good return but you take out the potential to make a fortune. 

Except those high school players in Rounds 2-5 aren't exactly "blue chip" stocks.

They're more like a cross between "penny/OTC" stocks and the NASDAQ in terms of their eventual success rates.  Teams could draft 9 high school guys from Rounds 2-10 and only a couple (if they were lucky) would even make it to the big leagues.

[Jose Abreu]

I'll just present this without comment 

[Jack Parkman]

7 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Except those high school players in Rounds 2-5 aren't exactly "blue chip" stocks.

They're more like a cross between "penny/OTC" stocks and the NASDAQ in terms of their eventual success rates.  Teams could draft 9 high school guys from Rounds 2-10 and only a couple (if they were lucky) would even make it to the big leagues.

You misunderstood. What I meant was that the college player is the "blue chipper" and that the HS player in that range is the super risky bet. If you can afford to play the game enough, you're going to hit and draft a superstar. It is a numbers game. You take a few in the 2-10 round each year, you probably hit on 2-3 of them over a decade. You keep doing it because the reward is so high. 

Edited June 5, 2018 by Jack Parkman

[SoxAce]

1 hour ago, Jose Abreu said:

I'll just present this without comment 

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamKwski/status/1003869173146095621

I guess if we're pulling up old Twitter files when players were kids, here's Swaggerty. 

 

 

[caulfield12]

I see some of those “southern” guys fit in on the Twitter spectrum quite well with Gordon Beckham...oh, well.  And Bohm might have given the worst interview in a decade (granted, the interview questions weren’t exactly penetrating, either.)

As far as Jack Parkman’s comment, the OTHER problem with high school hitters is that when you really hit paydirt with a superstar like Harper or Machado, 1) they won’t even consider signing an extension at age 24-26 and 2) you lose them right when they hit their athletic peaks, ages 26-29/30.

So another team gets to piggyback off the fruits of your labors, so to speak.

Edited June 5, 2018 by caulfield12

[TheFutureIsNear]

1 hour ago, caulfield12 said:

I see some of those “southern” guys fit in on the Twitter spectrum quite well with Gordon Beckham...oh, well.  And Bohm might have given the worst interview in a decade (granted, the interview questions weren’t exactly penetrating, either.)

As far as Jack Parkman’s comment, the OTHER problem with high school hitters is that when you really hit paydirt with a superstar like Harper or Machado, 1) they won’t even consider signing an extension at age 24-26 and 2) you lose them right when they hit their athletic peaks, ages 26-29/30.

So another team gets to piggyback off the fruits of your labors, so to speak.

Bohm was scared out of his mind to the point that it was almost comical. Probably overthinking it on my part, but as a GM I’d have a tough time taking a kid that can’t handle pressure. He’s going to have to be on a much bigger stage to be a successful big leaguer

[Chicago White Sox]

1 hour ago, caulfield12 said:

I see some of those “southern” guys fit in on the Twitter spectrum quite well with Gordon Beckham...oh, well.  And Bohm might have given the worst interview in a decade (granted, the interview questions weren’t exactly penetrating, either.)

As far as Jack Parkman’s comment, the OTHER problem with high school hitters is that when you really hit paydirt with a superstar like Harper or Machado, 1) they won’t even consider signing an extension at age 24-26 and 2) you lose them right when they hit their athletic peaks, ages 26-29/30.

So another team gets to piggyback off the fruits of your labors, so to speak.

Yeah, would really suck to only get 6 1/2 years of a young stud like Machado or Harper, definitely not worth the investment given how reliable the draft is ?‍♂️

[Chicago White Sox]

So how the hell do we make this A ball OF situation work?  Robert is coming back soon and that’s going require at least one promotion from High A to AA.  Luis Gonzalez definitely needs to be bumped as well.  Walker will be fine in Low A for the year, but man will it be impossible for him to really move fast with all the guys in front of him.  I get the always go BPA strategy, but you get somewhat diminishing returns when you aren’t able to play guys at age appropriate leagues.

[thxfrthmmrs]

14 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

So how the hell do we make this A ball OF situation work?  Robert is coming back soon and that’s going require at least one promotion from High A to AA.  Luis Gonzalez definitely needs to be bumped as well.  Walker will be fine in Low A for the year, but man will it be impossible for him to really move fast with all the guys in front of him.  I get the always go BPA strategy, but you get somewhat diminishing returns when you aren’t able to play guys at age appropriate leagues.

Easy, move Luis Robert to catcher.

[GenericUserName]

I have two guys that if we take them today I will be happy with the draft. 

1) Bren Spillane

2) Erick Rivera - Puerto Rican HS OF with a great arm, good speed, and absolutely elite, top of the scale bat speed. He might have the best bat speed in the class (better than Kelenic, Cabell, Gorman, Casas) while also having similar tools to Kelenic and Cabell, but he is also more than a year younger than Kelenic and he will probably be a late draft pick. 

[Chicago White Sox]

57 minutes ago, thxfrthmmrs said:

Easy, move Luis Robert to catcher.

That might work in the short-term, but Anderson will be blocking him if he ever reaches the pros.

[bmags]

1 hour ago, Chicago White Sox said:

So how the hell do we make this A ball OF situation work?  Robert is coming back soon and that’s going require at least one promotion from High A to AA.  Luis Gonzalez definitely needs to be bumped as well.  Walker will be fine in Low A for the year, but man will it be impossible for him to really move fast with all the guys in front of him.  I get the always go BPA strategy, but you get somewhat diminishing returns when you aren’t able to play guys at age appropriate leagues.

I think the diminishing returns may be losing out on what mlb value players like Polo or Fisher could provide. Talking about mostly 40 man depth but they are going to constantly be push d around instead of developing slowly. 

Situations like Gonzalez need to happen less though.

[bmags]

29 minutes ago, GenericUserName said:

I have two guys that if we take them today I will be happy with the draft. 

1) Bren Spillane

2) Erick Rivera - Puerto Rican HS OF with a great arm, good speed, and absolutely elite, top of the scale bat speed. He might have the best bat speed in the class (better than Kelenic, Cabell, Gorman, Casas) while also having similar tools to Kelenic and Cabell, but he is also more than a year younger than Kelenic and he will probably be a late draft pick. 

Yeah. I also like the Louisville guys wolf and stowers.

gerber and Spillane from U if I.

Montas de oca

[GenericUserName]

3 minutes ago, bmags said:

Yeah. I also like the Louisville guys wolf and stowers.

gerber and Spillane from U if I.

Montas de oca

Stowers was taken in the second. I was kind of surprised we took Walker over Stowers but I guess we like the safe hit tool more. 

[bmags]

3 minutes ago, GenericUserName said:

Stowers was taken in the second. I was kind of surprised we took Walker over Stowers but I guess we like the safe hit tool more. 

Ugh.

[GGajewski18]

17 minutes ago, bmags said:

I think the diminishing returns may be losing out on what mlb value players like Polo or Fisher could provide. Talking about mostly 40 man depth but they are going to constantly be push d around instead of developing slowly. 

Situations like Gonzalez need to happen less though.

Fisher could probably go to AAA if they wanted to push him.  Eloy will be there soon.  

[Chicago White Sox]

18 minutes ago, bmags said:

I think the diminishing returns may be losing out on what mlb value players like Polo or Fisher could provide. Talking about mostly 40 man depth but they are going to constantly be push d around instead of developing slowly. 

Situations like Gonzalez need to happen less though.

I’m ok with losing out on guys like Fisher & Polo, but Luis Gonzalez is the exact guy that bothers me.  He should be up with the Dash by now IMO.  The problem if/when they finally promote him is there will be a bunch of legit OF prospects that need to play everyday and they’ll end up trying to rotate in too many of them.  I hate how many days off a kid like Rutherford is getting and that’s with one of the current OFs being a fringe guy in Booker.  I’d ideally like my top end prospects playing 90% of the time.  Adolfo is the only guy actually playing pretty much everyday.

[steveno89]

13 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

I’m ok with losing out on guys like Fisher & Polo, but Luis Gonzalez is the exact guy that bothers me.  He should be up with the Dash by now IMO.  The problem if/when they finally promote him is there will be a bunch of legit OF prospects that need to play everyday and they’ll end up trying to rotate in too many of them.  I hate how many days off a kid like Rutherford is getting and that’s with one of the current OFs being a fringe guy in Booker.  I’d ideally like my top end prospects playing 90% of the time.  Adolfo is the only guy actually playing pretty much everyday.

These are all good problems to have as our system was sorely lacking depth as recently as a year ago. Competition is only a good thing and the best players/prospects will get playing time. Positional versatility will be key. 

[caulfield12]

2 hours ago, Chicago White Sox said:

So how the hell do we make this A ball OF situation work?  Robert is coming back soon and that’s going require at least one promotion from High A to AA.  Luis Gonzalez definitely needs to be bumped as well.  Walker will be fine in Low A for the year, but man will it be impossible for him to really move fast with all the guys in front of him.  I get the always go BPA strategy, but you get somewhat diminishing returns when you aren’t able to play guys at age appropriate leagues.

We still don’t know if Adolfo will stay at DH, get surgery or continue rehab...

Should be Gonzalez, Robert, Rutherford, Adolfo at Winston-Salem.

Move up Booker and Call to AA.

Jimenez to AAA.  And Steele Walker to Kannapolis because he’s going to be coming off that oblique injury and they’ll want him to build some confidence starting out against lesser pitching before he hits High A.

To me, the toughest decision is Basabe...whether to push him up to AA as well, or let him share time with Robert/Rutherford/Gonzalez in the outfield.

[Bob Sacamano]

Too much talent is never a problem. Plus, some could be used as trade chips.