This Is How It Begins
March 30, 2011
It's a little more than 12 hours removed from completing our annual XFL
supplemental draft, and to be honest I'm feeling an equal mix of 'meh'
and disappointment in my lack of execution. To be fair, though,
this is not an easy group of people to predict so the idea of any plan
holding true after the first two or three rounds is pretty much
folly.
To set the stage,
I came
away from the November draft with a team that
was pretty solid although it had some pretty obvious weaknesses due to
uncertainty and injuries in
the rotation. This spring, another
issue developed when second baseman
Chase
Utley decided now was the
time he would announce to the world that he had been playing the last
two seasons without
knees. If only he could have waitied another six or seven months
to do something about that. But I digress...
The one area I really wanted to shore up was starting pitching, and
given that this year's amateur draft is loaded with frontline starting
prospects, I also wanted to load up for the future as well. At
the top of my list was
Michael Pineda
and
Gerrit Cole. Pineda
is
a very promising young right-hander in Seattle who was pretty much
assured of appearing in the rotation at some point this season.
His performance this spring locked up that spot right out of the
gate. Some have suggested that Gerrit Cole has as much upside
as Stephen Strasburg although I'm not sure I buy that.
Nevertheless, he's still plenty good. In the middle and the end
of the draft I wanted to load up on some low level prospects that
looked like they had considerable upside, namely Philadephia's
Jonathan
Singleton, Kansas City's
Will
Myers, and a few college arms like
Taylor
Jungman (Texas),
Trevor Bauer
(UCLA) and
Jed Bradley
(Georgia
Tech). There's a lot of buzz around
Matt Purke (TCU) and
Sonny
Gray (Vanderbilt) but I'm not sold on either as legit front of
the
rotation starters.
Unfortunately, I could not be assured I would get either one of my two
targeted pitchers since I
had the third overall pick and Todd Zola, who had the first pick, had
made his intentions very clear that he was going to take Pineda
#1. He waffled a bit in conversations that he might consider
taking
Brandon Belt. But
even if he didn't take Pineda, Steve Moyer was
waiting in the #2 spot and I was pretty sure Pineda would never get to
me. Still, I felt uneasy about taking a college pitcher with the
third overall pick. My best guess is that I would end up with a
choice of either Pineda, Belt or eventual Rays closer
Jake McGee
(probably), and that Cole would make it back around to me in the second
round.
Also on my grocery list were a number of pitchers poised for big
improvements in their performance. I tracked
Chris Young,
Jason
Hammell,
Derek Holland,
Brandon McCarthy,
Esmil Rogers,
Erik Bedard,
Tom Gorzelanny and
Fausto Carmona, in that order.
I also needed
someone to play middle infield in the interim while Utley heals, some
speed (likely from the outfield but
Alcides
Escobar was very
intriguing) and some relievers who had a chance to become closers by
season's end, since this winter
Rafael
Soriano decided he'd rather get
a ton of money to set-up rather than just a lot of money to close for
the next three years. Soriano and
Rick Ankiel... two blindspots
that have caused me a heap of frustration through their up and down
careers. Still, I enjoyed a big pay-off with Soriano last year so
I won't have any hard feelings when I drop him sometime this
year. Ankiel has yet to deliver that big year but I'm still
optimistic. Anyway...
The last note in this prologue is that both Doug Dennis and Jeff
Erickson had a ton of early draft picks due to well-constructed dump
trades last year. In fact, Dennis would be finished with his
draft, all 17 of his reserve spots filled, by the end of the 5th
round. Meanwhile, in an effort to win last year I had traded away
my 5th and 7th round picks. In short, I had tremedous pressure to
get my best players in my first four picks before I sat out the draft
for what amounted to three rounds. And with that, here we go...
The Draft
True to his word, Zola took Pineda. So that left me thinking that
Moyer would take Belt and I would end up with the third choice,
McGee. Much to my surprise, Moyer zigged with
Manny Machado,
leaving me a decision: McGee or Belt. As would later be evident,
Steve had targeted a number of very young players with undetermined but
potentially high upside. He's done this before with mixed success
(
Felix
Hernandez, yes;
Tim Beckham,
no;
Bryce Harper, jury is
still out but
inclined toward yes). Actually, I should say it's been very
successful because even though Beckham has pretty much been a bust in
real baseball, Steve managed to trade
him for something useful on the lure of potential. That said, he
would
surpass his previous limits of speculation in this draft and grab not
only Machado, but also high school phenom
Francisco Lindor. Both
guys are probably at least three years away from the majors.
So, McGee or Belt. I still have some reservations about Belt this
year. He'll be at least decent, I'm sure, but the opinions about
his long-term upside range from
JT
Snow to
Joey Votto,
which basically
means I have nothing to hang my hat on but a gut feeling. Still,
better to take a hitter than a reliever, right? The best hitters
commonly fetch bids of $35-40 in this league whereas closers rarely top
$20. Long term, my best bet is Belt... and besides, I'd
still get Cole on the back side of the draft and all would be right
with the
world. Who knows, McGee might even make it back for my pick in
the third round.
Here is the big problem with picking early: the character of
the draft has yet to be established and by the time it gets back to
me, it could be a very different animal that what what I had
anticipated. Sure enough, not only did Cole not make it back
to me, neither did
Jordan Lyles
(a very promising pitching prospect in
Houston),
Erik Bedard,
Alcides Escobar, last year's top
pitcher in the
amateur draft
Jameson Taillon
and yes,
Jake McGee. All
gone.
As it turns out, Doug's draft plan was to take as many prospects
as possible, and it appeared that he was just reading a Baseball
America and checking off the top 100 prospects as he took them.
Of course, that left him with no major leaguers on his reserves but he
is a
brilliant trader particularly when it comes to trading prospects, so
even if some of them fail to get out of the gate or fall completely
flat I have little doubt that he will be able to extract value from
them.
So there I was contemplating my second pick realizing that much of my
draft list had already left the building, and that one of the drafters
- the one with a bazillion picks in the next three rounds - was
gobbling up every top prospect faster than Shaggy and Scooby go through
a box of Scooby snacks... so... to follow the plan and risk not having
any
future, or grab what I can and head to the rooftop until the water
subsides? I decided to take Jonathan Singleton with the hopes
that Will Myers would get back to me in the third round.
Nope. Just four picks later, there was Doug again taking a top
prospect. In response, with my plan for prospects in shambles, I
took Chris Young next because I had to make sure I got at least one
starting pitcher before the Big Pause in rounds 5-7. By the time
it got back to me in the fourth round, seven more prospects had been
picked, as well as Fausto Carmona. Jason Hammel was my
fourth pick and I had my fingers crossed that Derek Holland's terrible
final outing this spring would muss his numbers badly enough to scare
off
anyone who was considering him. In the meantime, from the bench I
would watch
the fifth round, much of the sixth and all of the seventh rounds go by
with but one chance to get a player. In that time, Doug completed
his draft taking four more prospects off the board. He was joined
in that crusade by Jeff Erickson, who took two of his own, as well as
Randy Wells and, yes, Derek
Holland.
It's my fault he got Holland. I had a chance in the sixth round
to take him but as
JJ Putz,
Leo Nunez,
Jake McGee,
Jon Rauch,
Kyle
Farnsworth,
Brandon League,
Jose Contreras and
Mike Gonzalez had
already been taken, I felt that my chances of finding a reasonable
number of saves in this draft was quickly evaporating. So with my
5th pick I took
Joel Peralta, who has been
surprisingly good the last year and
it would not be a shock to me if he ended up with the majority of
opportunities in Tampa this year. I took the chance and crossed
my fingers even tighter. (Note to self: crossing fingers is
useless.)
The rest of the draft is a bit of a blur, ending with the ignominy of
taking
Jerry Hairston Jr as a
desperate attempt to find someone with
speed who can play middle infield. I would cross my fingers that
the pick turns out better than expected but there's already a mountain
of evidence that would be insane (the finger crossing part... oh, ok,
the whole enterprise). In retrospect, I should have taken a
chance on a player in this year's amateur draft with my final
pick. Instead,
Cole Kimball, who
had impressed me with his performance in the AFL and this spring became
my last pick. If I'm being honest it's a bit of a long shot that
he ends up closing in Washington. Still,
there's a chance it all works out, right?
As for the future, I did manage to wrangle Trevor Bauer (who some
scouts are calling "Tim Lincecum Jr." because of similar delivery and
strikeout rate) and Jed Bradley, who might be the most complete lefty
in the draft. Both guys are viewed as at least major league #2s
in a good rotation. That doesn't sate my appetite for a true #1
ace to anchor the staff for years to come. Maybe
Yu Darvish will
ease my pain and bring his talent stateside next year. In the
meantime, I'll just hope for career years from the guys I have.
The rosters
(note: players listed in red are players who were drafted before they
were promoted to the major leagues and thus whose salaries increase by
only +3, instead of the +5 for all other players)
Looking back at previous drafts, I should not have been surprised by
the demand for prospects in the early rounds. That has been an
increasing trend in the last few years. What did surprise me was
the force at which it happened: ten players in the first two rounds
with several more just missing the playing time cut, making nearly half
of all the picks in the first two rounds being viewed as prospects.
Given that last year's champ was aggressive in the first few rounds
taking major league players that could contribute immediately, this
year's trend was a bit counter-intuitive. Also, the increased
demand for prospects meant that more "surprise" major leaguers - that
is, players with major league experience who had either not lived up to
previous billing or were hoping for a rebound performance - were
rostered in this draft rather than floaitng about for a month or two,
so the chances of finding early help on the waiver wire just decreased
a little. By how much remains to be seen. That said, it
should make for a very interesting season.