Welcome to Seattle, Steven
We told you guys this was happening – the M’s cut a pre-draft deal with Baron last week. He’s going to sign for below slot, as on talent, he’s more in the 50-100 range.
In case you’ve forgotten, Baron’s a catcher with great defensive tools and a questionable bat. The M’s think there’s more offense in there, and he could be a Yadier Molina type long term. I know, it’s not that exciting, especially considering some of the names that were on the board, but this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. We knew this was coming.
Will be interesting to see what the M’s do at #51 now. They’ve saved money at both #27 and #33, so I’d expect them to be aggressive with their next two picks.
Welcome to Seattle, Nick
I’m not worried about you – you’ll sign.
I like the Nick Franklin pick for the M’s (and, tooting my own horn here, I believe I’m the first one who put the M’s on him last week) as a switch-hitting shortstop with average tools across the board, giving him the ability to stay at shortstop long term and provide some nice offensive abilities. He might not be a super high upside guy, but he’s got a good approach at the plate, he’s strong fundamentally, and he’s got a chance to be an above average major league shortstop. As the current roster shows you, having a switch-hitting middle infielder who can play defense and not be a black hole can be a hugely valuable thing.
Good job, fellows. I like both picks so far.
Welcome To Seattle, Dustin
Now please sign.
For those of you wondering what to make of Ackley, the best comparison is probably early career Darin Erstad. Like with Erstad, he’s a small-ish left-handed hitter with great contact skills, plus speed, a good approach at the plate, power that’s more suited to the gaps than driving the ball over the wall, and the ability to play first base or the outfield. The bat is likely to be good rather than great, though Ackley could have a season or two similar to Erstad’s 2000 season, where his .355/.409/.541 line made him a legitimate MVP candidate.
The questions about Ackley really revolve around his defense. He has the athleticism and speed to cover center field, but Tommy John surgery has kept him at first base for most of the year, so he doesn’t have a ton of experience in the outfield. Erstad, interestingly, was one of the best defensive outfielders of his generation despite moving back and forth between 1B and CF/LF, so just because Ackley hasn’t played there doesn’t mean he won’t be able to excel. If he turns into a plus plus defender, he’s a legitimate franchise player. If the arm doesn’t come back and he ends up as just a guy with good range and a weak arm, he’ll be more of a good player than a great one.
That said, the M’s should be extremely excited to have Ackley in the system. He’s easily the organization’s number one prospect as soon as he signs, and he could be in the M’s starting line-up to begin the 2011 season. As a quality left-handed bat with the ability to offer value on offense and defense, he’s a great building block for the future. He might not have Strasburg’s upside, but there’s a pretty decent chance that he’s going to be the best player drafted today.
The M’s needed a guy like this, and while he’s not as sexy as Strasburg, we should be thrilled that the team had the opportunity to add Dustin Ackley to the organization. He’s probably going to be a USSM favorite for a long time.
Draft Reaction Thread
Okay, so this is our thread for the first three rounds of the draft, which will take place starting at 3 pm today. Remember, please be nice to our servers. You guys shut us down every year on draft day, so let’s not do that for a change, okay? If you’re going to leave a comment, make it insightful. “Ackley!!! WOO!” isn’t going to do anything other than put a strain on our server for no real reason. If your comment is less than a sentence or two, consider not posting it. If the server load gets too tough, we’ll have to shut comments off to keep the site alive. Be nice to us. Also, remember, no game thread tonight.
Okay, with that out of the way, here’s the latest about an hour before the thing kicks off.
Everyone thinks the M’s are taking Dustin Ackley #2 overall. Hooray.
#27 is getting interesting. Outside of the M’s, no one really knows how much money the team is willing to throw at the player they select there. If the rumors of a pre-draft deal with Steven Baron at #33 are true, they could have the resources to take a pitcher like Aaron Crow, Tanner Scheppers, or Kyle Gibson at #27. All three could fall to that spot, and the M’s are considered a potential landing spot for each of them.
If they don’t want to go over slot for the 27th pick, high school shortstop Nick Franklin and outfielder Max Walla are both being attached to the M’s. Franklin’s a switch-hitting guy with with some offensive ability and the defensive chops to stay at short. Walla is a hitter, through and through. Conor Glassey wrote him up for Baseball America yesterday.
I still expect the M’s to take Baron at #33. With the way players are falling due to signability, the M’s look pretty smart for working out a pre-draft deal before all the high school kids started demanding seven figure bonuses. Even if they don’t take one of the name guys at #27, having Baron signed for less than slot at #33 will allow them to be aggressive at #51 and #82, and given the way the draft is falling, there’s a pretty good chance that one of the sure fire first rounders falls to them in the second round, if they’re looking to go over slot at some point today.
Should be interesting.
Quick note on lockdown
In the event site load becomes huge, and it will, USSM will lean more and more heavily on caching, which means in particular you may see comments (if they’re on) lag way behind. Please don’t panic.
More on Bedard’s ranking
Baker writes at some length about why he thinks Bedard’s going to be a Type A in responding to “comments” and ups his prediction:
Taking all that into account, there is an excellent chance Bedard qualifies for Type A free-agency next November. It doesn’t matter where he ranks at present-time, because that ranking is skewed by an incomplete 2008. As long as Bedard stays on the mound, he should be fine. Rarely will things be a slam dunk like they were with Raul Ibanez. But in this case, as long as Bedard makes it to the mound, goes six innings and does what he’s been doing, he will make that elite cut. He might even increase his projected wins and winning percentage now that the Mariners are scoring a few more runs.
Now we’re to “excellent” chance?
I’d like first to just cross-apply the previous arguments, which are still entirely applicable. I’m not sure exactly what he’s arguing here, except that he both understands how they’re done and… doesn’t.
But the two-year thing… Bedard barely, barely made the cut last year, and Baker’s making the argument that all he has to do is match the 07-08 two-year performance to be an A.
Okay. But the rankings count wins and win percentage. In 2007, Bedard went 13-5 for a .722 win percentage. What are the chances he’s going to get there with this M’s team? Eight wins I can see, but this M’s team is legitimately terrible offensively. He’s not going to go the rest of the year losing only three games. In 2007, Bedard struck out 221 batters — he’s pitching well this year, but he’s not going to get there. Check out the single-season win-loss leaderboards: the best and luckiest starters in each league don’t get much higher than that. Why, in 2006 no one in the NL managed a .722. Takes a lot to get there.
And on and on… that Bedard’s composite 2007-2008 line got him at the tail end of the A players is a persuasive argument for how steep the mountain he has to climb this season. Given how bad, ranking-wise, his 08 was, he had to have it taken alongside the best year of his career, where he got lucky not taking losses, in order to be at the back of the pack.
Anyway, as I said last time, it could happen. But it’s a lot more difficult than Baker seems to believe it is, even if Bedard continues to pitch well the rest of the year.
Draft Day Reading
Draft Day is finally here, and in about six hours, we’ll find out who the M’s have selected with the 2nd pick in the draft.
To tide yourself over, here’s a series of draft related links to read until then.
I’ve got a Wall Street Journal piece on how various teams have done drafting pitchers in the last 20 years or so.
My FanGraphs post for the afternoon is called “The Case for Dustin Ackley”, where I argue that perhaps the Nationals should consider Ackley with the first pick in the draft. It’s going to get me called an idiot by a lot of people, but I think there’s a legitimate argument to be made for going the safe route. Their fans would riot, though.
Baseball America has a bunch of good stuff for their subscribers: Is Strasburg the best ever?, the poor track record of college arms, and Jim Callis’ latest mock draft. Their draft blog is free, and will be updated with news throughout the day as well.
Keith Law has his draft morning notes on ESPN’s draft blog for Insiders, as well as his latest mock draft.
Larry Stone does his thing summing up the news of the past few days.
And finally, don’t forget you can view reports and video on most of the guys drafted today at MLB.com’s draft central. They’ll also have live video of the draft as it occurs.
As a reminder, we’re not having a game thread tonight, since the draft and the M’s-O’s game run concurrently (thanks MLB!). I’ll have a draft reaction post up, though we might turn off comments if the load on the site gets too rough. I’ll also be live blogging the draft over at FanGraphs, so if USSM goes down, you’ll know where to find me.
Bedard’s upcoming Elias ranking
Baker:
Besides, Bedard is likely headed to Type A free-agent status. You’ll likely get two high draft picks for him if he leaves as a free-agent at season’s end. It would take quite a haul to pry him away from Seattle in June, I’d suspect. We’ll know the answer to that in three weeks or less.
It’s possible, but he’s a lot farther than likely. Here’s the Elias system, as best I know it. You take everyone’s two-year stats in a bunch of categories, and assign everyone ordinal ranks. Then you add that all up.
For starters, I believe it’s total games (as starts + 1/2 relief appearances), IP, Wins, W/L percentage, ERA, strikeouts. Then the top 20 percent get rated A, 21-40 percent are B, and then everyone else bites it.
Bedard only got 6 wins last year (68th in the AL among all pitchers), his win percentage was 60%, his ERA was 3.67, and 72 K put him at 70th among all pitchers. Bedard gets helped a little by his decent rate stats and hurt by getting killed on counting stats.
For 2009, he looks great — among qualified starters, he’s #12 in wins, his win percentage looks great, he’s 4th on ERA, and 9th in K.
To be an ‘A’ Bedard needs not only to pitch a lot (which… yeah), and do really well (which he’s entirely capable of). Or think of this another way: how many pitchers can you name quickly that will end up ahead of him when rated over two years on all those stats? You only have to get to the top 20%, because the ratings include all pitchers. When I rattled off a list this morning while discussing this on the Mariners Blogosphere Conspiracy Conference Call, it was
Burnett, Halladay, Meche (I can’t even believe that i just typed that), Greinke, Beckett, Lee, Floyd, Sabathia, Shields, Millwood, Joba probably, Garza, Jered Weaver maybe?, Edwin Jackson, Marcum (?), Wakefield…
That’s 16 I can name off the top of my head. And as much as Bedard might do well on the rate stats, there are going to be some random starters out there who luck into getting ranked well on the wins, say, or with fluky ERAs.
So I asked Eddie, who’s been working on this over at Tiger Thoughts, and he said yup, Bedard’s in the middle of the Type Bs.
Which is better than being in the others. And he’s talented… but say he pitches with the M’s the rest of the year. He needs to stay lucky on wins and win percent, stay healthy, and you’re still going to be crossing your fingers that he sneaks up to the last spot on the Type A list.
Now, I know this, and the M’s know this, and I would bet the brain trust already sent someone out to project this and see what the chances are that Bedard ends up as a Type A. And maybe they talked to Baker and gave him the nudge nudge that they’re expecting a little something, wanted to get that aired for other teams to note as well…. but it’s a tall order. Given the way it’s calculated, and who’s ahead of him, I don’t see how he’s a likely Type A.
Draft Stuff
So, the draft is tomorrow. Thanks to MLB trying to get it more publicity, they’ve split it into three days, with the first three rounds taking place tomorrow evening. The draft kicks off at 3 pm Seattle time. And, just for fun, the Mariners-Orioles game starts at 4 pm Seattle time. Apparently, MLB is not content with forcing us to deal with just draft-related traffic (which always crashes the server), but also wants us to have to deal with a game going on at the same time. Awesome.
So, yea, there probably won’t be a game thread tomorrow. And as always, we’ll ask that you please be kind to the blog – don’t just sit there and pound refresh waiting for updates. MLB.com is going to be streaming the whole thing live, and if you really need to get up-to-the-minute picks via a website, nuke their servers, not ours.
As for what the M’s are expected to do, here’s what I’ve gathered this morning.
Dustin Ackley is still the strong favorite to go #2. There’s a chance they could take Aaron Crow or Tyler Matzek instead, but Ackley is a good bet to be the pick.
At #27, the M’s will have a chance to select a premium arm if they want to gamble on signability a bit. Kyle Gibson was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his forearm, so there’s a chance he slides to #27. Likewise, Tanner Scheppers, James Paxton, and Matt Purke are asking for more money than teams want to give them, so they don’t have an obvious home in the first round right now. The front office will have a player on the board that shouldn’t be there on talent. If the rumors about a pre-draft deal being struck with Steven Baron are true, then the M’s will be saving money at #33, and could overpay at #27 while still being able to keep their total draft budget under control. That seems to be the path that most expect the M’s to travel.
However, that’s not a lock. Last week, I mentioned that I had heard high school shortstop Nick Franklin attached to the M’s at #51. As of this morning, I was told that he probably won’t last that long, so the M’s may consider him at #27 or #33. As a left-handed hitting middle infielder with some power and defensive skills, he’d provide something the organization badly lacks currently.
It will be interesting to see what transpires tomorrow. As long as you all let us keep the blog alive, we’ll provide analysis throughout the draft.
Minor League Wrap (6/1-7/09)
I figure that some people out there are going to be asking over the next few days, so preemptively, the draft starts on Tuesday at 3 pm Pacific, 6 pm for me (no day off from work), and will probably continue on for five to six rounds before calling it a night and resuming Wednesday. In another 33 hours, the system will have a new top prospect. I’ll probably be live blogging the whole thing at my site, hunkered down with food supplies and frantically Googling. It’s a big deal to me, but I’m probably not going to try to cover all fifty rounds this year because oh my god what was I thinking?
To the jump!
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