2014 MLB Draft Open Thread (Rounds 11-40)
This thing is still going on? And it isn’t even halfway done? Okay, look, one of the issues in spreading the draft over three days is that by the time you get into third day or even parts of the second day, the enthusiasm by those outside of the industry is pretty much burnt up. If it’s left to just one day you can sort of psych yourself into plowing through it or run off the excess energy whereas falling into exhaustion and then starting up again half a day later feels like a less practical use of one’s time. And you’re pushing it into a weekend? The weekend should be there to recover from the draft. I don’t think anyone is listening to me but danged if these don’t seem like reasonable complaints. Also you’re never going to generate enthusiasm for something with this erratic a yield. But I see no real reversal to it.
Day two brought the M’s mostly pitching. They bookended with a good defensive CF and a bat-first catcher and in the middle picked up a lot of college pitching. Of the pitchers, we had one junior draftee, one Juco guy, and four seniors. This would suggest in a way that the M’s expect to spend a lot of money on the combo of Jackson and Morgan just to get them signed and are scaling back a bit in order to do so. For example, the 7th round pick last year got $10k from us, the 8th rounder got $20k, and rounds nine and ten split $10k evenly between them. If the Mariners can get similar value from some of their senior signings, then appeasing Boras Jackson becomes easier.
What do I think of what’s going on so far? You could go the route of saying that most of these players will suck, and you wouldn’t be wrong. Its the same rationale that would allow you lazily to say that x position player won’t stay at their most taxing defensive position or y pitcher doesn’t have enough to start. Or you could treat it as that regular, fresh influx of names and talents that distracts us from the larger issues going on, much like say, the news does. The draft succeeds in diverting our attentions from the fact that the Rays had lost ten in a row before Erik Bedard schooled us last night. Or it at least puts in an effort.
Yarbrough and Ratliff seem somewhat similar, lefties with better than average fastballs who might have the secondary offerings to keep starting, though Ratliff is more raw on that front (he doesn’t even have a Perfect Game profile, but Twitter suggests to me that he’s worked out with the Mariners so I guess they saw something). Altavilla and Kerski are both undersized right-handers who get “bullpen” tags as a result. Altavilla has better stuff by a good margin, but the effort in his delivery seems to scare people and the M’s have generally put their high-effort guys in the bullpen pretty quickly. Byrd seems to be similar to last year’s seventh-rounder, Tyler Olson, in that he’s a left-hander with a good record who pitches off his breaking ball. Miller reportedly has average-to-slightly-better stuff but lacks much decent command of it.
The look of things is so heavy on college players right now that it seems a little weird. Could the first two picks go through that much money? Do Cousino or Altavilla or Ratliff really expect that much? We’re in a position now where it seems like the M’s could go for a tougher sign guy and attempt to throw a lot of money at him, but since the new rules went into effect, we haven’t really seen the M’s try that all that much, let alone succeed at it.
Let’s get to it then. Another thirty rounds. God, I hope we draft Handsome Monica.
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9 Responses to “2014 MLB Draft Open Thread (Rounds 11-40)”
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Handsome Monica looks like he’s trying to kill this guy. I swear it could be a scene from an Akira Kurosawa movie.
He’s a 1b/C/amateur MMA fighter!
The Padres drafted Texas A&M shortstop John Manziel in the 28th round, or as you may know him, Johnny Baseball.
Is this draft more dependent on the first couple of picks than in previous years? Jackson and Morgan pretty much have to pan out for this to be a successful year, right?
What, you can’t answer that for five years? Fair enough.
Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like we took a lot of players from the Northeast part of the country. Not saying it’s a bad thing, just surprised me.
Drafting Manziel kind of makes it seem like teams don’t take these late rounds seriously.
A lot of lottery tickets after the first 3 picks, lots of luck required. Plenty of potential bullpen fodder though.
More likely to draft Fat Monica. But then a cross between Fat Monica and Handsome Monica probably gets you Jesus Montero.
Nine high schoolers. Nine high schoolers in the entire draft.