Mike Zunino: Catcher, Mariners First-Round Pick
With the third overall pick in the 2012 draft, the Seattle Mariners selected C Mike Zunino out of University of Florida. Incidentally, Zunino also went to Mariner High School in Cape Coral, Florida. I found this out some months ago and thought about it at the time, but of course I couldn’t have known then that we’d have the added weirdness of him being picked by the Mariners. Now I know that he did, well, gosh, I hope that his old high school gear still sort of fits, but that sure seems unlikely.
The comparisons that some have made, reflecting back on the 2005 draft, is between Zunino and Jeff Clement. This is a lazy way of going about things. For one, Clement was more about the power bat back then, holding the career high school home run record at the national level. If injuries hadn’t derailed him, we might have seen more of that. Second is that much of the talk at the time about Clement pertained to the fact that he had improved his work behind the plate a lot, which is a roundabout way of saying that, for the time, it wasn’t great. Maybe it was even not-good.
There aren’t really any complaints about Zunino’s catching ability, seeing as how he’s been voted to the All-SEC Defensive team twice. He gets up quickly, throws well, doesn’t have too many issues with how his skills show back there. This is all interesting to me in that he hasn’t been a career catcher all the way through. He started to play there when he was eleven, but was a shortstop back in his freshman year in high school just because that was what the team needed. He’s not exactly up there with the elite defensive catchers of baseball history, but he’s proficient at what he does and proficiency behind the plate seems harder to come by these days. In this case, Zunino couples that with good leadership grades and the ability to handle a pitching staff. Zunino was able to call his own games this season, which doesn’t seem like all that much, but it’s rather uncommon for college baseball.
I’ve watched a little bit of Zunino at the plate, and he seems to stand a little bit crouched in there. There’s a cut to his swing, but at the same time he manages to adjust to the pitched ball pretty well. The scouting type people seem to give him above-average grades on both hitting and power, and again, those aren’t easy to come by from solid defensive catchers. Just like from the defensive side, he was first team ALL-SEC and was their Player of the Year last year while being named a finalist for the Johnny Bench award. Among the categories he led the conference in last season: total bases, hits, runs, doubles (tied), and home runs. The numbers this year haven’t been as eye-popping, but as Jeff Sullivan pointed out, pull up College Splits and adjust for park and schedule and suddenly he has the fourth-best adjusted OPS/wOBA in the country. All the while, he had a .311 BABIP, which is almost a hundred points lower than it was last season. When the balls fell in for him, they had usually gone pretty far.
We’ve talked before about how the M’s front office really does their homework with their picks. That’s true of Zunino on a whole different level, as it’s been reported that Zduriencik has known Zunino’s dad for decades since Zunino’s dad is a scout. This was the information that linked the two camps in the pre-season and I guess that with Buxton and Correa both out, they went with the guy they trusted.
The larger question for me at this point is how the organization’s catching depth is implicated in this. In the same sense that Rendon last year likely would have trumped the assorted internal options we had at the hot corner, Zunino trumps all of the backstops we have, a large portion of which were drafted recently. Most of those guys came with defensive questions that Zunino just doesn’t have. As raw power goes, Marlette might still have more, but his hitting skills aren’t nearly as refined and the expected timetable for Zunino would render that an afterthought anyway. What the Mariners will probably find themselves doing in the short-term is trying to find a way to trade from that depth and moving Marder to utility. The first move may be to send Jaso elsewhere within the next year or so.
That’s the story for now. It’s a solid pick, not what some of us hoped, but there was a sizeable dropoff from the two prep hitters to whoever was next and Zunino is hopefully a franchise catcher. Now to get stronger in the outfield on day two. Hopefully.
BA: Zunino is the Midseason Most Outstanding Player
Zunino’s 9th inning HR vs. LSU 3/18/11
Zunino’s HR vs. SC 5/25/12
ESPN Draft Watch
Interview #1
Interview #2
Jack and Tom talk about the pick
Minor League Wrap (5/28-6/3/12)
So, this is it. Today is draft day, or the first round of draft days plural, which is annoying. Today, we will either be overjoyed or go through the Five Stages of Grief over the course a few hours and then slowly come to realize that the Mariners scouting department simply knows more than we do.
At this point, I guess I want Buxton but don’t know if we’ll get him. Failing that, Correa. I originally wrote something here about a possible alternative, but then news seems to be going around about the Astros taking Appel, so I guess they get one of the two. Or, if last year is an example, they will have their choice between the two and then select someone different. Haha, suckers. If this Astros rumbling turns out to be cruel and vicious lies, I don’t know, Zunino? Pitcher?
Here is some advice to get you through the coming days: forget everything. They don’t have a thing for hitters or pitchers. They don’t have a thing for regions beyond wherever the first pick is coming from, as others tend to follow from there. They don’t have a thing for switch hitters or left-handed hitters or right-handed hitters. They don’t prefer college players or high school players. They have a thing for the best player available to them. Kick back and let it be what it is.
At any rate, I have limited patience for hours upon hours of rumor mongering and the fact that things have been dragged out until 4 pm our time only makes it worse, so I’m working around that by being away from the computer for most of the day. I will be back before the start time to relay the latest in a series of possibly baseless conjectures.
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Minor League Wrap (5/21-27/12)
To address something I haven’t really mentioned yet, this time next week, we will be readying ourselves the draft. The first round of the draft will occur on Monday at 4 pm our time. I’m not preparing for it in quite the same way as last year, when I was burned by the unexpected pick. There are really too many variables to try to guess at, particularly in this draft. Does Buxton slide because the Astros want a near-term contributor and the Twins need pitching far more than they need toolsy outfielders? Do the M’s still consider Zunino even with Jaso and Montero and all the other catchers they drafted last year? [The answer to that is probably “yes.”] What happens if both Zunino and Buxton are gone within the first two picks? What weird effects are we going to get from the new CBA? Factors like these make the whole thing a pain. I’m hoping for the best and not preparing at all.
After the first round is done, the whole thing will break up and we’ll get round 2-15 starting at 9 am on Tuesday. On Wednesday, it’s round 16-40 at the same hour. Yes, the draft is only forty rounds now. Since I don’t have a regular “blog” anymore, I’ll probably just be covering it here as much as I can or feel like doing. I’ll probably have to take off at some point during the Wednesday picks as I have other matters to attend to, but Tuesday I should be around throughout, commenting or at least making stupid remarks on the picks as they’re made.
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Minor League Wrap (5/14-20/12)
There were interesting things that happened this week. Hultzen pitched well and was named to the Prospect Hot Sheet. Someone threw a four-run complete game. A High Desert hitter had an OPS of 1.300+. None of these things are the most interesting minor league baseball-related item I encountered this week. The most interesting minor league baseball thing I learned about this week was this, via Wikipedia, which I hope is not full of lies:
The Bakersfield Blaze have played in Sam Lynn Ballpark since 1941. Or at least they’ve been the Blaze since 1995, but they’ve been around since 1941. One night, in 1982, before they were the Blaze, a game that ran late resulted in the automatic sprinklers coming on while players were on the field. Various attempts were made to remedy this problem, such as the solution of standing on the sprinkler heads, most popular among four-year-olds, but the groundskeeper couldn’t be located easily and it took twenty minutes to find a shutoff. The problem of standing water remained, so Visalia’s team manager provided a novel solution: pour gasoline on the puddles, and try to burn them off. It worked. Sort of. The third base side of the diamond was badly burnt and wasn’t fixed until the offseason. Meanwhile, Visalia rallied and won the game.
And people wonder why I love minor league baseball.
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Minor League Wrap (5/7-13/12)
Baseball America’s first mock draft of the year has us taking C Mike Zunino because Buxton somehow goes second to the Twins. Discuss this entirely too much.
In this week, we have a walk-off grand slam, mention of a 27-game safely reached streak, possible breakouts from prospects that people have pinned a lot (too much?) of hopes on, the vagaries of splits, competent pitching in Tacoma (!!), a team going 2-4 while remaining in first place, and baseball baseball baseball baseball baseball.
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Minor League Wrap (4/30-5/6/12)
This week, Brad Miller scored on an at-bat in which he struck out swinging. There were other interesting things that happened this week, positive signs for players that may end up being significant pieces in the Mariners future development, but nothing I tell you will be more interesting than that.
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Minor League Wrap (4/23-29/12)
In this one, we have two hitters of the week in Jackson, a walk-off from Carlos Triunfel, mention of Lansing’s bizarre mascot, a seven-inning complete game in the Cal League, Anthony Vasquez’s new nickname, four dingers by one hitter in the span of twelve innings (his week is even more interesting than just that!), a pitcher that has more walks than either hits or Ks, continued Cerberus-related dominance, a batter that accumulated half his hits for the year in the past week, and various other things to shock and educate you in how amazing and dumb baseball can be.
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Minor League Wrap (4/16-22/12)
In the second wrap of the season, I still don’t know what to say for intros aside from thank you all for being active participants last time around. I’m trying to remember how best to go about writing these things. For now, the status quo from last week remains the same: two of the teams are awesome (it’s the middle two), two of the teams are really struggling, but Clinton is actually pitching really well. High Desert, bless their little hearts, they try.
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Minor League Wrap (4/5-15/12)
Here we are again! There was also a big pack of releases to start the season, as usual, and various players that were of interest at some point like Matt Bischoff, Jessie Nava, and Brandon Haveman found themselves on the outs. You can also find a list of players on the DL on the same page. Use this to not ask me redundant questions!
To address assorted ways in which I have been wrong to start the season, neither Smith nor Sena have been in the Mavericks rotation and instead it’s Sorce and Gillheeney, and over in Clinton, it looks like they might be using off-days to keep mileage down on certain arms (Shipers and Landazuri did a piggyback outing at one point), but Trevor Miller and Brett Shankin are in the rotation, trading off starts, and Kohlscheen isn’t.
Did you notice that two Mariners (and one former Mariner, UGH) landed on Baseball America’s inaugural Prospect Hot Sheet? Did you see where Gameday seems to have expanded to advanced-A leagues, or at least the Cal League? Did you know that the Mavericks and the Generals don’t get a day off until the 30th? Did you realize that this minor league season began with two of our affiliates playing against the Bees and AHH BEEESSSS RUNNNNNNNNNNN. . . .
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Off Day Thread, Hultzen’s Minor League Debut
The Mariners have a day off today after playing some meaningful games against the Athletics, but unlike the last time that happened, the team will not be flying back to Arizona to follow it up with a series of less meaningful games. I’m sure this is confusing for a lot of people. While we wait with much anticipation for all of our hopes to be deflated tomorrow, as we become the first team to face Yu Darvish, today there’s a different kind of baseball/hope to pay attention to. Danny Hultzen is making his debut today, right around noon.
LF Daniel Carroll
SS Nick Franklin
3B Francisco Martinez
RF Chih-Hsien Chiang
1B Rich Poythress
DH Joe Dunigan
CF Denny Almonte
C Jesus Sucre
2B Gabriel Noriega
P Danny Hultzen
The Generals, playing the lowly Birmingham Barons (how have they not lost their title already?) have won all three games in the series so far. Paxton struck out ten over five and two-thirds innings with only two hits allowed. That was pretty good.
You can head over to the Jackson site, scroll down on the audio page, and find their “Listen Live” link. There will also be a Gameday available, but it’s not up yet. I’ll add it later?