Draft Countdown: 4 Weeks

Quick Draft notes:

 

We’re 4 weeks from the draft and the buzz is really heating up.  At the top of the draft, Stanford pitcher Mark Appel has claimed the consensus #1 position thanks to a dominant start against Arizona State on national television.  Oklahoma pitcher Jon Gray is the clear #2 player and San Diego 3B Kris Bryant has settled into the #3 position.  After that it gets quite muddled.  My compilation board as of today rounds the top 10 out like this: HS OF Clint Frazier, HS OF Austin Meadows, HS pitcher Kohl Stewart, Indiana State pitcher Sean Manaea, North Carolina 3B Colin Moran, Nevada pitcher Braden Shipley, and HS catcher Reese McGuire.  Some fresh buzz makes me think Meadows and Manaea will be taking a dive and Moran and HS SS JP Crawford will rise up as soon as Baseball America release their rankings tomorrow.  The bloom has really come off the rose for Meadows and Manaea; both considered possible 1-1 selections last fall are now in danger of falling out of the Top 10.  The same can be said for Arkansas pitcher Ryne Stanek, who was also a possible 1-1 player coming into the season but mediocre performances lately have him in the middle of the first.  Until I hear his name called, I’ll be pulling for him to fall to the Yanks at 26.

 A lot of the names around that 26^th pick on my board are the following: HS catcher Nick Ciuffo, Fresno State OF Aaron Judge, Jacksonville pitcher Chris Anderson, Mississippi State OF Hunter Renfroe, HS OF Billy McKinney, HS OF Ryan Boldt, Gonzaga pitcher Marco Gonzales, and UC Irvine pitcher Andrew Thurman.  I think Gonzales will be moving down soon and Renfroe will be moving up based on some buzz I’m hearing.  At picks 32 and 33, I have the names Samford OF Philip Ervin, Florida pitcher Jon Crawford, JUCO SS Tim Anderson, Cal State Fullerton OF/reliever Michael Lorenzen, Notre Dame 3B Eric Jagielo, Marshall pitcher Aaron Blair, HS pitcher Rob Kaminsky, and HS pitcher Ian Clarkin.  I’ve been hearing the names of Judge, McKinney, Ervin, Anderson, Lorenzen, Jagielo and Kaminsky connected with the Yanks so far as well as Minnesota pitcher Tom Windle.  I have to say I’m not excited about some of those names *cough* Windle *cough* but in all reality you’ve got to give these guys a chance.  I’ve got Windle at #43 and if the Yanks definitely think he’s their guy, they’ve got to jump on him with when of those picks because there is little chance he’s available when they pick again at #66.  If they take Tom Windle, I’m sure I’ll have myself talked into the pick by the time I wake up the next day.

 Team Needs

Before you can know what you need, you need to know what you have.  The following table is a list of players that have value to the Yankees.  As in: “We’ve got [player x], so we’re good there.”  In my mind, College players, especially those taken early in the draft, are comparable to a player in A or better and high schoolers are rookie level.  Pretty straight forward there.  Let’s look at the table:

	A - AAA	Rookie
P	Banuelos	Hensley
P	de Paula	O. Rodriguez
P	J. Ramirez
P	Campos
P
C	Sanchez	Torrens
1B	Bird
2B	Refsnyder
SS		Baez
3B
OF	Williams	Palma
OF	Austin
Of	Heathcott

The yellow shaded cells are team needs.  Based on this, they are: P, 3B, 1B [HS], 2B [HS], SS [C], OF [HS].  I’d definitely like to see New York add pitching because I think that’s weak right now.  You’ll also notice a lot of yellow under that rookie column.  I think you can say that about any given year.  Teams should add young talent IMO.  I’ll take it a step further… if I were the scouting director I’d be going for as many young, high upside kids as I could sign.  How quickly they could make it to the bigs would have NO relevance to me at all.  It would be all about upside…  the higher the better.  That would probably mean picking a lot of high school kids where the % chance of them eventually graduating to the majors is slim but the ones that do should be stars.

Here’s the rationale: New York’s core competency is not player development.  It’s buying proven, big league talent.  Sorry, it’s true.  They’re never going to be Atlanta or Tampa because they don’t have to be.  Would I love for that to happen, for my team to be 90% home-grown talent?  You betcha.  But New York’s going to do what they’ve always done: sign All-Stars to big $ deals and SOMETIMES fill the holes around them with kids from their farm system.  So I say shoot for the moon with every pick you have and the occasional kid that pays off could possibly pay off BIG TIME.  Before the current CBA deal, that could have been easy.  Throw hella cash at kids… “Oh you want $3 million?  Here ya go.  Yeah, you had 1^st round talent but just didn’t happen to get picked and once the 2^nd round rolled around, teams passed because you were too expense.  But not for us!!”  Unfortunately, NY didn’t do that and now they can’t.  Oh well…

Who knows what Oppenheimer & Co. will do come June 6^th.  I’m hoping for the best.  Based on my board, I’d take McKinney at #26, Kaminsky at #32, and Clarkin at #33.  I’ll be watching and tweeting and blogging the whole time.   If you see me despair in the moment, don’t worry, I’m not going to jump off the roof.  The following day I’ll drink the Kool-Aid and jump in line, biting my nails until they sign the kid who I wasn’t excited about originally but came to love.  Until then, follow me on twitter (@thebronxempire) and watch my blog for updates because I’m sure I’ll write about the draft a few more times before the big day.