By: Ben Embry
The first 2 rounds, comprising 73 picks, are in the books and despite the bemoaning of futile mock drafts on twitter, I'd say there weren't many shocking picks here. Houston taking Mark Appel was a micro-shocker. Though he was the consensus best player available and has been long rumored as one of the guys the Astros were looking at, it seemed as though Jon Gray and even Colin Moran were the more likely choices. But Houston takes Appel and, as I tweeted last night, they end up with both Appel and Carlos Correa, (the two guys they seemed to favor with the number one pick last year), in their farm system. You have to be pleased with that if you're a 'Stros fan.
Kris Bryant going to the Cubs at pick 2 was also a micro-shocker because it was long believed they would target a college P since their farm system is so devoid of P talent. Colorado took Jon Gray and it will be interesting to see if he can develop into a top of the rotation guy for a franchise that's seldomly been able to do that. Trey Ball going to Boston surprised me some because they supposedly loved Austin Meadows but even though he was available took Ball, whom I had never heard connected to Boston, instead. The first true shocker was KC taking Hunter Dozier who was generally considered a 2nd round talent at pick 8. It was an obvious money saver at the time and it appears to have paid off since they took Sean Manaea at 34 and should be able to use the savings to sign the Indiana State lefty. So it was an unconventional way to do it, but they ended up with 2 good talents with those picks.
I scored the draft last night with a metric where each player from 1 - 190 on my comp board was assigned a value. Number 1 ranked Appel was worth 1000 and number 190 ranked Josh Desze was worth 100. The weighting variance diminished the further down the board you went. Based on this metric, Miami scored the highest thanks to their 4 picks, all of which were on my board. The Marlins were followed by Pittsburgh, Colorado, Tampa Bay and the Yankees. The worst teams were Washington, followed by San Francisco, the Angels, the Braves and Milwaukee. What's notable here is that San Fran had multiple picks and used the first, (number 25 overall), on Christian Arroyo who was number 85 on my list, and 2 players later on who were off my list all together. I had a tweet already to go last night about this but had to dump it. It goes like this: "Teams were told to phone in their picks, #Giants apparently took that figuratively instead of literally".
Before I get to the Yankees picks, I have to address a minor heartbreak that I suffered last night. As a fan of both the Yankees and the Arkansas Razorbacks, I came into the draft with the faint hope of Ryne Stanek sliding to the Yanks. He was a consensus top 5 pick and after getting picked apart during the season, he slid to the mid-first round range on boards. He actually defied expectations and made it to 26 where NY could have taken him but they passed, taking Eric Jagielo instead. Ryne didn't make it to NY's second pick at 32, instead going to Tampa Bay at 29. I wish Ryne the best of luck in his career.
Ok, on to the Yankees picks...I was pretty pleased with them overall, save for them passing on Stanek at 26. I'll get to them all individually, but in general I think the three first rounders all could be slotted in the 7-12 range of the Yankees top 25 prospect list.
Pick 26: Eric Jagielo (3B, Notre Dame)
Jagielo has been linked to the Yankees for weeks and the Yanks were rumored lately to prefer a college bat with their first pick. I like Jagielo, as he is a power hitting 3B who has a chance to stick there and move quickly through the system. He is perhaps the best combination of best player available and a pick of need for NY in that area of the draft.
Pick 32: Aaron Judge (OF, Fresno State)
Aaron has been linked to New York even longer than Jagielo. He's an incredibly gifted OF that was athletic enough to play CF for Fresno despite being 6'7". He's got power for days and is a classic boom or bust pick. I'm on record as saying that's they type of player NY should be going after because they depend on their farm system less than any team in the league. Though I would argue they do a better job of developing and using prospects than people give them credit for, their core competency is signing proven, big money free agents. Anything they get from their system is a bonus. Judge is one of those guys so talented he could force his way into the Bronx.
Pick 33: Ian Clarkin (SP, H.S.)
I would say I experienced 3 disappointments last night. The first was NY passing on Stanek. The second was hearing a kid we're about to give a 7-figure bonus say in a pre-recorded interview that he hated the Yankees and his favorite sports moment ever was when they lost the 2001 World Series and he cried tears of joy. (The third I'll get to later). Ok, lots to dissect here; first and foremost, it's embarrassing for a kid you just picked to diss your team on national TV. Sorry but it is. Secondly, he had to have been 5 or 6 at the time so I'm not sure I'm even buying he story. But, despite this moment, he deserves a pass. He's a kid and its not as if he said it AFTER being taken by the Yanks. As long as he signs, (and I'll have a little doubt about that until it happens), we should all let it slide. Let this be a lesson to all draft prospects asked to pre-record a segment for the broadcast: if you hate a particular team, keep that to yourself in the event that team actually selects you. As far as the actual talent, I like the kid. He's been on draft boards forever and has exhibited projectibility and quality stuff. Scouting reports I've read say he has a 3 pitch mix which includes a power curve and a good change.
Pick 66: Gosuke Katoh (2B, H.S.)
Third disappointment of the night was not knowing who in the heck our second round pick was. My immediate reaction was: NNNOOOOOOOO!!! Jon Denney was still on the board and NY had also been rumored to be on him for a while. I would have loved that pick and we would have won the night based on my aforementioned scoring metric. But instead they took a kid off the board. I asked a friend of mine over at Big League Futures who calmed me down a bit: he said he's a good fielder with good speed and an Ichiro-like swing. He said he thought he was a 3rd talent. So that was reassuring. Then I saw he was rated 189 on the BA 500, so that's not terrible. Ultimately, you've got to expect picks like that the further you get into rounds. And last night, as I was lying in bed still not totally comfortable with he pick, I had this thought: they may have worked out a pre-draft deal with Katoh where he would go under slot and perhaps they can string some money together and make a 7-figure offer to their next pick at 103, (Denney perhaps?). It would take about a $500 thousand discount from Katoh, which would be almost 60% of his slot, but even $345,000 would not be too bad for GK.
Ok, I will have a quick final wrap up blog on Sunday after the draft has concluded with my final grades for all 30 teams as well as my thoughts on the rest of the Yankees picks.
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