2014 MLB Draft Compilation Board #3

by: Ben Embry

It's been a while since Spring has sprung and we're starting to head into the home stretch of amateur baseball seasons.  Some HS teams' seasons are already over and the college offseason will be here soon.  The MLB Draft is a little over a month away and draft boards are taking shape...kinda. While it's becoming more clear who the best 50 to 100 to 200 players are, the order in which they'll be picked in the beginning is VERY unclear. The consensus #1 player heading into the year, NC State LHP Carlos Rodon, has been kinda disapointing.  He ceded the top spot to young high school LHP Brady Aiken from the San Diego area not long after my last comp board was published.  Since then, he's had 2 pretty good outings and suddenly it's a race between him, Aiken, and Texas RHP Tyler Kolek.  East Carolina RHP Jeff Hoffman had been in the mix but some arm troubles has taken him out of that mix (for now).

 

This compilaton board is something I like to do to stay up on who the big names are in the draft pool. What I do is take rankings from 6 different sources that I trust the most on the subject of draft prospects and I compile them into one board.  And honestly, it is very difficult to find a lot of information on the MLB Draft on the internet, at least compared to the more popular NFL and NBA Drafts.  The MLB Draft is more niche-y, so if anything I'd like to consider what I do a service to those other MLB draftniks out there who are looking for some good information.

My previous board can be found here.  Here's the third board for the 2014 draft:

 

Rnk	Name	Pos	School
1	Brady Aiken	SP	H.S.
2	Tyler Kolek	SP	H.S.
3	Carlos Rodon	SP	NC State
4	Jeff Hoffman	SP	E Carolina
5	Alex Jackson	C	H.S.
6	Tyler Beede	SP	Vandy
7	Nick Gordon	SS	H.S.
8	Aaron Nola	SP	LSU
9	Grant Holmes	SP	H.S.
10	Bradley Zimmer	OF	San Fran
11	Brandon Finnegan	SP	TCU
12	Trea Turner	SS	NC State
13	Sean Newcomb	SP	Hartford
14	Kyle Schwarber	C/1B	Indiana
15	Michael Conforto	OF	Oregon St
16	Michael Chavis	3B	H.S.
17	Touki Toussaint	SP	H.S.
18	Max Pentecost	C	Kensaw St
19	Jacob Gatewood	SS	H.S.
20	Luis Ortiz	SP	H.S.
21	Luke Weaver	SP	Florida St
22	Sean Reid-Foley	SP	H.S.
23	Michael Gettys	OF/SP	H.S.
24	Erick Fedde	SP	UNLV
25	Kyle Freeland	SP	Evansville
26	Braxton Davidson	1B	H.S.
27	Derek Fisher	OF	Virginia
28	Monte Harrison	OF	H.S.
29	Kodi Medeiros	SP	H.S.
30	Scott Blewett	SP	H.S.
31	Marcus Wilson	OF	H.S.
32	Foster Griffin	SP	H.S.
33	Mac Marshall	SP	H.S.
34	Casey Gillaspie	1B	Wichita St
35	Mike Papi	OF/1B	Virginia
36	Jacob Bukauskas	SP	H.S.
37	Cameron Varga	SP	H.S.
38	Derek Hill	OF	H.S.
39	Nick Burdi	RP	Louisville
40	Forrest Wall	2B	H.S.
41	Alex Verdugo	SP/OF	H.S.
42	Spencer Adams	SP	H.S.
43	Matt Imhof	SP	Cal Poly
44	Matt Chapman	3B	CS Fuller.
45	Alex Blandino	3B	Stanford
46	Michael Kopech	SP	H.S.
47	Ti'quan Forbes	SS	H.S.
48	Dylan Cease	SP	H.S.
49	Jackson Reetz	C	H.S.
50	A.J. Reed	1B/SP	Kentucky
51	Taylor Sparks	3B	UC Irvine
52	Milton Ramos	SS	H.S.
53	Chase Vallot	C	H.S.
54	Jack Flaherty	SS/P	H.S.
55	Chris Oliver	SP	Arkansas
56	Zech Lemond	SP	Rice
57	Justus Sheffield	SP	H.S.
58	J.J. Schwarz	C	H.S.
59	Joey Gatto	SP	H.S.
60	Andrew Suarez	SP	Miami (FL)
61	Matt Railey	OF	H.S.
62	Jacob Nix	SP	H.S.
63	Jake Godfrey	SP	H.S.
64	Jake Stinnett	SP	Maryland
65	Jacob Lindgren	SP	Miss. St.
66	Sean Bouchard	3B	H.S.
67	Garrett Fulencheck	SP	H.S.
68	Keaton McKinney	SP	H.S.
69	Jordan Brink	SP	Fresno St
70	Sam Travis	1B	Indiana
71	Michael Cederoth	RP	SD State
72	Brian Anderson	2B/OF	Arkansas
73	Greg Deichmann	3B	H.S.
74	Keith Weisenberg	SP	H.S.
75	Chris Ellis	SP	Ole Miss
76	Brett Graves	SP	Mizzou
77	Evan Skoug	C	H.S.
78	Bobby Bradley	1B	H.S.
79	Ryder Ryan	3B	H.S.
80	Cody Reed	SP	H.S.
81	Spencer Turnbull	SP	Alabama
82	Josh Morgan	3B	H.S.
83	Turner Larkins	SP	H.S.
84	Bryce Montes de Oca	SP	H.S.
85	Cobi Johnson	SP	H.S.
86	J.D. Davis	SP/1B	CS Fuller.
87	Dylan Davis	SP/OF	Oregon St
88	Austin Davis	SP	CS Baker.
89	Jeren Kendall	OF	H.S.
90	Tate Blackman	2B	H.S.
91	Stone Garrett	OF	H.S.
92	Kel Johnson	OF	H.S.
93	Luke Bonfield	SP/OF	H.S.
94	Lane Thomas	OF	H.S.
95	Chad Sobotka	SP	SC Upstate
96	Grayson Greiner	C	South Car
97	Travis Jones	OF	H.S.
98	Dillon Peters	SP	Texas
99	Jake Cosart	SP	JUCO
100	Scott Heineman	OF	Oregon

The Yankees currently have the 55th pick, with a slot of about $1.02 million.  In theory, they should wind up with 2 guys off this list.  In the 50-60 range, you see a few high school kids, which I don't think would be a bad way to go.  Based on what talent they have in the system, a HS OF would work.  HS pitchers are never a bad way to go.  I'd advocate for some college pitching because our pitching depth has been shrinking, but generally the pickings get slim in that area after the first round, (if not sooner).  They can afford to stay away from advanced catchers and outfielders, and young infielders based on what they did last year and what they're working on in the international free agent class, (although it never hurts to get a good young SS if they're available).

I want to make sure I give credit where credit's due, that being the six writers/publications I use to assemble my board.  Some are subscription based, some are free.  I encourage everyone to check them all out.  They are:

Big League Futures (Kevin Gallo, Matt Grabusky)

Baseball America (various writers)

ESPN (Keith Law)

MLB.com (Jim Callis, Jon Mayo)

Scouting Baseball (Kiley McDaniel)

MLB Draft Insider (Chris Crawford)

My next board will be available at the end of May.  At that point I'll have enough info to do a deep dive on some of the top prospects and some guys that are being predicted for New York.  You can expect a lot of changes and the board will get to 250 at that point; I actually have 123 names now but I don't like odd numbers like that so I cut it off at 100.

Email me or hit me up on twitter with any questions: info@thebronxempire.com or @thebronxempire.  Have a good day!

MiLB Assignments for Top 25 Prospects

by: Ben Embry

With Spring Training wrapping up and the big league club headed to Houston to start the season, the team's minor leaguers are off to their assignments either in Scranton, Trenton, Charleston or Tampa, (some of whom will play for the A+ affiliate and others staying in extended Spring Training).  You can't really find official announcements on these assignments but Twitter is an excellent source. There are several people in the know such as Dan Pfeiffer, (@danpfeiffer74), a Trenton Thunder beat writer for Examiner.com.  Plus a lot of the players tweet where they're going on their feeds.

Here is the assignments for our pre-season Top 25 list:

For those in Extended Spring, I expect Austin and Heathcott to go to AA when ready, Bird and Campos to go to A+, Encinas to go to A-, and Clarkin and Hensley to go to Short Season in Staten Island.

It looks to me that they're being pretty aggressive with some of the younger players, notably Katoh, Torrens, and Andujar.  I love to see it, as it's a strong endorsement from the organization for those players.  It also gives me confidence that we could see a wave of prospects ready to hit the big league roster in 2016-2017.  In my opinion, the Yankees farm system has been backsliding for 2 seasons but I'm very confident that they'll be back on an upswing this year.  They drafted really well last year and there are a handful of guys in the upper-end of the minors that are good bounce back candidates.

Before I conclude, I want to give a quick shout out to fellow Yankee blogger: Draft 2 Dynasty.  He helped me out with some of the harder guys to find info on for this list.  For those on twitter, he's a must follow for Yankee fans and baseball card collectors, (@draft2dynasty).  I love his blog, which you can find at draft2dynasty.blogspot.com.

A Couple of Draft Observations

by: Ben Embry

It's been 26 days since I published my second comp board for this years MLB Draft and we're now 73 days from the big day.  Even though we're not very far removed from my last comments and still 2.5 months from the draft, there have been some changes that I feel compelled to address.

The first is a change at the top.  For two years, Carlos Rodon has been the consensus top player for the 2014 draft.  He would have been the best player in last year's draft pool.  Prior to the start of this season, it was arguable he was 1 of the 10 best players not in the major leagues.  But the bandwagon has been thinning out with a couple notable names taking a step back.  Keith Law and Chris Crawford, both who write for ESPN.com, have anointed California prep lefty Brady Aiken the best prospect.  Both had Rodon the best player prior to this season, and to different degrees are contending Rodon is not the same prospect they thought he was 6 weeks ago.  They're citing command mainly, and Law says his slider, which has been an 80 on the 20-80 scale, is now a 60 or a 70 and his fastball is looking average.  Law is a little more fervent in his opinion while Crawford seemed to say he thinks Rodon will bounce back before draft day.

The more interesting situation is what the rest of the industry will have to say soon. Reading sites like Baseball America lately, it seems they believe Rodon has maintained his grip on the top spot.  They've referred to him more as "unlucky" than "less dominant".  I think there could be a fracturing of opinion on Rodon by the top sites where as previously he was the unanimously anointed best player.

As for the Yankees angle, it seems my fascination with one prospect will have to be short lived but in its place will be intrigue in an entire class of prospects.  Last post I mentioned Dylan Crase, a prep righty from Georgia, was the player I hoped would land in the Bronx.  This was based on him bring ranked 38th on my previous comp board, which is within a range that is reasonable to believe he could be available when New York makes their first pick at #47.  But upon further review, it looks less likely that Cease and the Yankees are a good match.  The main reason is that most people believe he's actually a top 15 talent and some are ranking him as such while others are hesitating because he hasn't been pitching because of a sore elbow.  This mix of opinions caused him to be drug down in the rankings from where he justifiably should be.  And it's still entirely possible that he will not have been selected when NY's first pick rolls around.  But the fact that he is so well regarded coupled with his availability will be due to some health questions, plus the issue of his commitment to Vanderbilt, (historically very tough to sign), all make it hard to see anyone being able to sign him in the second round.  He would most likely honor his commitment to Vanderbilt and re-enter the draft in 3 years.

So instead of wanting New York to sign Cease, or any one specific person for that matter, I'm going to just hope they sign one of the multitude of good young HS arms that will most likely be available.  This class is LOADED with quality prep pitchers and any ranking or mock draft you read will tell you at least a few of them will be available when NY picks.  It won't be Aiken, or Tyler Kolek, or Grant Holmes.  They'll all be gone.  Luis Ortiz probably will be, too.  And as for Cease or fellow Vandy commit Touki Toussaint, I don't believe they'll be signable.  But that still leaves guys like Sean Reid-Foley, Cameron Varga, Keaton McKinney, Kodi Meideros, Jacob Nix, Michael Kopech, Mac Marshall, Scott Blewett, Alex Verdugo, and on and on and on.  It's crazy!  In one sense, the Yankees are lucky in that in a year they do not have a pick before the second round, they can still have a shot at one of these talented kids.  I'd still rather have a pick in the first AND second, but we should be able to live with what we end up with.

Again, I will do another comp board at the end of April and one last one at the end of May.  I just wanted to give you these couple updates since I blogged last.