2014 Draft Discussion

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

You can't just arbitrarily pass on the best arm in the draft to take the 10th best bat that is clearly a step or three down from the pitcher.

 

Sure I can.

 

http://i.imgur.com/gU1tEi4.gif

[mul21]

You can't just arbitrarily pass on the best arm in the draft to take the 10th best bat that is clearly a step or three down from the pitcher.

 

Sure I can.

 

You can, but that's how the Cardinals end up with Shelby Miller at pick 19.

[davell]

You can't just arbitrarily pass on the best arm in the draft to take the 10th best bat that is clearly a step or three down from the pitcher.

 

Sure I can.

Not an exact match here, but assuming Turner winds up the top bat in the draft, are you taking him or Rodon, if both are there?

[sneakypower]

The Cubs do seem to be sticking to that mantra. Can't say I blame them considering the injury risk on the pitching side, but there has to be a pitcher good enough that they would make an exception. Maybe not in this draft but there has to be a profile that would just be too good to pass up. It will be fun watching the candidates try this year.

we've been so obsessed over minimizing risk on pitchers, that we'll be probably opening camp next year with Edwin Jackson as our best starter, all while guys like Lucas Giolito and Jon Gray are set to dominate (to say nothing of FA efforts)

[Guest]

You can't just arbitrarily pass on the best arm in the draft to take the 10th best bat that is clearly a step or three down from the pitcher.

 

Sure I can.

 

You can, but that's how the Cardinals end up with Shelby Miller at pick 19.

 

Miller was the 13th pitcher taken in that draft, and the 7th HS pitcher.

 

To be clear, I'm being a bit facetious with the "not ever" bit, but Goony's hypothetical happens very rarely if you're constricting yourself to the Top 10 picks. Beyond that and you have to start considering guys with superior talent who've fallen for other reasons, pitcher or not. "Don't take a pitcher in the Top 10" is not the same as "Don't draft Shelby Miller at 19"

[mul21]

You can't just arbitrarily pass on the best arm in the draft to take the 10th best bat that is clearly a step or three down from the pitcher.

 

Sure I can.

 

You can, but that's how the Cardinals end up with Shelby Miller at pick 19.

 

Miller was the 13th pitcher taken in that draft, and the 7th HS pitcher.

 

To be clear, I'm being a bit facetious with the "not ever" bit, but Goony's hypothetical happens very rarely if you're constricting yourself to the Top 10 picks. Beyond that and you have to start considering guys with superior talent who've fallen for other reasons, pitcher or not. "Don't take a pitcher in the Top 10" is not the same as "Don't draft Shelby Miller at 19"

 

I didn't look at specifics of his draft, but I wasn't saying don't draft Shelby Miller at 19. I was saying that if Kyle sticks to his guns, that's how you end up with a guy as talented as Miller clearly is falling to 19. Now, that must have been a very deep draft pitching wise for him to fall that far.

 

Fake edit: Looking at it, and not being a guy who follows the minors really closely, I recognize all but 3 of the guys taken ahead of him. Many of those have had some significant success already, so that was definitely not the best example to use.

[Guest]

Pretty close to a "No pitchers in the Top 10, not this year, not ever" policy myself.

no, that policy already cost us Jon Gray

 

Seems far too early to rue taking Bryant over Gray, especially when there wasn't a consensus favoring Gray.

[sneakypower]

the annoyingly overlooked part of this equation is we're forcing guys down the defensive spectrum to accommodate each other, thereby immediately destroying part of their value

 

Bryant likely won't fit in with Alcantara & Baez -or- Olt/Villanueva/Candelario, so he's likely already set for corner OF, making him a whole lot less interesting; it's possibility of Troy Glaus (exciting) vs. Pat Burrell (not so exciting)

 

sadly that's not a situation we'll have to worry about with pitchers for a seemingly very long time

Edited February 25, 2014 by sneakypower

[jersey cubs fan]

To be clear, I'm being a bit facetious with the "not ever" bit, but Goony's hypothetical happens very rarely if you're constricting yourself to the Top 10 picks.

Well obviously, because people don't actually follow the "no arms in the top ten" rule.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

You can't just arbitrarily pass on the best arm in the draft to take the 10th best bat that is clearly a step or three down from the pitcher.

 

Sure I can.

Not an exact match here, but assuming Turner winds up the top bat in the draft, are you taking him or Rodon, if both are there?

 

I'd consider that a *really* tough call. I hate taking pitchers this high that much.

[jersey cubs fan]

Bryant likely won't fit in with Alcantara & Baez -or- Olt/Villanueva/Candelario, so he's likely already set for corner OF,

 

I think you are getting ahead of yourself here. There's no way he's already set for corner OF.

[sneakypower]

You can't just arbitrarily pass on the best arm in the draft to take the 10th best bat that is clearly a step or three down from the pitcher.

 

Sure I can.

Not an exact match here, but assuming Turner winds up the top bat in the draft, are you taking him or Rodon, if both are there?

 

I'd consider that a *really* tough call. I hate taking pitchers this high that much.

unfortunately our divisional opponents have no qualms about it, and we'll have the fun task of dealing with Gerrit Cole, Michael Wacha, Jameson Taillon, Homer Bailey, Shelby Miller, Robert Stephenson, etc. for a very long time

[Guest]

the annoyingly overlooked part of this equation is we're forcing guys down the defensive spectrum to accommodate each other, thereby immediately destroying part of their value

 

Bryant likely won't fit in with Alcantara & Baez -or- Olt/Villanueva/Candelario, so he's likely already set for corner OF, making him a whole lot less interesting; it's possibility of Troy Glaus (exciting) vs. Pat Burrell (not so exciting)

 

sadly that's not a situation we'll have to worry about with pitchers for a seemingly very long time

 

If you do get to the point where you have guys forced out of position, you deal from the surplus. The value of the pitching you can get for an MLB ready Bryant outstrips Gray's value anyway.

[sneakypower]

you make this sound so much easier than it probably is, in practice; you have to assume other teams are going to fall in love with our minor leaguers we can't actually put into MLB situations to prove their worth

 

so in the future, after Bryant is demolishing AAA, we can package him with a couple other really interesting guys, for just a couple years of an established starter, like KC did with Myers

 

it's easy to assume there are other less dramatic paths we could take (Washington/Fister, Rockies/Anderson), but if it were that simple, we'd have just done this already to address our current glaring pitching need

[jersey cubs fan]

you make this sound so much easier than it probably is, in practice; you have to assume other teams are going to fall in love with our minor leaguers we can't actually put into MLB situations to prove their worth

 

It's hardly a stretch to assume other teams will highly rate your prospects prior to seeing them play in the major leagues.

 

 

That being said, if you really wanted to, it wouldn't be hard to give such a player a little experience even if you theoretically have "too many" players at a position.

[sneakypower]

this line of thought still basically amounts to "a bird in the hand is worth one in the bush"

[jersey cubs fan]

this line of thought still basically amounts to "a bird in the hand is worth one in the bush"

 

It's more like a bird in the hand is worth more than an egg in the bush.

[Guest]

You're also glossing over the considerable downsides of drafting a pitcher that high. Sure it's not as simple as going to the store and asking for a Verlander, but we also haven't had the actual logjam happen yet either. It's like Parks says, it's all currency, my preference when you have a top pick is to minimize the bust rate and then deal with any imbalances via trades later.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

 

I'd consider that a *really* tough call. I hate taking pitchers this high that much.

unfortunately our divisional opponents have no qualms about it, and we'll have the fun task of dealing with Gerrit Cole, Michael Wacha, Jameson Taillon, Homer Bailey, Shelby Miller, Robert Stephenson, etc. for a very long time

 

Fully half of the pitchers you listed were taken way too far back to be of relevance to this discussion.

[Guest]

On a related note, here's the first round picks of all of McLeod's drafts

 

2013 - #2 - Kris Bryant - 3B

2012 - #6 - Albert Almora - CF

2011 - #10 - Cory Spangenberg - 2B

2011 - #25 - Joseph Ross - RHP

2010 - #9 - Karsten Whitson - RHP - Didn't sign, hence the Spangenberg pick

2009 - #28 - Reymond Fuentes - CF

2008 - #30 - Casey Kelly - SS - Later converted to RHP

2007 - None

2006 - #27 - Jason Place - OF

2006 - #28 - Daniel Bard - RHP

2005 - #23 - Jacoby Ellsbury - CF

2005 - #26 - Craig Hansen - RHP

 

So with one exception that didn't sign, every pitcher they've taken has come as the 2nd of 2 first round picks.

[sneakypower]

You're also glossing over the considerable downsides of drafting a pitcher that high. Sure it's not as simple as going to the store and asking for a Verlander, but we also haven't had the actual logjam happen yet either. It's like Parks says, it's all currency, my preference when you have a top pick is to minimize the bust rate and then deal with any imbalances via trades later.

Gray's got the same ETA as Bryant; he'll be in the bigs soon and carry the same injury risk as every other pitcher who hasn't been significantly injured yet

[Hairyducked Idiot]

It's easy to point to Cole and Taillon right now, but from 2001-2007, the Pirates spent five top-8 picks on pitchers.

 

They got Paul Maholm and four guys who never put up more than 0.6 career bWAR.

[Guest]

Gray's got the same ETA as Bryant; he'll be in the bigs soon and carry the same injury risk as every other pitcher who hasn't been significantly injured yet

 

Agree to disagree on the ETA. At the very least, Bryant was considered a faster mover on draft day, but that's not really the point I'm getting at. I'm not saying we should inherently be drafting Bryants over Baezes/Almorii either.

[Guest]

It's easy to point to Cole and Taillon right now, but from 2001-2007, the Pirates spent five top-8 picks on pitchers.

 

They got Paul Maholm and four guys who never put up more than 0.6 career bWAR.

 

For fun, here's the next drafted position player in each of those drafts:

 

Wieters(or LaPorta since Wieters was unsignable by Pittsburgh)

Drew Stubbs

Ian Stewart! (this was the Maholm draft, so good call there, even though John Danks was the very next pick)

BJ Upton

Chris Burke

 

EDIT: And the 2 position players they did take in that span? McCutchen and Neil Walker.

[Guest]

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20140225&content_id=68310540&notebook_id=68310256&vkey=notebook_mlb&c_id=mlb

 

Jim Callis on Hoffman, Virginia's juniors (Fisher, Downes, Papi, Howard), Kolek, Nola and Schwarber.