Nationals Arm Race

I saw an article this morning on Prospect Insider titled “Every MLB’s best Unsigned Draft pick.”

Being that i’m a big draft guy and hyper-follow our draft picks, I was excited to see who they picked.  And, to my chagrin, they chose to combine the Expos history with the Nationals and ended up picking Mark McGwire, who the Expos drafted in 1981 but didn’t sign out of high school.  In fact, most of their honorable mentions were also Expos picks.

Well, with all due respect to the franchises time in Montreal, I wanted to do this analysis and bound it by the time of the franchise here.

So, here’s some analysis of the National’s best unsigned draft picks since 2005.  For the below, up until the 2012 draft year only players who appeared in the majors are listed; from 2013 onwards we’ll also mention prospects who are highly regarded and/or who seem close to the majors.  And, frankly, there’s nobody worth identifying past the 2016 draft since they’re all still in college and we won’t know if they get drafted until we figure out the 2020 draft.

Using the Draft Tracker as a guide, here’s the candidates (from earliest to latest):

• Scott Barnes; 2005 43rd round pick out of Cathedral HS in Mass, went to St. Johns instead and was an 8th rounder in 2008 by San Francisco.  He was flipped to Cleveland, appeared in parts of two seasons 2012-2013 then played out the string in the minors.
• Khris Davis, a 2006 29th round pick out of Deer Valley HS in AZ, went to Cal State Fullerton and was a 7th rounder in 2009 by Milwaukee.  He was traded to Oakland in 2016 and  has blossomed into one of the premier power hitters in the league (leading the AL in homers in 2008 despite playing in Oakland’s hitter’s park).
• Aaron Crow, our 2008 1st round pick (9th overall) who failed to sign out of Missouri, went back to school then became the 1st round (12th overall pick) by Kansas City the next year.  Crow put in four solid years as an 8th inning reliever, blew out his elbow and had TJ surgery in 2015.  He barely pitched in 2016, then missed all of 2017 before getting cut loose and moving to the Mexican league.  Not signing Crow was a pretty embarrassing situation for Jim Bowden and the franchise at the time, one more additional data point proving the incompetence of the organization.  The Nats recouped the pick in 2009 of course, picking Drew Storen in his place.  Even given Storen’s challenges, most would not argue that the Nats (on the field anyway) got the best out of this pick in the end.
• Louis Coleman, a 2008 14th rounder from LSU who went back for his senior year and became the 5th round pick of Kansas City in 2009 (I guess KC just picked up all our rejects in the 2009 draft).  Coleman became a middle RH relief pitcher in the KC bullpen for several years.
• Cory Mazzoni was a 2008 26th rounder out of a PA HS, went to NC State and became a 2nd round pick in 2011 by the Mets.  He eventually got moved to the bullpen, traded and had a grand total of 22 appearances over 3 seasons.
• Chris Heston was a 2008 29th round pick out of Seminole Juco in FL, then was drafted and signed as a 12th rounder the next year in 2009 by San Francisco.  He matriculated to the majors with San Francisco, had one solid season in the Giants rotation in 2015, then struggled to stay on the field ever since.
• Robert Brantly, a 2008 46th round pick out of an AZ HS, went to UC Riverside and became a 3rd round pick by Detroit in 2010.  He’s bounced around as an “org-guy” catcher since, and is currently with San Francisco.
• Alex Dickerson, a 2008 48th round pick out of Poway HS in California.  Went to Indiana and became a 3rd rounder by Pittsburgh in 2011.  He’s bounced around a bit as a lefty corner outfielder type and is currently with San Francisco.
• Marcus Stroman, a 2009 18th rounder from a NY HS, went to Duke and became a 1st round pick (22nd overall) by Toronto.  Interestingly, he was listed as a SS out of high school but became (and was drafted as) a starter in college.  He’s most people’s immediate answer for this question, but there are more than a few possible alternatives.
• Kyle Martin, a 2009 39th round pick out of a TX HS, went to Texas A&M, was drafted again after his Junior season and again after his senior season, when he signed with Boston.  His entire MLB career was two games in 2017.
• Hoby Milner, a 2009 44th rounder out of a TX HS, he went to Texas, became a 7th rounder by Philadelphia in 2012, has bounced around a bit and signed as a FA with the Angels for 2020.  He’s a lefty starter converted to reliever and was a closer for Durham in Tampa’s system last season.
• Ryan Sherrif was a 2010 33rd rounder out of a Los Angeles Juco, then signed as a 28th rounder in 2011 with St. Louis.  He appeared in their bullpen for parts of two seasons.
• Skye Bolt, a 2012 26th rounder from a GA HS, went to UNC and starred there, became a 4th rounder by Oakland in 2015.  He debuted in 2019 and is profiling as a switch-hitting center fielder with some decent power, but looks like perhaps a 5th OF for the Oakland team in 2020.
• Garrett Hampson, a 2013 26th rounder out of Reno, went to Long Beach State, became a 3rd rounder in 2016 by Colorado and debuted in 2018 for the Rockies.  He currently projects as a utility guy for the Rockies, with the ability to play inf and of.
• Shaun Anderson was our 2013 40th round pick out of American Heritage HS in FL, he went to the U of Florida and was Boston’s 3rd rounder in 2016, he got flipped to San Francisco in 2017 and had matriculated to the majors by 2019, appearing as a swingman/spot starter last season.  He isn’t projecting to the Giants rotation in 2020 with their off-season veteran acquisitions.
• Austin Byler was our 2014 9th rounder out of Nevada; he declined to sign and was drafted in the 11th round the next year by Arizona.  Byler struggled to produce as a 1b-only player, never got out of A-ball and was released out of affiliated ball after 2017.  I mention him less as a candidate here, but more as a post-mortem on one of the few top-10 round signing failures we’ve had.
• Stuart Fairchild was our 38th round pick in 2014 out of a Washington HS, went to Wake Forest, then was the 2nd round pick of Cincinnati in 2017.  He is listed as as the 13th best prospect by one pundit in the Cincinnati organization and is projected for AA.
• Andrew Suarez was our 2nd round pick in 2014 out of U of Miami, declined to sign, then became San Francisco’s 2nd rounder the next  year.  He debuted in the SF rotation in 2018 making 29 starts, then got dropped to the rotation for 2019 and struggled.   He is projecting as the 5th starter in 2020.

So, who is the “best” player we drafted but didn’t sign?  probably Stroman, then Davis, then Suarez.

Who of these was our “worst” non-sign?   for me its the only three top-10 picks on this list: Crowe, Suarez and Byler.  I think Crowe was the worst just for the reputational damage it did to the front office here (even if, in hindsight, we got the better player).  Suarez #2; I think he could still feature in this league.

 

 

 

Updated for the 2019 draft

In 2018, just four players from the top 10 rounds failed to come to terms with their drafting team.  This was slightly higher than the previous couple of seasons, but interesting this year because all four non-signing players were basically the same situation: high-end 1st round prep players with big price tags who in the end each turned down at least $2M each (and in some cases a ton more) to go off to school and lock themselves in for 3 years of playing for unaccountable, arm shredding, self-interested NCAA coaches who often could care less about player development and more about their next conference title and regional hosting bid.

And each of them probably made a huge mistake.

Its a common refrain among pundits in the amateur baseball world (Keith Law in particular) that HS players should “take the money” if they’re drafted high enough.   Certainly any first rounder would be a fool to turn away that kind of money, and mostly any prep player offered something in the upper 6 figure range should give serious consideration.  MLB contracts generally include college tuition … so even if you sign out of HS you still have 4 years fully paid for in case you wash out.  So instead of gambling on your health, or the fickleness of the baseball draft (where one bad start can cost you 30 spots in the draft and millions of dollars), take the cash when its offered.

But, don’t take our word for it.  Lets look at the empirical evidence of every player over the past seven drafts who has forgone the cash to see if there’s any trends.

Here’s a summary of the last few years of players who did not sign from the top 10 rounds.  This only goes back to 2012, since that’s the beginning of the new draft rules.

• 2021: 3
• 2020: ?
• 2019: 2
• 2018: 4 (all 1st or supp-1st rounders)
• 2017: 3
• 2016: 2
• 2015: 6
• 2014: 6 (two of which were Nats picks: Andrew Suarez and Austin Byler in that ill-fated draft class, and one more who didn’t sign thanks to Houston’s screwing up the Brady Aiken deal and who was eventually granted free agency).
• 2013: 8
• 2012: 8

These are the total non-signings for the top ten ROUNDS of draftees, meaning anywhere between 300 and 350 guys comprising the top 10 rounds and supplementals.  So in the seven years and roughly 2200 players drafted in the top 10 rounds in the last 7 seasons, a grand total of 37 have failed to sign.

Side note: each year we hear about all these players who aren’t going to sign or that negotiations are tough, when in reality the modern CBA rules nearly guarantee 100% signing among drafted players (unless there’s a huge misunderstanding on draft day, or a huge disagreement about medicals).  The draft pools are structured so that the penalties for NOT signing players can cascade and affect your ability to sign other players  (see Houston’s issue in the 2014 draft), so teams are now basically calling players in advance and saying, “If we draft you at X, will you sign for $Y?” … so the only reason players don’t sign is if there’s a serious breakdown or mis-understanding.

So, why do i say that you should always take the money?  Well, lets ask ourselves: out of these 37 players who didn’t sign.. who actually IMPROVED their draft status by not signing?  Lets go year by year and look at the players who failed to sign.

(a caveat here: I did not look at the dollar amounts offered here; this is basically draft round analysis.  Its possible that a 5th rounder in one year went in the 8th the next and got offered more money … but its quite rare with the new draft rules and bonus pools.  Everything changed with the new CBA that went into effect in 2012.  The Nats in particular spent $14.6M on draft bonuses in 2011.  The next  year?  $4.6M, with most of it going to one player in Lucas Giolito).

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2021: 3 players did not sign from the top 10 rounds:

• Kumar Rocker, RHP Vanderbilt, in a well publicized blow-up, the Mets drafted Rocker 10th overall and made a huge splash announcing a $6M over-slot bonus .. then ran into issues with his medicals, resulting in the two sides failing to agree on anything and the Mets passing on the Vanderbilt star altogether.  Rocker’s agent (ahem, “advisor”) Scott Boras of course refused to make his medicals available ahead of time, and of course claimed that there was no injury, but the damage is now done.  Rocker cannot go back to school, and will likely go to independent ball to re-enter the draft in 2022.
• Jud Fabian, OF Florida; saw his draft stock fall from a possible top-5 pick all the way out of the first round.  But, he apparently had a $3M deal with some team in the second, but those plans were foiled when Boston selected him at the beginning of the 2nd round.  Fabian stuck to his bonus demands, and the two sides could not reach an agreement.  Fabian will go back to school.
• Alex Ulloa, prep SS from Texas failed to come to terms with Houston as a 4th round pick.  He’s Oklahoma State committed, but rumblings he may go Juco to re-enter the draft in 2022.

Verdict: Its hard to believe Rocker will be able to beat $6M, but who knows.  Fabian will lose leverage coming back in 2022 as a senior, and Ulloa will have some time to improve on his 4th round bonus dollars.

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2020: in a shortened 5-round Covid-related draft, not one player picked in the 5 rounds failed to sign.

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2019: 2 players did not sign from the top 10 rounds

• Brandon Sproat, RHP Fla HS 7th/205 overall by Texas.  $222,100 slot value, which wasn’t enough to buy Sproat out of his commitment to Florida.
• Wyatt Hendrie, C from Calif Juco 10th/312 overall by Chicago Cubs.  $142,200 slot value.  Cubs seemingly ran into slot issues with both 10th and 11th rounder, and Hendrie wouldn’t take under slot.

Verdict: both players are still in College as of mid 2021; Hendrie was draft eligible in the shortened 2020 draft but was not taken and is now enrolled at San Diego State, presumably not eligible until 2022.

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2018: 4 players did not sign

• Carter Stewart, RHP Fla HS. 1st/8th overall. Atlanta didn’t like Physical, offered 40% of slot value ($1.9M); initially slated to Mississippi State.  Update: However, he did an about face, went to a Juco instead with the plan on re-entering the 2019 draft.  When he struggled in Juco and fell to a mid 2nd round projection … he attempted an end-around of the MLB draft rules and signed to play in japan, a situation I detailed in this space.  2021 update: he has graduated the Japan minor leagues into the majors at this point but has not found his foothold there yet.
• Matt McLain: 2B Calif HS. 1st/25: Asked $3M, Arizona offered $2.6M didn’t budge, going to UCLA.  Update: picked 17th overall in the 2021 draft and signed for $4.63M.
• JT Ginn: RHP Miss HS. 1st/30th: LA dodgers offered $2.4M, asking $2.9M, going to Mississippi State.  Update: drafted 2nd round/52nd overall in 2020 draft, signed for $2.9M with the Mets in a well over-slot deal.  So two years later he got his asking number.
• Gunnar Hoglund: LHP Fla HS. 1supp/36: Pittsburgh didn’t like physical, low-balled and he declined. going to Ole Miss.  2021; was projected as a top 10 pick, hurt his arm, had TJ but still got drafted 19th overall by Toronto and signed for $3.25M.

McLean drastically improved his stock, Ginn got what he wanted, and Hoglund (despite his injury) got paid.  I already detailed why I think Stewart’s deal is smart.

Verdict: All four made the right decision.

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2017: 3 players did not sign

• Drew Rasmussen, RHP, Oregon State, 1s/31st overall. Failed to sign with Tampa, who (I guess) didn’t like his medicals.  He was coming back from TJ and only had a few weeks of action before the draft. Went 6th round in 2018 to Milwaukee in 2018
• Jack Conlon, RHP, Clements HS (Sugar Land, Texas). 4th round/128 overall. Failed to sign with Baltimore, went to Texas A&M.  Update: left TAMU, went to San Jacinto, then enrolled in Rice and sat out 2020.  However, he wasn’t on the 2021 roster, and its unclear where he’s playing at this point.
• Jo Jo Booker, RHP, Miller HS (Brewton, Ala.). 5th round/145 overall. failed to sign with LA Angels, with to South Alabama.  Was not drafted in 2020 or 2021 out of USA; unclear if he will return for a 5th season or if he is done.

Two players who ended up playing themselves out of any bonus dollars.  Rasmussen didn’t turn down the Rays as much as they refused to tender him a contract … they must have tendered him something because they got a comp pick in 2018 draft.  So he turned down 40% of first round money in 2017 to sign an under-slot deal in the 6th round of 2018 ($135k, just $10k more than the non-top 10 rounds minimum).  I’d say this was a bad move by the player unless Tampa flat out refused to pay a dollar.

Verdict: 1 worsened his draft position, 2 missed out on any draft money.

2016: 2 players did not sign

• Nick Lodolo: 1S/41st overall; LHP from Damien HS in California. failed to sign with Pittsburgh, went to TCU instead, draft eligible in 2019.  In 2021, drafted 7th overall, signed for $5.43M.
• Tyler Buffett: 7th/217 overall; RHP, failed to sign with Houston. returned to Oklahoma State, drafted in 6th round in 2017 and signed with Cincinnati

Lodolo went to school (an arm-shredder program in TCU even) and went from 41st overall to 7th overall, with probably 3x the bonus.  Furthermore, by 2021 he was one of the best pitching prospects in the game.  Meanwhile Buffett improved his draft position one round by going back to school.

Verdict: 1 drastically improved his draft pick and money, 1 improved his draft position one round.

2015: 6 guys did not sign.

• Kyle Funkhouser: 1st/35th overall: RHP from Louisville, failed to sign with LA Dodgers, turning down an above-slot $2M. 4th rounder in 2016, signed with Detroit.
• Brady Singer, 2nd/56th overall: RHP Florida HS. failed to sign with Toronto, went to Florida and was 1st rounder in 2018, signed with Kansas City
• Jonathan Hughes, 2nd/68th overall: RHP Georgia HS. failed to sign with Baltimore, went to Georgia Tech and not even drafted in 2018…
• Kyle Cody, 2nd/73rd overall: RHP U Kentucky. failed to sign with Minnesota, drafted in 6th round in 2016 and signed with Texas
• Nicholas Shumpert, 7th/220th overall. SS Colorado HS. failed to sign with Detroit. Went to San Jacinto CC, drafted in 28th round 2016 by Atlanta and signed.
• Kep Brown, 10th/311 overall. RF South Carolina HS, failed to sign with LA Dodgers. went to Juco, then to UNC-Wilmington, not drafted in 2018.

Funkhouser was the biggest “whoops” here; a poor spring took him from his pre-season top 10 draft position all the way out of the first round, but he still demanded upper 1st round money.  He didn’t get it … and then fell to the 4th round the next year.  That was a big fail.  Singer clearly improved on his 2nd round status by going to college.    Cody slipped from being a 2nd rounder to a 6th rounder.  The other three guys drastically fell on draft boards; one of them going from a 10th rounder to not even being drafted.

Verdict: 1 improved, 5 hurt draft stock

2014: 6 failed to sign

• Brady Aiken: 1/1 overall, RHP from San Diego HS. failed to sign with Houston, went to IMG Academy in FL, drafted 1/17 by Cleveland
• Andrew Suarez: 2nd/57 overall LHP from UMiami, failed to sign with Washington. Drafted 2nd round/61st overall in 2015 by San Francisco
• Trevor Megill; 3rd/104th overall RHP from Loyola Marymount. failed to sign with Boston, drafted 7th/207 in 2015 draft and signed with San Diego
• Jacob Nix: 5th/136 RHP from Los Alomitos HS; couldn’t sign when Tampa lost bonus money, sued, FA, signed with San Diego
• Zack Zehner: 7th/204 OF from Cal Poly, failed to sign with Toronto. Drafted 18th round 2015 and signed with NYY
• Austin Byler, 9th/274 1B from nevada-Reno. failed to sign with Washington, drafted 11th round in 2015 and signed with Arizona

Aiken became quite the rarity; the first #1 overall baseball pick to fail to sign in 30  years.    But his lack of signing cascaded and cost the Astros both their 5th rounder Nix and another player later on thanks to the new draft rules on bonus pools; Nix ended up being declared a FA in a face-saving move by MLB so as not to admit that their new bonus cap circumvention rules were BS.  Aiken had no where to go but down from 1-1 so he obviously cost himself money.  The others all fell, if only slightly in Suarez’s case.

Verdict: 1 didn’t count, 5 lowered draft stock

2013: 8 failed to sign

• Phil Bickford: 1/10 RHP California HS. Toronto failed to sign. went to Southern Nevada juco, drafted 1/18 by SF and signed.
• Matt Krook 1s/35 LHP calif HS. Miami failed to sign, went to Oregon State, drafted 4th round by SF in 2016
• Ben DeLuzio 3rd/80 SS from Fla HS. Miami failed to sign. Went to Florida State, played 4 years … undrafted out of college, NDFA with Arizona
• Ben Holmes, 5th /151 LHP Oregon State. Philly failed to sign. went 9th round in 2014
• Jason Monda 6th/181 OF Washington State. Philly failed to sign … then accused him of NCAA violations. he wasn’t drafted again and quit to go to Med school
• Stephen Woods 6th/188 RHP NY HS: Tampa failed to sign, went to Suny-Albany, drafted 8th round 2016 by SF and signed
• Dustin DeMuth 8th/230 3B from Indiana, Minnesota failed to sign, became 5th rounder in 2014 and signed with Milwaukee
• Ross Kivett 10th/291 2B from kansas State. Cleveland failed to sign, became 6th rounder in 2014 and signed with Detroit

Bickford fell 8 slots year over  year but still fell.   DeMuth and Kivett both improved their stock.  The rest fell, drastically in some cases.

Verdict: 2 improved, 6 fell

2012: 8 failed to sign

• Mark Appel 1/8 RHP Stanford by Pittsburgh. failed to sign, was 1/1 in 2013 with Houston
• Teddy Stankiewicz 2/75 RHP from Texas Hs. failed to sign with Mets, went Juco, 2/45 in 2013 by Boston
• Alec Rash, 2/95 by Philadelphia from IA HS. went to Missouri, 2015 drafted in 23rd round by Washington but still didn’t sign; quit baseball and started playing NCAA basketball
• Kyle Twomey, 3/106 LHP Calif HS Oakland. Drafted 13th round 3 yrs later out of USC by Chicago Cubs.
• Brandon Thomas 4/136 OF from Ga Tech; didn’t sign with Pittsburgh, drafted 8th round one year later and signed with NYY
• Colin Poche 5/162 LHP texas h s. failed to sign with Baltimore, went to Dallas Baptist, undrafted Jr year, drafted 14th round 2016 by Arizona
• Nick Halamandaris 8/251 1B Calif HS. failed to sign with Seattle, played 4 years at cal, undrafted jr and Sr year, NDFA with Seattle, played one season
• L.J. Mazzilli 9/280 2B from UConn. 4th rounder in 2013 signed with NY Mets

Appel managed to improve from 8th overall to 1st overall.  Stankiewicz also improved his stock about a round’s worth.  Mazzilli improved from a 9th rounder to a 4th rounder.  The others all fell.

Verdict: 3 up, 5 down.

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Summary: of the 37 players who failed to sign:

• 7 too early to tell yet (7 hs, 0 coll)
• 22 hurt their draft stock by failing to sign (12 HS, 10 coll)
• 7 improved their draft stock.  (1 HS, 6 coll).  Of those who improved:
  • Two improved one round (1 HS, 1 coll) HS kid was Brady Singer
  • Two improved slightly within the same round (2 coll): Mark Appel, Stankiewicz
  • One went from 8th round to 5th round (1 coll)
  • One went from 10th round to 6th round (1 coll)
  • One went from a 9th rounder to a 4th rounder. (1 coll)
• 1 didn’t really count b/c of the Houston 2014 draft bonus shenanigans (Jacob Nix, HS)

So there you have it.  7 of 37 turned down money and look like they slightly made out (19%).   22/37 (60%) did not … and in some cases clearly cost themselves millions of dollars.  And even those 7 who did improve their ranking … not one of them in my opinion drastically improved their stock by going to college.  In fact, you can make the argument that getting drafted in the 8th round in one year, playing another year in college and then going in the 5th round probably *hurts* a player’s pro prospects because now he’s a year older versus his peers and has lost a year of pro development time.  A 22 yr old college senior draftee is already “old for the level” until he gets to at least Low-A, which is no guarantee even in his second pro year.

Now, has it ever worked out for a player to turn down significant 1st round money?  Yeah a couple times; Mark Appel gambled and improved his stock just before the new CBA took hold; in fact he managed to go 1-1 despite being a college senior with zero leverage.  Garrett Cole also made out by going to school.  So did a few others in the pre-2012 CBA eras.   But its a rarity; I’ve got another post that goes over these and some of the biggest nightmares for a later date.

Food for thought.

Third in our set of Draft class Reviews for the 2016 season.  First was the 2016 class, then the 2015 class.

Web links to use while reading:

• Stats are pulled from milb.com and/or fangraphs.com; put the player name into the search bar to get his seasonal stats
• The MLB.com Draft Tracker (which I believe is the best draft tracker out there) is the best place to get draft class information.
• The Big Board and the Draft Tracker are the goto resources for prospects for any Nats fan.
• More obscure stats on players are sometimes found at places like thebaseballcube.com, perfectgame.org, their college websites, twitter accounts for the players, and good old fashioned deep-dive googling.
• My historical list of Nats prospect rankings, updated for all 2016 mid-season rankings.

With out further ado…

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Round 1: Erick Fedde RHP (starter) COL jr from UNLV.  8-5 with a 3.12 ERA in 23 games (22 starts) across 2 levels.  123/29 K/BB in 121 IP.  1.21 combined whip, 3.22 fip and .316 babip in Potomac.  Fedde began the year in the Potomac rotation and struggled in his first 6-7 starts.  Then something clicked; from late May through his eventual promotion to AA in early august, he threw 10 straight starts giving up 0 or 1 earned runs, driving his ERA down from somewhere in the 6.60 range in May to a sub 3.00 ERA for the year in High-A.  His final Potomac start may have been his best: 10 strikeouts, 5 hits and 1 unearned run in 7 innings.  In his limited time in AA, he had one blow-out but was other wise also solid (in his last start of the season he had 12 strikeouts in 6 innings).  Fedde looks completely back to his first round projection form and may quickly add his name to the list of guys in AAA pushing for a promotion to the majors.   Trending up.

Round 2: Andrew Suarez LHP (starter) COL jr  from Miami (FL).  Did not sign: 2nd round signee for San Francisco in 2015.  Spent most of 2016 starting for SF’s AA team in Richmond and looked solid.  He may need another year in AA.

Round 3: Jakson Reetz, C  Norris HS (NE).  Slashed .230/.346/.357 splitting time at C in Hagerstown.  79/38 K/BB, 4homers, 4SBs.  Reetz’ first foray into full-season ball did not result in appreciably better results all around at the plate.  He improve his slugging percentage with more XBH, but his average remains poor.  79 Ks in 283 ABs is a hefty percentage.  This was his age 20 season, playing in Low-A, and there’s not a ton of competition for the High-A catcher job next year, so he likely moves on up, but i’m a bit down on him at this point.  Perhaps unfairly.  Truth is, he got a big bonus and the team will give him plenty of room to grow.  Trending down.

Round 4: Robbie Dickey, RHP (reliever) from Blinn College (TX). 2-0, 3.48 ERA for two levels relieving.  26/18 K/BB in 20 2/3rds innings.  1.89 whip, 5.60 fip, .345 babip while in Hagerstown.  Dickey started the season in Short-A, his third successive year in Auburn.  This time though he forced his way up, featuring as a reliever now instead of a starter, giving up 1 hit in 8 innings and quickly getting pushed up to Hagerstown.  Once there, he quickly got hurt and when he returned his control left him; he walked 15 but struck out 15 in 12 2/3 low-A innings.  He now has 46 walks in 78 professional innings and we may begin wondering when he’s going to put things together.  2017 is a make-or-break season for Dickey; he’s going to be (believe it or not) rule-5 eligible after next season and he’s yet to come close to mastering Low-A.  I’m guessing he’s in the Hagerstown bullpen and as an upper round pick will be given a few more chances before the team cuts bait.   Trending down.

Round 5: Drew Van Orden RHP (starter) COL sr from Duke.  Released 3/16/16.  Now this kind of surprised me.  No he wasn’t a dominant swing and miss guy in 2015 (47 Ks in 92 IP) but he gave the team a bunch of innings at a 3.61 ERA clip.  I guess he’s a victim of the pitcher-heavy drafts of this time frame.  He’s also a victim of being a low bonus, low investment senior sign.

Round 6: Austen Williams RHP (starter) COL jr from Texas State.  Went 5-13 with a 5.45 ERA in 26 starts for High-A and AA.  78/48 K/BB in 140 1/3 innings, 1.74 whip, 5.00 fip and .339 babip while in AA.  Williams was in the opening day AA rotation after a stellar 2015 but was demoted back to High-A after two months of AA struggles.  Once back in High-A, he couldn’t repeat his 2015 success there and got hit hard.  His Potomac ERA was 3 points higher this year than it was last year.  His 2015 season put him on the prospect map (around 20th on Nats prospect lists) and his 2016 season has caused his name to vanish.  Now what?  I guess you start him back in AA again and hope that the 2nd time around is better.  Trending down.

Round 7: Dale “D.K.” Carey OF (CF) COL sr from Miami (FL).  Slashed .209/.341/.331 while playing all three OF positions for Potomac.  84/63 K/BB ratio in 326 ABs, 7 homers, 5 SBs.  A ton of walks jacked up his OBP and helped off set his poor BA in High-A this year.  Carey’s problem is that the OF spots are scarce the higher you go.  He played along side the best hitting prospect in our system (Victor Robles) and 2015 2nd round pick Andrew Stevenson has already passed him by.  He may be victim of a numbers game in 2017, all the more so since he was signed for a relative pittance as a senior.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see him get cut loose at the end of spring training 2017.  Trending down.

Round 8: Jeff Gardner, LF COL sr from Louisville.  Released 6/6/16.  As predicted, Gardner failed to make Hagerstown and then failed to prove he could earn an Auburn job and was released once the 2016 signings came in.

Round 9: Austin Byler, 1B COL jr for Nevada (Reno).  Did not sign: became an 11th round by Arizona in 2015.  He ended 2016 with Arizona’s high-A Visalia team after serving a PED suspension that cost him the first two months of the season.

Round 10: Matthew Page, RF/1B COL sr  from Oklahoma Baptist U.  Slashed .267/.348/.419 while earning a promotion from Low-A to High-A.  99/53 K/BB in 415 ABs.  11 homers, 3 SBs.  Yes that’s a lot of Ks.  But Page is turning into a nice little pick up.  He had an OPS above .800 and slugged 10 homers in 88 games for Hagerstown before earning a promotion to Potomac.  Playing 1B exclusively this year (he was drafted as a RF) he really struggled power-wise once he got to High-A (just 3 XBH in 30 games), but he earned the promotion in the first place.  I don’t think there’s anyone to push him off the position to start next year at Potomac … but he’s gotta rebound and show he can hit in High-A like he did in Low-A.  Trending Steady.

Round 11: Weston Davis RHP (starter) Manatee HS (FL).  Went 3-6 with a 2.67 ERA in 11 starts for Auburn.  33/11 K/BB in 54 IP, 0.93 whip, 3.07 fip, .236 babip.  Davis missed all of 2015 after signing out of HS in 2014, was in the Auburn opening day rotation and stayed there the whole season.  He turned 20 during the season but more than held his own against the older competition.  He looks pretty promising after missing a whole year and barely pitching his draft year.  My one nit is his K rate; just 33 in 54 IP.  He should be in the Hagerstown rotation to start 2017.  Trending Up.

Round 12: Domenick Mancini RHP (reliever) from Miami-Dade CC South.  Released 6/27/15.

Round 13: Austin Davidson, 3B COL jr  from Pepperdine.  Slashed a healthy .272/.377/.443 between Low- and  High-A in 2016.  46/49 K/BB ratio in 316 ABs, 9 hrs and 5 SB.   Davidson was stranded in XST to start the year then returned to Hagerstown in late April only to play sparingly until June.   From there he played pretty consistently both for Hagerstown and then for Potomac (he got promoted in early July for the 2nd Half).  He had solid numbers and a great OBP in both land a solid enough slugging even without a ton of homers.  He also had more walks than strikeouts, which I believe is the first time I’ve seen that for any hitter profiled in these posts.  His problem seems to be positional; he’s listed as a “DH” on Milb.com, was drafted as a 3B but played in the field sparingly this year (some 2B, some 3B).  I’d guess he’s pegged for a 2B slot, but then that has him competing with the generic “middle infielder” type who is dotted all over these low-minors rosters.  Nonetheless, he’s not going to get cut when he’s one of the few guys posting .800 OPS figures in the system, so i’m trending him up.  I figure he’ll do the Potomac to Harrisburg thing in 2017 assuming he continues to be a tough out.  Trending up.

Round 14: James Bourque RHP (starter) COL jr from Michigan.  5-6 with a 5.03 ERA in 17 games/13 starts for Hagerstown.  55/23 K/BB in 68ip.  1.53 whip, 4.89 fip, .327 babip.  Bourque missed all of 2015 with injury and then hung around XST until early June.  From there he featured in the Hagerstown rotation for the most part, but his role seemed to be “spot starter” instead of rotation guy.   He didn’t have the best numbers, no two ways around it.  Maybe it was rust.  I’m guessing he’ll get another shot at the Hagerstown rotation in 2017 but may be a release candidate.  Trending Down.

Round 15: Ryan Ripken 1B COL soph from Indian River State (FL).  Slashed just .201/.241/.254 between Low-A and Short-A.  73/20 K/BB in 374 ABs, 3HR, 1SB.  Ripken started the year in Hagerstown but hit just .190 and got dumped back to Short-A.  He’s now got three pro years under his belt and is hitting just .205 for his career, mostly in short-season ball.  Its hard to see him continuing to get chances even given his family pedigree.   Trending down.

Round 16: Cole Plouck LHP (reliever) from Pima CC (AZ): Released on 6/29/15.

Round 17: Alec Keller CF COL sr from Princeton by way of Richmond VA and Freeman HS.  Slashed .285/.338/.374 playing a full season (mostly in LF) for Potomac.  78/35 K/BB, 3homers, 14SB.  Keller more or less replicated his High-A numbers posted in the 2nd half of 2015; solid average, not a ton of power.  Keller’s issue is that the tryouts for the AA outfield are looking tough; he may be hard pressed to get a promotion in a corner OF spot without any power.  I’m guessing he makes AA as a 4th outfielder in 2017.  As I noted last year though, he’s performing great for a senior sign from an Ivy league school.  Trending Steady.

Round 18: McKenzie Mills,  LHP (starter), Sprayberry Senior HS (GA). 4-5, 3.71 ERA in 12 starts for Short-A.   46/28 K/BB in 53 1/3 innings, 1.33 whip, 4.03 fip, .269 babip.  Mills was the #2 starter in Auburn to start the season … and was the #2 starter at the end of the season.  He posted a solid season; not awe-inspiring but pretty good for a guy who doesn’t turn 21 until next month.  He addressed the issues that plagued him in 2015 and his hits/inning figure looks great.  I’d like to see how he does in full season ball and project him in the Hagerstown rotation in 2017.  Trending Steady.

Round 19: Clay Williamson,  OF (RF) COL jr from Cal State Fullerton.  Released 6/29/15.

Round 20: Bryan Langlois, RF COL jr from Pepperdine: Apparently retired Jan 2015 (per the Big Board), but he doesn’t have an official transaction listed in MILB.com.  He didn’t play for us after 2014 despite not being officially released.

Round 21: Connor Bach, LHP COL sr from Virginia Military Institute by way of Centreville HS in Clifton.  Went 0-1 with a 7.30 ERA in 5 relief appearances in Low-A and then was released on 6/1/16.   This one was another shocker for me; he was in Hagerstown’s rotation the whole of 2015 and was good; what happened to him in 2016?   Miami picked him up 6 days after we released him but he was similarly bad for them and they cut him loose a month later.  Such a strange set of circumstances.

Round 22: Daniel Salters, C COL soph  from Dallas Baptist: did not sign: drafted by Cleveland in the 13th round of 2015 draft.  He was in High-A and AA for Cleveland this year.

Round 23: Chris Riopedre, SS COL jr, East Tennessee State.  Released on 6/25/15.

Round 24: Kyle Simmons RHP (reliever) COL jr Texas Lutheran U.  Released on 5/3/16 after not appearing in 2015 and failing to make a full season squad in 2016.

Round 25: Kyle Bacak C COL sr  from Texas Christian U.  Released 1/20/15.

Round 26: Chase McDowell RHP (reliever) COL 5S  Rice (TX): Retired 4/9/15

Round 27: Conor Keniry SS COL sr Wake Forest U.  Released on 4/2/16 after playing sparingly in 2015 and failing to make either Hagerstown or Potomac as a backup infielder.

Round 28: Kida De La Cruz, RHP (reliever) from Volunteer State CC (TN). Released on 3/26/16 after throwing just 19 innings in two seasons in the GCL.

Round 29: DJ Jauss, RHP COL 5S from U. Mass. Amherst: Released 3/26/15.

Round 30: Tyler Mapes RHP COL sr from Tulane U. (LA).  went 12-10 with a 3.19 ERA for AA Harrisburg.  25 games/25 starts.  78/39 K/BB ratio in 155 innings.  1.25 whip, 4.22 fip, .283 babip.  Mapes was the #2 starter in Harrisburg all  year and continues to be a fantastic draft pickup for this team.  Who would have thought a 30th rounder college senior who probably signed for a few thousand dollars would be on the brink of the AAA roster?  He doesn’t have the best strikeout numbers, which may define a glass ceiling for him, but he should continue to matriculate to AAA next year.  That being said, its crowded at the top, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s back in AA.   Trending up.

Round 31: Samuel Johns RHP COL 5S U. Evansville (IN).  Released 1/12/16.  What was surprising about this release was the timing; why not let him compete in spring training for a Hagerstown spot?  The January release is an odd one.

The rest of the 2014 draft class was HS kids who were long shots to sign and a Juco kid in the 40th who already had a transfer agreement to a good baseball school; one more piece of evidence to perhaps shorten the draft to 35 or even 30 rounds?  Here’s a quick summary.

Round 32: Elliott Cary: CF Clackamas HS (OR): did not sign: honored commitment to Oregon State.    Started 24 games as a freshman but did not play in 2016 (injured?).
Round 33: Clay Casey: CF DeSoto Central HS (MS): did not sign: was initially set to attend Ole Miss, but then changed his mind and attended Northwest Mississippi CC to be draft eligible in 2015.  He didn’t get drafted though, so he then enrolled at the U. of Houston.  Update: things didn’t work out there, so he transferred to D2 Delta State University, where he had a successful 2017 season in what was his “junior” year.
Round 34: Evan Skoug: C Libertyville HS (IL): did not sign: honored commitment to TCU.  At TCU he has been a starter since day 1 and was named Freshman All-American.  As a sophomore he slashed .301/.390/.502 and was 2nd team all-conference.  I’d say its safe to say he has made himself some money in College.
Round 35: Tommy Doyle RHP Flint Hill School in Oakton: did not sign: honored commitment to Virginia.  At UVA, Doyle played an integral part in getting UVA out of the regional his freshman year but did little else for the team as UVA surprisingly won the CWS.  As a sophomore, he had a 5.07 ERA all told as he was convered from mid-week starter to “closer” towards the end of the season.  I’m guessing he’s back in the rotation for his junior year as the Cavaliers are a bit short on starters.
Round 36: John Henry Styles, LHP Episcopal HS (TX): did not sign: honored commitment to Stanford.  There, he’s had almost no playing time, getting 5 appearances as a freshman and just one as a sophomore.
Round 37: Quinn Brodey, LHP Loyola HS (CA): did not sign: honored commitment to Stanford.  There he was a 2-way player as a freshman but moved to the OF as a sophomore, slashing .280/.302/.445 this year and being named All Pac-12.
Round 38: Stuart Fairchild RF Seattle Prep (WA): did not sign: honored commitment to Wake Forest.  As a sophomore this year he started every game and slashed .293/.403/.470.
Round 39: Jon Littell, OF Stillwater HS (OK): did not sign: honored commitment to OK State.  As a sophomore this year, he slashed .258/.332/.343.
Round 40: Jacob Hill LHP JUCO Orange Coast Coll. (CA): did not sign: transferred to U San Diego, then was drafted by Cleveland in the 32nd round of 2015 and also did not sign.  He went back to San Diego for his senior year, only threw 8 innings in 2016 and was not drafted.

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Trending Summary:

• Trending Up (4): Fedde, Davis, Davidson, Mapes
• Trending Steady (3): Page, Keller, Mills
• Trending Down (6): Reetz, Dickey, Williams, Carey, Bourque, Ripken
• Released/Retired (15): Van Orden, Gardner, Mancini, Plouck, Williamson, Langlois, Bach, Riopedre, Simmons, Bacak, McDowell, Keniry, De La Cruz, Jauss, Johns
• Did Not Sign in 2014 (12): Suarez, Byler, Salters, Cary, Casey, Skoug, Doyle, Styles, Brodey, Fairchild, Littell, Hill

Executive Summary

At this point just 7 of the 40 players are trending in what can inarguably be considered a positive fashion; 15 of the 28 players signed have already been cut loose and another 6 of them are  heading that way.  Is this destined to be a one-player draft?  Who else besides Fedde is projecting as a major leaguer?

Following in the footsteps of the stat review of the 2015 draft class, here’s the same analysis for the 2014 draft class, looking at their 2015 numbers and making some snap judgements.

I last did this project in 2013 (got too busy this time last fall at a new client), so this is the first time I’ve really run through the 2014 draft class in this detail.  In fact, getting into the lower picks I don’t even recognize some of the names, having only really focused on the top 10 guys at the time.  Its definitely interesting to see where they stand one year on.

Web links to use while reading:

• Stats are pulled from milb.com and/or fangraphs.com; put the player name into the search bar to get his seasonal stats
• The MLB Draft Tracker (which I believe is the best draft tracker out there) is the best place to get draft class information.
• The Big Board and the Draft Tracker are the goto resources for prospects for any Nats fan.
• Baseball-reference.com’s draft database
• My working XLS in Google for all this data.

Unlike the 2015 draft class analysis, we’ve already shedded a large number of 2014 draftees.  And mostly we have full seasons worth of work on which to judge.

Without further ado:

Round 1: Erick Fedde RHP COL jr from UNLV.  4-1, 2.57 ERA in Short-A Auburn with 36/8 in 35ip (8 starts), 2.60 fip, .346 babip.  He then got bumped up to Hagerstown where he threw another 29 innings across 6 starts with lesser stats (1-2, 4.34 ERA).  A good  post-Tommy  John debut season for Fedde, despite the rather restrictive innings limits put on him; he was limited to just 5ip per start for a total of 64ip on the season between two levels.  I’m not sure why they were so restrictive: he threw many more innings in his college career (90, 96 and then 76 before getting injured in 2014).  I guess the theory was to limit him to half his pre-injury innings limit first  year back, with a goal of getting back to that level of production in 2016.  You Look for him to be in the Potomac rotation on perhaps a 90-100 innings limit for 2016 (or, exactly what Giolito did his 2nd year back from TJ surgery in 2014).  Trending up.

Round 2: Andrew Suarez LHP COL jr  from Miami (FL).  Did not sign: returned to Miami for his senior year where he led his team to the CWS before getting shelled in Omaha.  Drafted in the 2nd round again, slightly later than the Nats did and signed for slot for San Francisco.  He did not significantly improve his draft position by playing college another year, but may have gotten more cash (we do not know what bonus amount he declined in 2014).

Round 3: Jakson Reetz, C  Norris HS (NE).  Slashed just .212/.326/.248  between ShortA/GCL with 37/13 k/bb in 113 Abs, 0homers 3sb just 36 games.  A curious season for Reetz: why was he at short-A to begin with?  He seemed to play mostly half and half time with an older DSL grad catcher and seemed outmatched in the league; why not just bring him back to Florida for another year of seasoning?  Definitely a set-back year for Reetz.  What do they do with him next year?  Try him at Low-A after doing poorly in Short-A?  Have him repeat the rookie league for the third time?  Where’s the power?  a .248 slugging percentage is incredibly weak.  Trending Down.

Round 4: Robbie Dickey, RHP  from Blinn College (TX).  0-3, 6.65 ERA starting in Hagerstown and getting demoted to Auburn.  16/17 k/bb in 23ip (6 starts).  He was incredibly wild and then didn’t pitch after 7/25/15, accumulating just 23 IP on the year.  Was he hurt?  There was no record of a D/L trip, just an assignment back to XST after a while.  All in all, a pretty disappointing season for our 4th round pick.  Where does he go from here?  Is the team just being too impatient with him, yanking him from Hagerstown after just a few innings?  Trending Down.

Round 5: Drew Van Orden RHP COL sr from Duke.  5-5, 3.61 ERA  for Hagerstown with 47/34 K/BB in 92ip (15 starts), 4.33 fip, .254 babip.  Not a bad season for an under-slot senior sign, who’s clearly sticking around.  He was mostly a spot starter for Hagerstown this year, getting a bunch of starts during the turmoil of the rotation.  He ended the season on the DL after giving the team 92 decent innings.  His FIP is a bit weak thanks to overall lucky BABIP contact but he has given no reason not to put himself into the discussion for that same role in Potomac next year.  Trending Steady.

Round 6: Austen Williams RHP COL jr from Texas State.  12-8, 2.58 ERA while making the jump from Hagerstown to Potomac (with one AAA spot-start).  106/33 K/BB in 139.2 ip (25 starts).  He was 8-1 for Hagerstown before getting bumped up and continued to be effective all year.  Great season for Williams, putting his name on the map in the organization and starting to get some notice in the prospect rankings (he was #14 in the farm system in J.P. Schwartz‘s topprospectalert post-2015 rankings and in the upper 20s for Scout.com and MLB.com).  In the mix for a AA rotation spot in 2016.  Trending up.

Round 7: Dale Carey CF COL sr from Miami (FL).  Slashed .234/.340/.345 for Hagerstown with 91/66 K/BB in 415ABs, 8 homers, 10/9 SB/CS playing CF.  Another under-slot/cost savings senior sign who is sticking around, Carey showed some power but not great overall numbers playing CF this year.  He’ll be pushed out of CF by budding uber-prospect Victor Robles unless Carey can earn a promotion, which may be hard to do.  Needs to show a better hit tool if he wants to keep a job.  Trending Steady.

Round 8: Jeff Gardner, LF COL sr from Louisville.  Slashed .226/.296/.345  in Hagerstown with 90/38 K/BB in 403ABs, 5 homers, 8/7 SB/CS playing LF.  Unlike his fellow senior sign and outfield partner Carey, Gardner is stuck in the unathletic corner and isn’t showing nearly the power or bat that he needs to stick around.  He’ll get pushed out of a corner job in Hagerstown for 2016 and may lose out in a numbers game.  Trending down.

Round 9: Austin Byler, 1B COL jr for Nevada (Reno).  Did not sign: returned to Nevada for his senior season, led his team into the CWS playoffs and showed a ton of potential .. .but slipped out of the top10 rounds.  He was the first pick of the non-bonus controlled rounds, in the 11th by Arizona, meaning his fortunes dipped slightly by staying in college another year.  One last unfortunate footnote; a quick google search shows that Byler was suspended for PED-usage at the end of the 2015 season.  Whoops.

Round 10: Matthew Page, RF COL sr  from Oklahoma Baptist U.   Slashed .270/.362/.384 between ShortA and LowA, with 54/39 K/BB in 263ABs, 2 homers, 6 sbs.  Not a bad return for a $30k bonus on a college senior from a small school.   He isn’t lighting the world on fire, but he’s keeping his head above water.  He’ll compete with his fellow senior sign OFs Carey and Gardner for a spot in the 2016 Potomac outfield.  Trending Steady.

Round 11: Weston Davis RHP Manatee HS (FL).  He did not play (injured) in 2015.  He had just 16 IP in all of 2014 for the GCL Nats.  No word on the nature of the injury, but 16IP in two pro years is never a good start to a career.  Trending down.

Round 12: Domenick Mancini RHP from Miami-Dade CC South.  He was released 6/27/15; no 2015 stats after 14.2 IP in 2014.  He lost out in the numbers game thanks to the massive influx of college arms competing for Short-A roster spots.

Round 13: Austin Davidson, 3B COL jr  from Pepperdine.  Slashed just .202/.302/.314 for Hagerstown with 47/26 K/BB in 258 Abs, 6 homers, 6/7 sb/cs playing 2B and 3B.  His bat definitely took a step back in Low-A and there’s a glut of middle infielders in the 2015 class.  He may not be long for the organization.  Trending down.

Round 14: James Bourque RHP COL jr from Michigan.  dnp – injured; no IP in 2015.  He was in the Auburn rotation for 2014 and pitched adequately, but never got started in 2015.  Lets hope he makes it back to compete for a job in 2016.  Trending Steady.

Round 15: Ryan Ripken 1B COL soph from Indian River State (FL) Slashed .250/.296/.391 with 15/5 K/BB in 92ABs while repeating the Gulf Coast league.  A curious case; why so little playing time at age 22, repeating the GCL?  The team had all spring to evaluate him yet put a senior nominal slot signee (David Kerian) at 1B in Auburn instead of Ripken.  Is he hurt?  Is he just being rostered because of his name?  Trending down.

Round 16: Cole Plouck LHP from Pima CC (AZ): went 1-0, 1.80 ERA in a 5 inning stint in Auburn… and then was released on 6/29/15.  Why??  Such a strange case; why send him to Vermont if you’re going to release him a few days later?  Understood if he gets lit up maybe, but it just seems odd timing.  It does not look like he’s picked up elsewhere, so perhaps it was a “retirement.”

Round 17: Alec Keller CF COL sr from Princeton.  Slashed .294/.341/.374 while getting promoted from LowA->HighA.   63/30 K/BB in 425 Abs, 0 homers, 11/9 Sb/cs playing CF.  Not bad for a most unlikely college senior sign.  If he can keep the average and OBP up and perhaps improve his SB success rate, he could put himself in a pretty good position.  Trending up.

Round 18: McKenzie Mills,  LHP, Sprayberry Senior HS (GA).  0-5, 7.27 ERA  with 24/28 K/BB in 34.2 ip across two levels.  He posted a 4.46 fip, .405 babip  while in Short-A then got dropped back to the Rookie league.   Rough season for Mills, who couldn’t make the jump to short-A, then struggled when back in rookie ball.  Just way too many walks to be effective, but likely hangs around a bit longer since he can just hang out in XST and try to pick back up on next year’s short season squads again.  Trending down.

Round 19: Clay Williamson,  RF COL jr from Cal State Fullerton.  Slashed .211/.318/.316  in 5 Auburn games and then was released 6/29/15 as the 2015 signees started rolling in.   Never really impressed in 2014 (hitting .236 in short season) and may wish he had stayed in school instead of signing as a 19th round junior draftee.

Round 20: Bryan Langlois, RF COL jr from Pepperdine: no 2015 stats, was in XST the entire season.  He had 141 mostly non-descript ABs in Auburn last  year, then never got assigned this year.  But, he wasn’t released either; is he injured?  Converting to a new position?  Trending down.

Round 21: Connor Bach, LHP COL sr from Virginia Military Institute.  Posted a 6-4, 3.85 ERA with 106/69 K/BB in 110 ip (20 starts) in Low A as a member of the rotation for much of the season.  4.08 fip, .311 babip.  Not too shabby for a 21st round senior sign from a relatively unknown baseball school.  Perhaps too many walks, but nearly a K/inning in full-season ball portends well for his future.  At the very least he could move up as a lefty specialist.  Trending up.

Round 22: Daniel Salters, C COL soph  from Dallas Baptist: did not sign: returned to DBU for his junior season and then was drafted by Cleveland in the 13th round of 2015 draft.  He had a good 2015 short-season, so going back to school definitely helped his career.

Round 23: Chris Riopedre, SS COL jr, East Tennessee State.  Went 1-4 in one game for Auburn this year and then was released on 6/25/15.  He only hit .214 in Auburn last  year, and the team drafted a ton of MIF players in 2015, but it does seem harsh to make the kid go all the way to Vermont just to release him after *one game*.

Round 24: Kyle Simmons RHP COL jr Texas Lutheran U.  Assigned to GCL but dnp – injured and no IP in 2015.  He had just a 5.03 ERA in limited innings last year in the GCL and now missed this year.  As a small college junior draftee, he’ll be entering his 3rd pro season with just 19 poor innings of rookie ball performance; hard to see him making an impact.  Trending down.

Round 25: Kyle Bacak C COL sr  from Texas Christian U.  He went 4-28 for Auburn last year and was released 1/20/15.

Round 26: Chase McDowell RHP COL 5S  Rice (TX): retired 4/9/15 after putting up a 4.50 ERA in 28IP for Auburn last year.  If I had to guess, he probably lost out on a full season job, was looking at sitting around in XST until June and (as an older guy, a 5th year senior) may have looked at the guys in camp who were all 4-5  years younger and called it quits.  I had a friend who did exactly this: graduated a 4-year program as a highly decorated college player, then was sent to short-season ball.  He got all the way to Idaho or some random place and looked at his teammates: he said they were all just as good as he was but all 3 years younger and mostly Dominican.  He had a college degree, a job waiting for him and came to a quick realization that he could push for several years of below-minimum wage money looking at an uphill battle where his age worked against him, or he could just face reality and start his life.  You wonder how often this really happens.

Round 27: Conor Keniry SS COL sr Wake Forest U.  Slashed .250/.323/.310 while moving up from ShortA->LowA.  27/10 K/BB in 116ABs, 1hr, 3sbs as 2B.  Not bad; he was clearly the backup middle infielder “guy who can play any infield position in a pinch” guy for Hagerstown.  Can he stay in that role?  Maybe, maybe not.  He’ll have plenty of competition for that spot in 2016 thanks to a slew of 2B/SS draftees in 2015 plus rising DSL players.  Trending Steady.

Round 28: Kida De La Cruz, RHP from Volunteer State CC (TN).  Went 0-0, 5.43 ERA in just 1.2 IP for GCL in 2015.  But he has no injuries listed.  He threw 18 rather non descript innings for the GCL last year too.  Perhaps they just don’t bother with D/L postings for kids on teams based out of spring training facilities since the lines seem rather blurred between “XST” and “GCL.”  There were 4 or 5 guys this year who spent the entire year in “Extended Spring Training” or “To Be Determined” fashion, including a couple of very long-serving minor league arms (see the final column in the Big Board link).  Either way, De La Cruz is now 21, has 20 innings in GCL with more walks than strikeouts; hard to see him making an impact.  Trending down.

Round 29: DJ Jauss, RHP COL 5S from U. Mass. Amherst: was released 3/26/15 after getting hit hard in the GCL last season.  Just no room for a guy who is now 25 who couldn’t cut it in the rookie league.

Round 30: Tyler Mapes RHP COL sr from Tulane U. (LA).  Went 7-3, 2.23 ERA with 75/17 K/BB in 96.2 ip (8 starts) between  LowA->HighA, 2.78 fip, .324 babip.  Ended the year in Potomac’s rotation.  What a great result set for a 30th round college senior sign.  At one point he was even up in AA, though he had no appearances.  Good K/BB ratio, good peripherals.  Great find from the draft team.  Trending up.

Round 31: Samuel Johns RHP COL 5S U. Evansville (IN).  Went 3-4, 4.31 ERA between LowA and ShortA with 39/17 k/bb in 62.2 relief innings, 4.63 fip, .290 babip in lowA.  He struggled in LowA, but then dropped back to ShortA and was dominant.  Not great, but certainly not bad for a 31st round 5th year senior as compared to what has happened to other 5th year senior signs on this list.  Maybe not the best stuff, but has been effective.  My guess is that he either makes the Hagerstown team next spring or is cut loose, but the fact that he hung around this long gives him some more room to work with.  Trending Steady.

The rest of the 2014 draft class was HS kids who were long shots to sign and a Juco kid in the 40th who already had a transfer agreement to a good baseball school; one more piece of evidence to perhaps shorten the draft to 35 or even 30 rounds?  Here’s a quick summary.

Round 32: Cary, Elliott CF Clackamas HS (OR): did not sign: honored commitment to Oregon State.
Round 33: Casey, Clay CF DeSoto Central HS (MS): did not sign: honored commitment to Mississippi
Round 34: Skoug, Evan C Libertyville HS (IL): did not sign: honored commitment to TCU
Round 35: Doyle, Tommy RHP Flint Hill School (VA): did not sign: honored commitment to Virginia.  At UVA, Doyle played an integral part in getting UVA out of the regional but did not really factor after that.
Round 36: Styles, John Henry LHP Episcopal HS (TX): did not sign: honored commitment to Stanford
Round 37: Brodey, Quinn LHP Loyola HS (CA): did not sign: honored commitment to Stanford
Round 38: Fairchild, Stuart RF Seattle Prep (WA): did not sign: honored commitment to Wake Forest
Round 39: Littell, Jon OF Stillwater HS (OK): did not sign: honored commitment to OK State
Round 40: Hill, Jacob LHP JUCO Orange Coast Coll. (CA): did not sign: transferred to U San Diego, then was drafted by Cleveland in the 32nd round of 2015 but had no 2015 innings as far as I can tell.

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Trending Summary:

• Trending Up (5): Fedde, Williams, Keller, Bach, Mapes
• Trending Steady (6): Van Orden, Carey, Page, Bourque, Keniry, Johns
• Trending Down (10): Reetz, Dickey, Gardner, Davis, Davidson, Ripken, Mills, Langlois, Simmons, De La Cruz
• Did Not Sign in 2014 (12): Suarez, Byler, Salters, Cary, Casey, Skoug, Doyle, Styles, Brodey, Fairchild, Littell, Hill
• Released/Retired (7): Mancini, Plouck, Williamson, Riopedre, Bacak, McDowell, Jauss

Executive Summary

While I still think this draft was a failure for the lack of Suarez and Byler signings, we are seeing some great surprises from later picks Keller, Bach and Mapes.  Reetz and Dickey under-performance hurts the class too.  Fedde’s return was good, but he needs to make himself into a legit #3 starter prospect for me to start thinking more favorably about this class.  However, 19 out of 40 picks either never signed or are already gone after just one year, and another 10 are trending towards a release instead of production .. this can’t be good.  Lotta red in that trending summary.

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PS: I created an XLS to do this analysis; if you prefer, you can see my working XLS in Google for all this data which is also listed as a link to the right (2015 Stats for 2014 Draft Class); quick XLS below:

Round	Player/Pos	Level	2015 Level	2015 Basic Stats
1	Fedde, Erick RHP	COL jr	ShortA	4-1, 2.57 ERA
2	Suarez, Andrew LHP	COL jr	did not sign: returned to Miami
3	Reetz, Jakson C	HS	ShortA->GCL	.212/.326/.248
4	Dickey, Robbie RHP	JUCO	LowA->ShortA	0-3, 6.65 ERA
5	Van Orden, Drew RHP	COL sr	LowA	5-5, 3.61 ERA
6	Williams, Austen RHP	COL jr	LowA->HighA (with 1 AAA spot start)	12-8, 2.58 ERA
7	Carey, Dale “D.K.” CF	COL sr	LowA	.234/.340/.345
8	Gardner, Jeff LF	COL sr	LowA	.226/.296/.345
9	Byler, Austin 1B	COL jr	did not sign: returned to Nevada
10	Page, Matthew RF	COL sr	ShortA->LowA	.270/.362/.384
11	Davis, Weston RHP	HS	GCL (DL)	dnp – injured
12	Mancini, Domenick RHP	CC	released (2015)
13	Davidson, Austin 3B	COL jr	LowA	.202/.302/.314
14	Bourque, James RHP	COL jr	ShortA	dnp – injured
15	Ripken, Ryan 1B	COL soph	GCL	.250/.296/.391
16	Plouck, Cole LHP	CC	released (2015)	1-0, 1.80 ERA
17	Keller, Alec CF	COL sr	LowA->HighA	.294/.341/.374
18	Mills, McKenzie LHP	HS	ShortA->GCL	0-5, 7.27 ERA
19	Williamson, Clay RF	COL jr	released (2015)	.211/.318/.316
20	Langlois, Bryan RF	COL jr	XST	no 2015 stats
21	Bach, Connor LHP	COL sr	LowA	6-4, 3.85 ERA
22	Salters, Daniel C	COL soph	did not sign: returned to DBU
23	Riopedre, Chris SS	COL jr	released (2015)	.250/.250/.250
24	Simmons, Kyle RHP	COL jr	GCL (DL)	dnp – injured
25	Bacak, Kyle C	COL sr	released (2015)
26	McDowell, Chase RHP	COL 5S	retired (2015)
27	Keniry, Conor SS	COL sr	ShortA->LowA	.250/.323/.310
28	De La Cruz, Kida RHP	CC	GCL	0-0, 5.43 ERA
29	Jauss, DJ RHP	COL 5S	released (2015)
30	Mapes, Tyler RHP	COL sr	LowA->HighA	7-3, 2.23 ERA
31	Johns, Samuel RHP	COL 5S	ShortA->LowA	3-4, 4.31 ERA
32	Cary, Elliott CF	HS	did not sign: Oregon State
33	Casey, Clay CF	HS	did not sign: Mississippi
34	Skoug, Evan C	HS	did not sign: TCU
35	Doyle, Tommy RHP	HS	did not sign: Virginia
36	Styles, John Henry LHP	HS	did not sign: Stanford
37	Brodey, Quinn LHP	HS	did not sign: Stanford
38	Fairchild, Stuart RF	HS	did not sign: Wake Forest
39	Littell, Jon OF	HS	did not sign: OK State
40	Hill, Jacob LHP	JUCO	did not sign: U San Diego

Now that the June 2015 draft signing deadline has passed, here’s a quick review of all DC/MD/VA players who got drafted with their signing bonuses (if known), and if not signed where they’re presumably heading to school.

This post at MinorLeagueBall lists all the top 20 round draft picks who did NOT sign.  This list has a ton of 20th round+ guys who we’re depending on MiLB.com assignments.

Chelsea James just did a nice summary of the Nats draft class at NatsJournal.  I’ll do a separate post to that end later on.

Important Draft-related links for this post:

• MLB’s Awesome Draft Tracker; you can slice and dice the draft 10 different ways, search by schools and home states, etc.
• Official Draft Bonus Pool totals.  Astros have $17M (most).  Nats have 3rd least at $4.1M.
• MLB.com’s Draft Signing and Bonus tracker; note this only goes through the first 10 rounds; after that, the bonus figures are treated differently.

College Players with local ties

• Nathan Kirby LHP from UVA: went #40 (Supp 1st round) to Milwaukee.  Signed at the deadline for below slot value ($1.2M versus slot of $1.545M).
• Josh Sborz, RHP closer for UVA: went #74 (Supp 2nd round) to the Dodgers.  Signed at the deadline for below slot ($722k vs $827k).
• Taylor Clarke, who hails from Ashburn (Broad Run HS) went #76, first pick of the 3rd round to Arizona.  Signed for slot value of $801k.
• Mike Matuella, of Great Falls (Georgetown Prep) and Duke: #78, to Texas in the 3rd round.  Signed for huge overslot deal of $2M.
• Brandon Lowe: UMD infielder: 3rd round #87 overall to Tampa Bay.  Signed for $6k overslot ($697k); why $6,000 over slot?  weird figure.
• Alex Robinson: UMD’s ace Lefty went in the 5th round (#140 overall) to Minnesota.  Signed for $5k under-slot ($382k)
• Joe McCarthy, OF for UVA: 5th round, #148 overall to Tampa Bay.  Signed for slot value of $358k.
• Brandon Waddell UVA Saturday/Sunday starter: 5th round (#157) to Pittsburgh.  Signed for slightly underslot bonus of $315k.
• Jack Wynkoop of Virginia Beach (Cape Henry Collegiate HS), LHP starter for South Carolina: went in the 6th round to Colorado.  Signed for slot value of $298k.
• Michael Boyle: Radford Ace.  13th rounder to the Dodgers.  Signed for unknown figure, currently in Rookie/Pioneer League Ogden.
• Kevin Mooney: UMD closer: 15th rounder by the Nats.  Signed for unknown figure, currently in short-A Auburn.
• Kenny Towns; 3B from UVA and the 2011 All-Met player of the year from Lake Braddock, went in the 20th to the Angels.  Signed for unknown figure, currently in Rookie/Pioneer League Orem.
• Luke Willis, OF from George Mason and Oakton HS, in the 30th round to Kansas City.  Signed for unknown figure, currently in Rookie/Appalachian League Burlington.
• Josh Swirchak, a MIF from Division II Wilmington University via Osbourne Park HS in Manassas, Signed with St. Louis as an undrafted free agent after the 2015 draft.   Currently at short-A State College.

There were no significant college draftee non-signings from the area.

There are quite a few other college players from the many baseball-playing colleges in the area drafted past the 10th round; search the MLB draft tracker and select the state of Virginia for many more local college players.

Local Prep players of note:

• Jimmy Barnes, Deep Creek HS in Chesapeake; 11th rounder to the Angels.   Signed for unknown figure, currently in the Arizona Rookie League.
• Nic Enright RHP from Steward HS in Richmond: 19th rounder to the Mets.  Did Not Sign, as noted on MinorLeagueBall.com.  Will presumably honor his committment to Virginia Tech.
• Ljay Newsome of Chopticon (south of Waldorf): 26th rounder by Seattle.  Per his summer team’s twitter page, Newsome Signed with Seattle for an undisclosed amount.  Currently in the Arizona Rookie League.
• Nathan Trevillian, RHP from small Amherst County HS; 22nd rounder to the Pirates.  Signed for  unknown figure, currently in GCL.
• Stevie Mangrum, 3B from Western Albemarle HS in Charlottesville, 28th round pick by Boston.  Did Not Sign, will presumably honor his commitment to Virginia Tech.
• Cody Morris, of Reservoir got picked up in 32nd round by Baltimore.   Did Not Sign, will honor his commitment to South Carolina.
• Hunter Parsons of Parkside HS, picked up in the 40th round by Cleveland.  Did not Sign, will presumably honor commitment to Maryland.

At the end of the signing period, here’s what some of these local schools’ recruiting classes seem to look like in terms of local guys:

• UVA: Connor Eason, Nathan Eikhoff, Evan Sperling, Grant Donahue
• U of Maryland: A.J. Lee, Hunter Parsons
• Virginia Tech: Nic Enright, Stevie Mangrum, John DeFazio, Paul Hall
• South Carolina: Cody Morris, Danny Blair
• Wake Forest: Harvey Logan
• Liberty: Jack DeGroat
  
• VCU: Brody Cook
• UNC-Asheville: Jordan Carr
• Campbell: James Monaghan
• Uncommitted thus far: Kaleb Bowman, Hunter Byrnes.  Update post-publishing: Bowman went to Spartansburg Methodist and Byrnes went to UVA … to play football.

This Baseball America link has a list of all the major prep players who didn’t sign, listed by college commitment.  It has a couple more big names for some of the local baseball schools.  PerfectGame.org also has a way to search by college commitment, but it doesn’t verify the results since its self-reported by the players (it has literally 20 names listed for UVA’s incoming 2016 class).

Nats re-draft/previously drafted Players (i’ve noted our previous draft position for each player)

• Andrew Suarez , (2nd round pick 2014) LHP from Miami went in the 2nd round again, #61 overall this time to San Francisco.  Signed for slot of slightly more than $1M.
• Skye Bolt, OF from UNC, went in the 4th round (#128 overall) to Oakland.  Signed over-slot deal of $610k.
• Cody Poteet, (27th rounder in 2012) went in the 4th round (#116 overall) to Miami.  Signed slot deal of $488k.
• Austin Byler, (9th rounder, 2014) OF from Nevada.  Was the first pick on day 3; 11th rounder by Arizona.  Signed for unknown amount.
• Daniel Salters (22nd rounder 2014) C from Dallas Baptist: 13th round pick to Cleveland in 2015.  Signed for unknown amount.
• Jake Jefferies (34th rounder in 2012): 2B from Cal State-Fullerton; Nats picked him up again, this time in the 39th round.  Signed for unknown amount with the Nats and is on the Auburn roster.

Previous local Draft posts:

• At the beginning of the season, we profiled a ton of local prep and college players.
• Then we talked about the higher-profile local players in our Pre-draft coverage
• Just after the rule-4 draft, we went over all the local players who got picked.

 

Here’s how some of the players of local interest fared in the 2015 draft.  Per section, i’ve ordered these guys by the order they were taken chronologically, not by any pre-draft rankings.

At the beginning of the season, we profiled a ton of local prep and college players.  And then we talked about the higher-profile local players in our Pre-draft coverage.  At the end of the day, almost none of the prep guys were drafted and those that were are almost certain to go to school.

College Players with local ties

• Nathan Kirby LHP from UVA: went #40 (Supp 1st round) to Seattle, a huge drop from where he was projected.  His injury and the drop in his stuff this year really hurt his draft status.
• Josh Sborz, RHP closer for UVA: went #74 (Supp 2nd round) to the Dodgers, who had a fantastic draft picking big-name college arms who fell due to performance.  Sborz can start (and did start both this year and last).
• Taylor Clarke, who hails from Ashburn (Broad Run HS) went #76, first pick of the 3rd round to Arizona.
• Mike Matuella, of Great Falls (Georgetown Prep) and Duke: went two picks later, #78, to Texas in the 3rd round.  An amazing drop for Matuella, who was rumored as a top 5 pick earlier in the season but who dropped probably 3 full rounds thanks to the surgery and questions about his medicals.  And there’s no reason for him to head back to school; thanks to the timing he isn’t even back on a mound until midway through his senior year.  Maybe he does go back to school (he’s going to Duke after all; he may want to finish his degree) and try to get himself back into the 1st round.  We’ll see.
• Brandon Lowe: UMD infielder: 3rd round #87 overall to Tampa Bay.
• Alex Robinson: UMD’s ace Lefty went in the 5th round (#140 overall) to Minnesota.
• Joe McCarthy, OF for UVA: 5th round, #148 overall to Tampa Bay.  Man, Joe had a rough junior year.  He went from a back-0f-the-first rounder to a 5th rounder.  Will he hold out for above slot money as a result, possibly going back to school for his Senior year to regain value?  I would.
• Brandon Waddell UVA Saturday/Sunday starter: 5th round (#157) to Pittsburgh.  Another guy who was supposed to be higher but who dropped.
• Jack Wynkoop of Virginia Beach (Cape Henry Collegiate HS), LHP starter for South Carolina: went in the 6th round to Colorado.
• Michael Boyle: Radford Ace.  13th rounder to the Dodgers, who just *cleaned up* on high-profile college arms in this draft.
• Kevin Mooney: UMD closer: 15th rounder by the Nats!
• Kenny Towns; 3B from UVA and the 2011 All-Met player of the year from Lake Braddock, went in the 20th to the Angels.
• Luke Willis, OF from George Mason and Oakton HS, in the 30th round to Kansas City.

There are quite a few other college players from the many baseball-playing colleges in the area drafted past the 10th round; search the MLB draft tracker and select the state of Virginia for many more local college players.

Local Prep players of note: nobody got drafted high enough to seriously consider changing their college frankly.

Fyi: Washington Post announced their All Met teams last night.  Nearly every local kid we’ve talked about this year is mentioned, including a number of these guys below:

• Jimmy Barnes, Deep Creek HS in Chesapeake; 11th rounder to the Angels.  Interesting selection; the 11th round is the first round where you can “get away” from the bonus structure of the first 10; Barnes hasn’t committed to a college and is a SS from the baseball hotbed of Chesapeake VA.  Signable?
• Nic Enright of Steward HS in Richmond: 19th rounder to the Mets.  Looks like he’s going to Virginia Tech.
• Ljay Newsome of Chopticon (south of Waldorf): 26th rounder by Seattle.  Wonder what happens here: Newsome has not declared for a college yet.  Is he signable as a 26th rounder?  Post Publishing update: per his summer team’s twitter page, Newsome signed.
• Nathan Trevillian, RHP from small Amherst County HS; committed to Liberty.  22nd rounder to the Mets.
• Stevie Mangrum, 3B from Western Albemarle HS in Charlottesville.  Va Tech commit, 28th round pick by Boston.
• Cody Morris, of Reservoir with a South Carolina commit and a TJ surgery: got picked up in 32nd round by Baltimore, probably the team sending a message to a local kid.
• Hunter Parsons of Parkside HS, picked up in the 40th round by Cleveland.  Maryland commit.

I only see one of these prep kids going signing (Barnes in the 11th).  That means, reaching back to my pre-season coverage, the following colleges are going to see their early commits come to school.  Here’s a list of all the Prep players profiled early on with verbal commits (link to allmetsports.com’s Recruit Watch) Not all of these commits are set in stone, but here’s what some local schools signing classes could look like:

• UVA: Connor Eason, Nathan Eikhoff, Evan Sperling, Grant Donahue
• U of Maryland: A.J. Lee, Hunter Parsons
• Virginia Tech: Nic Enright, Stevie Mangrum, John DeFazio, Paul Hall
• South Carolina: Cody Morris, Danny Blair
• Wake Forest: Harvey Logan
• Liberty: Nathan Trevillian, Jack DeGroat
  
• VCU: Brody Cook
• UNC-Asheville: Jordan Carr
• Campbell: James Monaghan
• Uncommitted thus far: Ljay Newsome, Jimmy Barnes, Kaleb Bowman, Hunter Byrnes

 

Nats re-draft/previously drafted Players (i’ve noted our previous draft position for each player)

• Andrew Suarez , (2nd round pick 2014) LHP from Miami went in the 2nd round again, #61 overall this time to San Francisco.  A few picks after he went last year; did he make a mistake spurning the Nats offer?  (disclaimer: who knows what the Nats offered).
• Skye Bolt, OF from UNC, went in the 4th round (#128 overall) to Oakland.
• Cody Poteet, (27th rounder in 2012) went in the 4th round (#116 overall) to Miami.
• Austin Byler, (9th rounder, 2014) OF from Nevada.  Was the first pick on day 3; 11th rounder by Arizona.  His decision to head back to school may have cost him (though, to be fair, we have no idea what he turned down from the Nats).
• Daniel Salters (22nd rounder 2014) C from Dallas Baptist: 13th round pick to Cleveland in 2015.
• Jake Jefferies (34th rounder in 2012): 2B from Cal State-Fullerton; Nats picked him up again, this time in the 39th round.  He’s a junior now, clearly the Nats like him and probably just wanted to send a message, setting him up for next year.

There’s a couple more guys who were HS draftees in 2012 who should be draft eligible juniors now but who were not drafted.  They may not even still be playing for all we know.

 

The MLB rule-4 (Amateur) draft starts on Monday 6/8/15 at 7pm.  See MLB Network for the best coverage.  Since we’re also going to be talking about prep regional results and CWS results early next week, I thought i’d get this draft coverage post out there.  This post has good links to use to see draft prospect rankings, then links to help cover the draft starting monday, then some blurbs on local players of interest, and then links to a bunch of mock drafts.

Draft Coverage so far at NAR for 2015:

• here was our 2015 pre-season local player link.
• the shake-up at the top of draft boards with the news of Aiken and locally-tied Matuella‘s TJ surgeries in March.

Here’s a slew of Draft Prospect rankings : these are NOT the same as mock drafts; see further down for those.

• D1baseball HS top 100 players with commitments (most of it behind a pay-wall)
• Keith Law‘s Early top 50 draft prospects
• MLB’s initial top 50 draft prospects
• Jon Sickels early draft thoughts.
• Kiley McDaniels early draft rankings.
• MLB’s Late may top 200 draft prospect rankings.
• Baseball America’s top 500 draft prospects
• MinorLeagueBall’s top 400 draft prospects
• Chris Crawford (now Baseballprospectus.com) top 100 draft prospects
• Scout.com’s Jeff Ellis 1-35 draft prospect rankings and 36-75 rankings (some scout.com stuff is behind the pay-wall)
• D1Baseball.com’s Top 150 Draft Prospects (mostly behind a paywall)
• MLBDraftReport’s top 500 with write-ups…

Draft Links of importance

• MLB.com Official 2015 Draft Central home page.
• MLB’s Awesome Draft Tracker; you can slice and dice the draft 10 different ways, search by schools and home states, etc.
• Official MLB 2015 Draft Order (Nats first pick is #58 well into the 2nd round, next #69, then #103, then #134 in the 4th round, and then 134+30 picks there-after.
• Official Draft Bonus Pool totals.  Astros have $17M (most).  Nats have 3rd least at $4.1M.
• MLB Draft Database
• Fangraphs Sortable Draft Board; a great new tool Fangraphs has that lets you slice and dice their top draft board.
• Baseball-Reference Draft Tools: links to their draft database plus some custom reports.

Now, some news about College Players with local ties

• Nathan Kirby Lat strain Press Release: UVA’s ace Kirby, considered a mid-to-late 1st rounder, missed a huge chunk of the season with a Lat Strain.  If the cards fall right, he may be able to pitch UVA’s 3rd regional game.  MLB has him ranked #26, as does BA.
• Mike Matuella, of Great Falls (Georgetown Prep) and Duke, remains a back-end of the 1st round draft prospect but is also rehabbing his own TJ surgery.  He has far less of a track record than other college arms, and may be a crap shoot in the draft.  MLB has him ranked #28, BA #23.
• Taylor Clarke, who hails from Ashburn (Broad Run HS), was named the CAA pitcher of the year while putting up stellar numbers for the College of Charleston, a trendy underdog pick to reach the CWS.  MLB has him ranked #144, so that’s perhaps a 4th-5th rounder, while BA has him higher at #118.  Here’s a draft profile of him from scout.com.
• Joe McCarthy, OF for UVA, missed most of the season with a back injury and then hit horribly after wards.  His draft stock has dropped from a supp-1st to probably the back end of the 2nd round.  MLB has him ranked #68, BA #46.
• Josh Sborz got dumped out of UVA’s rotation but still is ranked #115 in MLB’s pre-draft rankings (projecting to a 3rd-4th rounder).
• Brandon Waddell had a good season as UVA’s #2 starter … and MLB projects him as a 5th rounder at #163.  BA has him at #153.
• University of Maryland’s two best draft prospects are Alex Robinson (MLB ranked #124) and Brandon Lowe (MLB ranked #148).  Robinson is #74 on BA’s top 500 list and Lowe is #98 on BA’s list.
• Radford’s Michael Boyle has pushed his draft stock up with his team’s post-season performance; BA has him ranked #132, which puts him in the 4th-5th round.

Local Prep players of note:

• Cody Morris, probably the best local player matriculating this year, had to undergo TJ surgery and likely scuttling his draft plans.  Luckily he had already taken a scholarship offer to South Carolina, where he will now presumably attend and rehab to get ready for the 2016 season.  BA still has him ranked #265 but the odds of a team taking him in the 8th round seem slim.
• A.J. Lee of St. Johns earned his 2nd straight Gatorade DC player of the year award and remains committed to Maryland; I do not sense he is a significant draft prospect and will go to College.  He is not in BA’s top 500 prospects.
• Ljay Newsome of Chopticon (south of Waldorf) made some noise with his stellar 3-A state final game; he has not picked a college and I wonder if he’s headed for the draft.  He is not in BA’s top 500 prospects.
• Nic Enright of Steward HS in Richmond (2015 Gatorade player of the year) is signed to Va Tech but ranked #132 by MLB.  Will he sign if he gets 3rd round money?  BA’s got him ranked far lower; #230, in the range of draft rankings where it makes more sense for him to go to school.

Other players of interest to Nats fans:

• Andrew Suarez, the Nats’ 2nd round pick of last year, had a decent if not spectacular senior season at Miami and may end up getting picked right in the same spot.  MLB has him #75, BA #73.
• Austin Byler, the Nats’ 9th round pick of last year, is ranked #199 by MLB (but much higher at #115 by BA) putting him in the 7th round or so.  Not too much of an improvement over last year; his senior season was more of the same for him; lots of power, perhaps stuck at 1B so will really have to hit his way moving forward.
• Skye Bolt, the Nats’ 26th round pick in 2012, had a great UNC career and is ranked #67 by MLB ahead of the draft.  BA has him a bit lower at #106.  Maybe the Nats can draft him again since this is right around where their first 2015 draft pick falls.

Mock Draft Guesses

Sometimes you just can’t help yourself.  I like mock drafts from writers I like.  Since the Nats don’t pick until midway through the 2nd round, there’s no point (like in years’ past) in trying to project the Nats pick.  So here’s some popular pundits and their mocks, with their top 5 predictions (Law = Espn, McDaniel = Fangraphs, Callis & Mayo = Mlb.com, Manual = Baseball America and Crawford = Baseball Prospectus)

• Keith Law Mock #1: Dansby Swanson, Alex Bregman, Dillon Tate, Brendan Rodgers, Kyle Tucker
• Keith Law Mock #2: Swanson, Rodgers, Tyler Jay, Tate, Tucker
• Keith Law Mock #3 (on ESPN podcast): Swanson, Bregman, Rodgers, Tate, Tucker
• Keith Law final Mock: Swanson, Bregman, Rodgers, Trenton Clark, Andrew Benintendi
• Kiley McDaniel Mock #1: Swanson, Rodgers, Tate, Kyle Funkhouser, Daz Cameron
• Kiley McDaniel Mock #2: Swanson, Rodgers, Jay, Bregman, Tucker
• Kiley McDaniel Mock #3: Swanson, Bregman, Rodgers, Tate, Tucker
• Jim Callis Mock #1: Swanson, Rodgers, Jay, Cameron, Carson Fulmer
• Jim Callis Mock #2: Swanson, Bregman, Rodgers, Cameron, Tucker
• Jim Callis: Final Mock: Swanson, Bregman, Rodgers, Tate, Benintendi
• Jonathan Mayo Mock #1: Tate, Rodgers, Swanson, Cameron, Fulmer
• Jonathan Mayo Mock #2: Swanson, Rodgers, Jay, Cameron, Tate
• Jonathan Mayo Final Mock: Swanson, Bregman, Rodgers, Cameron, Tate
• John Manual Mock #1: Tate, Swanson, Rodgers, Jon Harris, Tucker
• John Manual Mock #2: Fulmer, Swanson, Rodgers, Tate, Tucker
• John Manual Mock #3: Jay, Swanson, Rodgers, Tate, Tucker
• John Manual Mock #4: Swanson, Bregman, Jay, Rodgers, Cameron
• Jeff Ellis/Scout.com Final Mock: Swanson, Bregman, Rodgers, Tate, Tucker
• David Rawnsley/si.com final mock: Swanson, Bregman, Rodgers, Tate, Cameron
• Chris Crawford Mock #1: Garrett Whitley, Swanson, Rodgers, … the rest behind a pay-wall.
• Ryan Sullivan/NatsGM final mock: Swanson, Bregman, Rodgers, Tate, Tucker
• D1baseball.com Mock #1: Swanson … and the rest behind a pay-wall.
• Jon Sickels/MinorLeagueBall Mock #1: Swanson, Bregman, Jay, Rodgers, Tucker
• PerfectGame.org’s mock drafts and coverage now behind a pay-wall.

Todd Boss’ Mock draft?  Based on my vast level of expertise (sarcasm) and the thousands of man hours i’ve put in scouting players in person and cultivating industry sources (also sarcasm), I’ll take this as my guess for the top 5:

1. Swanson: I think Swanson’s post-season hitting combined with his positional flexibility and the decline of all the upper-end college arms that have been mentioned in the conversation for 1-1 (First Aiken & Matuella, then Tate, then Funkhouser and Fulmer) has cemented Swanson’s spot at 1-1.  In other years, he’d be lucky to go in the top 10.  Not this year.  Arizona goes with the least risk; proven college hitter.
2. Bregman: practically every connected pundit now has Bregman going 2nd.  Houston gets a sure thing and goes prep with #5.
3. Rodgers: Houston hasn’t backed away from HS players before and get the best one, a SS with power, at #2.
4. Tate: Tate’s regional performance pushed him back into this lofty level and he’s a better bet than Jay thanks to his reliever status all year.  Colorado likes college arms this high.  He makes the most sense.  If this pick isn’t Tate, its Jay.
5. Tucker: practically everyone has Houston’s 2nd pick on Tucker, meaning they’re taking two upper-end prep talents.  Plus the Astros know the family; Kyle’s older brother Preston was a 7th round pick by Houston in 2012 and made his debut this year.  Makes too much sense.

So, just so you know, this guess matches the final mocks of Law, McDaniel and Ellis, and is nearly identical to the final mocks of a couple others.

This top 5 means some big time names are available 6-10.  Cameron, Jay, Fulmer, Clark and Harris could very well be in the next 4-5 guys picked.  Funkhouser seems to be slipping.  Also throw the likes of Andrew Benintendi, Tyler Stephenson, and Walker Buehler into the top 10 possible mix.

ACTUAL DRAFT Results added on 6/7/15: Swanson, Bregman, Rodgers, Tate, Tucker.  A number of the experts above had the top 5 pegged.  Yours truly … changed his prediction last minute to match the consensus and “got it right” too 🙂

The title of my previous post was pretty simple: “Nats 2014 Draft == failure.”  And it resulted in a rather spirited debate in the comments about the 2014 draft, the 2008 draft in hindsight, etc.

In that debate, I postulated my benchmarks for judging whether or not a team’s draft was “good” or not.  Here were the six guidelines I stated for judgement, going round by round/section by section in the draft:

• a. 1st rounder: future MLB above average regular to all-star
• b. 2nd rounder: future MLB regular
• c. 3rd-5th: expect at least one future MLB player in at least a backup/bullpen role
• d. 6th-10th: hope for at least one player to reach the MLB level.
• e. 11th-20th: hope for at least three players who matriculate to AA or higher
• f. 20th and above: hope for one-two players to matriculate to AA or higher

Lets go back through all 10 Nats drafts and see whether these guidelines hold up.  For each of the 6 requirements, we’ll give a quick “yes/no the condition was met” for each year.  Critical to this analysis is the Nats DraftTracker XLS, milb.com and baseball-reference.com for searching for old players.  Also useful is the Baseball America executive database, which populated the staff in charge of each draft.

Editors Note post-posting: I’ve added in the total known bonus amounts, per suggestion in the comments.  Data taken from the Draft Tracker.  Actual figures are likely higher because most bonus figures past the 10th round are unknown (but likely minimal).  Also per good suggestion, I’m adding in the draft position for context, since its far easier to get a future all-star if picking in the top 5 versus later on.

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2005: Owner: MLB.  President: n/a.  GM: Jim Bowden.  Scouting Director: Dana Brown.  Drafting 4th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $3,990,500

• a. Yes: 1st rounder Ryan Zimmerman: MLB above average regular (former all-star)
• b. n/a: we had no 2nd rounder; forfeited for Vinny Castilla
• c. Yes:  4th rounder Justin Maxwell turned into a 4th outfielder.  No 3rd rounder.
• d. Yes: 6th rounder Marco Estrada has turned into a decent starter (albeit for someone else after we released him)
• e. Yes: 11th rounder John Lannan and 12th rounder Craig Stammen turned into MLBers, far above expectations here.  18th rounder  Tim Pahuta had long ML career for us, playing 3 years at AA.
• f. Yes: 33rd rounder Ryan Butcher was a 6yr MLFA who left the org but now has MLB experience with Atlanta.  No other 20th+ round draftees made it out of A-ball, but Butcher’s MLB matriculation makes up for it.

2005: Success, inarguably.  6 guys matriculating to the majors is a winning draft, especially considering the lack of a 2nd or 3rd round pick, the ownership confusion, and the budget restrictions put on the team.

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2006: Owner: MLB.  President: n/a.  GM: Bowden.  Scouting Director: Brown.  Drafting 15th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $5,222,000

• a. No: 1st rounder Chris Marrero looks like a 4-a guy at best and 1st rounder Colten Willems never made it above A-ball.
• b. No: the team failed to sign 2nd rounder Sean Black and 2nd rounder Stephen Englund never made it out of low-A.
• c. No: none of their 3rd-5th picks made the majors.  The highest one of these guys got was 5th rounder Corey VanAllen, who did pitch in AAA after passing through the rule-5 draft and finished out his 6-years with the org.  VanAllen is in Indy ball in 2014.
• d. No: they didn’t even sign their 7th, 9th or 10th round picks.  The closest they got to a MLBer here was 6th rounder Zech Zinicola, who played at AAA for quite a while, was rule-5 picked and returned, and now sits in Baltimore’s AA team.
• e. Yes: 12th rounder Cole Kimball made it the majors briefly, while 17th rounder Erik Arnesen, 18th rounder Adam Carr and 13th rounder Hassan Pena all toiled in AAA for several years. 
  
• f. Yes, sort of.  We’re all well aware of the success of 41st rounder Brad Peacock, but he was picked under the “draft-and-follow” system that no longer exists.  So while yes it was a 41st round pick, in our current system Peacock wouldn’t have been picked at all and/or wouldn’t have signed but would have been picked the subsequent year based on his great first-college juco season.   Of the rest of the 20th+ round picks, one guy had a couple months in AA (26th rounder Brett Logan) to serve as a backup catcher; he hit .102/.170/.122 in 20 games in 2007 and was released.

2006: Failure: 3 guys who have MLB appearances but near zero impact for this team.  Peacock enabled the Nats to get Gio Gonzalez but I think we see now that Peacock wasn’t the driving prospect in that deal (now that Derek Norris has made an all-star team).

For as much as went right for the team in the 2005 draft, it went wrong in 2006.  Was the lack of signing their 7th, 9th and 10th round picks evident of “fiscal restraint” demanded by the other 29 owners?  Clearly to me, the focus on HS drafted personnel in this draft has Bowden’s hands all over it, and almost none of them panned out in the slightest.

 

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2007: Owner: Ted Lerner group.  President: Stan Kasten.  GM: Bowden.  Scouting Director: Brown.  Assistant GM/VP, Baseball Operations: Mike Rizzo.  Drafting 6th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $7,619,300

• a. No: The team went one-for-three on its first rounders: Michael Burgess got to AA in his fourth pro season but never further, was flipped for Tom Gorzelanny.  Josh Smoker‘s failure has been well documented here.  But Ross Detwiler, for all the complaining about his usage and role in this space, did make the majors and looked like a good 4th starter (in 2012).  I still believe he could start in this league and is better than a long-man.   However, the condition is that a first round pick turns into a successful regular, and this crop failed in all regards.
• b. Yes.  2nd rounder Jordan Zimmermann is now a 2-time all-star and is probably the best 2nd round pick the organization has ever had.  His successes make up for their other 2nd rounder Jake Smolinksi who has made his MLB debut but not until he became a 6-yr MLFA.
• c. Yes.  4th rounder Derek Norris made the 2014 all-star team for Oakland.  3rd rounder Stephen Souza has debuted in the majors and looks quite promising (albeit blocked) for our AAA team.  5th rounder Brad Meyers toiled for us in AAA for years before being released this spring after a long injury recovery.
• d. Yes: 10th round pick Patrick McCoy made it to AAA for us, signed with Detroit as a MLFA and debuted this year.  We should note for the record though that 6th rounder Jack McGeary was paid as if he was a low-1st rounder and failed pretty spectacularly here.
• e. Yes: 20th rounder Jeff Mandel was a long-serving org arm at AA and AAA.   11th rounder Bill Rhinehart was looking like a find, appearning on Nats system prospect lists for a while and getting to AAA before getting flipped for Jonny Gomes.
• f. Yes: 28th rounder Boomer Whiting made it to Syracuse before getting released in 2011.   48th rounder (!) Kyle Gunderson was flipped for Logan Kensing in 2009 and made it to Miami/Florida’s AAA squad before getting released.  
  

2007: Success: despite the 1st round failures and the McGeary disaster, the breadth of success in the other categories and the production of the remaining guys weighs out.

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2008: Owner: Lerner.  President: Kasten.  GM: Bowden.  Scouting Director: Brown.  Assistant GM/VP, Baseball Operations: Rizzo.  Drafting 9th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $4,766,500

• a. No: as is well documented, the Nats failed to sign 1st round pick Aaron Crow.
• b. No/Inc: 2nd round pick Destin Hood has already passed through Rule-5 waivers once, but has found himself in 2014 and is hitting great for Syracuse (2014’s AAA line: .308/.353/.502).  It does make one wonder if he’s worth adding to the 40-man once the season is over to keep him; he’s finishing his 7th pro year and is in line for minor league free agency.
• c. Yes: 3rd rounder Danny Espinosa has his critics, but he’s at least a MLB backup or possibly more.  5th rounder Adrian Nieto has stuck with the White Sox after getting plucked in the Rule-5 draft last year and hasn’t been half bad.
• d. Yes: 10th rounder Tommy Milone has shown his capabilities as a MLB starter.  d. 6th-10th: hope for at least one player to reach the MLB level.  6th rounder Paul Demny remains in the system (on the D/L in Harrisburg) but doesn’t seem like he’ll go much higher at this point.
• e. Yes: 16th rounder Tyler Moore has put in meaningful at-bats for the Nats for a few years now.  And 19th rounder Steve Lombardozzi looks to be a solid utility/backup infielder in this league for years.  Lastly I wonder if the team gave up on 15th rounder J.P. Ramirez too soon; he was paid like a 2nd round pick but was released prior to his MLFA period.  He may have only made it to high-A, but his last season was somewhat decent.
• f. No: as far as I can tell, nobody of note came in rounds 20 or above from this draft.

2008: Failure: How would you judge this draft?   We failed to sign the first rounder, which for me is a huge negative.  The second rounder may or may not ever debut in the majors, which is also for me a huge negative because of the huge prevalence of 1st and 2nd rounders on MLB rosters.  But we got four (5 counting Nieto) other MLBers out of the rest of the draft, including some very deep-dive picks that you rarely find (Moore and Lombardozzi, aside from Peacock, are the two lowest round picks to ever make it to the majors for this team).

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2009:  Owner: Lerner.  President: Kasten. GM: Rizzo.  Scouting Director: Brown.  Drafting 1st overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $18,806,000

• a. Yes: no arguing about either first round pick here: both Stephen Strasburg and Drew Storen have pitched at all-star levels in their careers.
• b. No: 2nd Rounder Jeff Kobernus may have made his MLB debut, but he’s nowhere close to being a “regular” in the majors right now and doens’t seem to be trending that way either.
• c. No: 3rd round pick Trevor Holder was a gross over-draft (albeit with known reasons; the team committed an *awful* lot of money to the first two guys on this list) and was released in 2013.  4th rounder A.J. Morris looked quite promising for us, was flipped in the Gorzelanny deal, and this year is pitching effectively for Pittsburgh’s AAA squad after being taken in the minor league Rule-5 portion last off-season.  And the Nats failed to sign their 5th rounder.  So even if Morris pans out as a MLB-capable player, he’s doing it for someone else.
• d. Yes: 9th round pick Taylor Jordan was effective for the team last year and may yet figure in the team’s plans despite his mysterious D/L trip right now.  And 6th round pick Michael Taylor has rocketed up the prospect lists for this team, is crushing AA pitching right now, is on the team’s 40-man roster and may very well get a look as 2015’s starting center fielder.
• e. Yes: 12th rounder Nathan Karns made the org look quite intelligent when he gave spot starts in 2013 after rocketing up the farm system after finally recovering from arm issues.  I wonder if the success they had with Karns was the first impetus for Rizzo to take more gambles on high-end-but-injured arms.  13th rounder Patrick Lehman has bounced around as an org arm for years.  11th rounder Juston Bloxom played a couple years in AA before getting released this year.  16th rounder Sean Nicol is splitting time between AA and AAA this year.   Finally, I wanted to note something I never knew before studying this: the Nats drafted Marcus Strohman in the 18th round out of HS; this is the same Strohman who went in the first round three years later to Toronto and who is currently holding down a rotation spot for the playoff-pushing Blue Jays.  Wow.  He’s listed as a SS on the draft-tracker but clearly is a MLB-calibre starter.
• f. Yes: 22nd rounder Danny Rosenbaum has been Syracuse’s “ace” for three seasons now.  And a slew of guys drafted in the 20s stuck around for years as middle relievers (Mitchell Clegg, Matt Swynenberg, Evan Bronson, Rob Wort, and Shane McCatty).  You just can’t ask for more out of your picks in rounds 20-30.

2009: Success: I’ll take a couple of misses in the 2nd and 3rd rounds given the amount of talent they picked up in the middle and late rounds.  Great draft.  6 guys who have debuted in the majors with at least another one likely coming soon.

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Note: from 2010 onwards, most of the judgement calls are still “in progress.”  We’ll use projections and “small sample sizes” to pass judgement.  It is what it is.  Feel free to criticize in the comments about using projections and national pundit scouting reports to make judgements.

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2010:  Owner: Lerner.  President: Kasten.  GM: Rizzo.  Scouting Director: Kris Kline.  Drafting 1st overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $11,413,200

• a. Yes: 1st rounder Bryce Harper has turned into everything the hype suggested.  Fun fact; when he went on an rehab assignment in Potomac, he was the 2nd youngest guy on the roster.  Remember that when you criticize the guy for not being better than he already is: if he was “playing by the rules,” he’d be jsut finishing his junior year of college.
• b. No/Inc: 2nd rounder Sammy Solis has been one injury issue after another.  He missed all of 2012 with Tommy John, came back slowly in 2013, but now sits on the AA D/L with another “elbow” issue.  He was protected on the 40-man roster last fall, but you have to wonder what’s to come of him.  He’s finishing his 5th pro season and he’s got exactly one start above A-Ball.
• c. Yes/Inc: 4th rounder A.J. Cole was paid like a late first rounder, and after some struggles he’s really come onto the scene this year.  He was already really young for AA and “solved” it, and is now in AAA holding his own.  The other guys in this category are less impressive: both Rick Hague and Jason Martinson are repeating AA and not really hitting well enough to push for promotions.  This could be a side-effect of the huge amount of money committed to Harper and Cole.
  
• d. Yes: 9th round pick Aaron Barrett went from unknown/unrecognized prospect to the Nats 40-man roster last fall to being lights-out middle reliever in the major league pen this year.  As a 9th round college senior pick.  8th rounder Matthew Grace may be next; after toiling as a mediocre starter, he became a reliever in 2013 and has been lights out in AA and AAA this year.  And he’s not just a LOOGY: 56 IP in 33 appearances and he’s given up just 6 ER in that time.
• e. Yes: 15th round pick David Freitas, after getting traded to Oakland for Kurt Suzuki, got traded again to Baltimore and now is in AAA.   12th round pick Robbie Ray has made his MLB debut for Detroit after going over in the Doug Fister deal.  11th rounder Neil Holland toils in the Harrisburg pen admirably.
• f. Yes: 23rd rounder Colin Bates and 26th rounder Christopher Manno both are in the Harrisburg pen.  22nd rounder Cameron Selik made it to AA before hitting his ceiling and being released earlier this year.   And 32nd rounder Randolph Oduber is a starting OF in Potomac with decent splits and a shot of moving up.

2010: Success: It may have been a no-brainer to take Harper, and it may have been an example of the “checkbook” winning in their picks of Cole and Ray, but you have to hand it to this team; they bought two high-end prep guys out of their college and they’re both looking like huge successes.   And they got a MLB servicable reliever out of a college senior sign who they paid just $35,000 in bonus money.  Great work.

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2011: Owner: Lerner.  President/GM: Rizzo.  Scouting Director Kline.  Drafting 6th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $11,325,000

• a.  Yes: 1st rounder Anthony Rendon was on everyone’s “all star snub” lists this year, while their other 1st rounder Alex Meyer remains one of the top pitching prospects in the game and seems likely to debut later this year.   Their supp-1st rounder Brian Goodwin remains on every pundit’s prospect lists even if he seemingly has been passed on the organizational “future starting Center-fielder” depth chart.   There’s no chance the team leaves him exposed in the upcoming rule-5 draft, so he’ll have at least three more years to prove he belongs.
• b. n/a: forfeited for Adam LaRoche signing.
• c. No/Inc: Right now our 3rd through 5th picks are looking iffy; 4th rounder Matthew Purke was paid like an upper first rounder and has been a massive disappointment.  Right now he’s recovering from Tommy John and faces an uncertain future.  4th rounder Kylin Turnbull has gotten lit up in high-A this year, his second crack at the league.  5th rounder Matt Skole may be the most promising of the bunch; he crushed 27 homers in his first season of full-season ball only to miss all of 2013 because of a freak injury.  Can Skole continue developing and make the majors on a full-time basis?  Can Purke at this point?
• d. Yes: With the call-up of 6th rounder Taylor Hill earlier this year, this category is met.  Which is good because the rest of the 6th-10th rounders from this year are struggling.  Two are already released/retired, one is MIA and the lone remaining active player (Brian Dupra) is struggling as a starter/swing-man in AA.  But Hill is a huge win; a college senior draftee on minimal bonus rocketing through the minors and forcing his way onto the 25-man roster.
• e. Yes/Inc:  It is far too early to fully judge this category, but it is looking promising despite the fact that the team failed to sign SIX of its ten picks beween the 11th and 20th round.  11th rounder Caleb Ramsey is already in AA.  16th rounder Deion Williams is on the mound (not a SS as in the Draft Tracker) and is struggling in short-A.   18th rounder Nick Lee is struggling in Potomac this year but has shown a huge arm and seems like he’ll eventually convert to loogy (especially considering his undersized stature); I can see Lee making it far as a matchup lefty reliever with swing-and-miss stuff.  The lone failure at this point is 12th rounder Blake Monar, sort of inexplicably released after a decent 2012 season in Short-A.   
  
• f. Yes: 30th round pick Bryan Harper earned his way to Harrisburg.   45th round college senior pick Richie Mirowski also made it to AA, where he wasn’t half bad last year, though at the moment he’s back in Potomac.   And there’s three other players drafted in the 20th or higher who are active on Potomac’s roster this year and who may get moved up.   Decent production out of the bottom of this draft so far.

2011: Projected Success: As discussed before, I believe the selection of Rendon was a “no-brainer” based on a unique set of circumstances that occured on draft day, but credit the management team for having the stones to pick him when other GMs didn’t.   I’m sure the Mariners (especially) would like a re-do on that draft (they picked 2nd overall, got soft-tossing local product Danny Hultzen, who was sidelined last year with all sorts of shoulder issues and is no sure bet to ever make it back.   They rolled the dice with Purke and so far seem to be losing, but Purke was himself a 1-1 talent at one point (remember, he had his $4M+ deal with Texas pulled thanks to MLB-stewardship at the time) and was probably worth the risk.   I’d like to see Skole reach the majors in some capacity before declaring this draft a full success.

 

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Note: from here onwards, everything is a projection and is based on scouting the stat lines.  I’m going to sound negative where others sound positive and vice versa.  Hey, its better than writing nothing.

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2012: Owner: Lerner.  President/GM: Rizzo.  Scouting Director Kline.   Drafting 16th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $4,503,500

• a. Yes/inc: 1st rounder Lucas Giolito (so far) has shown himself to be at full speed post TJ surgery and is mostly in the top 10-15 of every professional scouting pundit’s list for best prospect in the entirety of the minors.  He’s got a #1 starter ceiling, a huge frame and three plus pitches.  He’s projecting to be everything you’d hope for from an upper first rounder.
• b. No/inc: It is hard to squint at 2nd rounder Tony Renda at this point and project him as a future “MLB regular.”  Sure he’s hitting .297 in Potomac, and sure his numbers at the plate have not varied much in his three pro seasons.  Unfortunately he’s vastly undersized and he has no power in a time where pro middle infielders are expected to provide serious pop.   Maybe he can forge a career like Jamey Carroll or like a Jose Altuve, but the odds are against him.  I don’t mean to discount the guy because he’s 5’8″ but we all know there’s a significant bias in the industry towards undersized guys.  Heck, a pitcher is considered “short” if he isn’t 6’2″ these days.
• c. No/inc: So far the guys picked 3rd-5th are also struggling.  3rd rounder Brett Mooneyham‘s struggles are well documented here.  4th rounder Brandon Miller continues to show great power but has missed much of this season with a hamstring injury (he’s on rehab in the GCL as we speak).  Lastly 5th rounder Spencer Keiboom suffered a blown UCL that basically cost him the whole 2013 season.  He’s got great numbers in low-A this year but is two years too old for the league.  Keiboom’s talents more centered on his defense than his bat, so he may still push forward as a future backup catcher.  But until he does, this category falls in the “no” side.
• d. Maybe/inc: The leading hope for some MLB success out of our 6th-10th round picks right now resides in one of two middle relievers: 7th round pick Robert Benincasa or 9th round pick Derek Self.   You never know; one of these guys could turn into the next Aaron Barrett.  8th round SS Stephen Perez made the all-star team this year in Potomac and could feature as a future utility infielder.  The team has already released its 6th round pick Hayden Jennings, and their 10th rounder (local Rockville product Craig Manual) was a college senior catcher who is backing up other catchers in the system for the time being).  He may continue to hang around but unless he gets a starting gig he’s going to get replaced by someone newer.
• e. Yes/inc: 17th rounder Blake Schwartz has already made it to AA, where he struggled and he now sits back in Potomac (where he was great last year, go figure).  11th rounder Brian Rauh got a spot-start in AA last year but has bounced in and out of the Potomac rotation this year.  16th rounder Ronald Pena is working his way off injury but faces a long road to move up thanks to a lack of swing-and-miss stuff.   The team has already released four of its 11th-20th round picks; the remaining out-field players (12th rounder Carlos Lopez and 19th rounder Bryan Lippincott) both seem to face long odds as college senior draftees still residing in the low minors to even make it up to AA at this point.  To be fair, Lopez missed most of 2013 with an unknown injury, so we’ll give him a slight pass.   Lippincott sits in XST right now.
• f. No/inc: 33rd rounder Mike McQuillan has hung around and currently serves as a utility guy/bench player for Potomac.   A couple of relievers remain on squads: 29th rounder Leonard Hollins is hurt but is on a full-season squad, and 30th rounder Robert Orlan was with Hagerstown to start the season but is back in Auburn.   The rest of the 20th round and up guys features carnage; eight college senior draftees already released to go along with 10 unsigned (mostly high schoolers) picks in the later rounds.  One unsigned pick looks interesting; all-american freshman UNC player Skye Bolt may be a big-time 2015 draft pick.   But otherwise, I’m predicting that we dont’ get even a AA player out of the last  20 rounds of this draft at this point.

2012: Projected Failure: Frankly, this is looking like it may be a one player draft.  At this point, I don’t think you can look at *any* other player in this draft and project even a bench/fringe 25-man roster guy besides Giolito.  Now ask yourself: if Giolito fulfills expectations and becomes an “ace,” a top 15-20 arm in the majors while the rest of this draft basically becomes high-A and AA filler, does that change your opinion of the draft success/failure?

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2013: Owner: Lerner.  President/GM: Rizzo.  Scouting Director Kline.  Drafting 30th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $2,678,100

• a. n/a: No 2013 first rounder thanks to the supurfluous signing of Rafael Soriano.  As noted at the time, the Nats missed out on players like Sean Manaea, Ryan Stanek or Ian Clarkin, all of whom were available at the time of their lost 1st rounder.  Manaea in particular has flourished, rising up prospect list charts and sporting a healthy K/9 rate in high-A this year.  I’d like to call this in and among itself a failure (given my reservations about paying for saves in general), but have to admit that Soriano has been pretty durn good this year.
• b. No/inc: 2nd rounder Jake Johansen thus far has not lived up to advance billing in his first year in full-season ball.  He’s averaging just 4.5 innings per outing and sports a 5.00 ERA and less than a K/inning.   I can understand the difficult adjustment to pro ball, but I don’t get how his vaunted velocity and size combination aren’t resulting in more swing-and-miss.    He’s given no indication that he can avoid what scouts have been saying all along (that he’s destined for the bullpen), he’s way too wild and way too hittable.
• c. Yes/inc: the Nats collection of 3rd rounder Drew Ward, 4th rounder Nick Pivetta and now especially 5th rounder Austin Voth are making this management team look very smart.  All Voth has done since forcing his promotion to High-A is give up 10 hits and ONE earned run in 33 innings over five starts.  That’s just ridiculous.  And he’s doing it while maintaining a 36/5 K/BB ratio.  There’s zero reason for him to still be in Potomac at this point.  I don’t know what Voth’s ceiling is, but its getting pushed.
• d. No/inc: Thanks to the new CBA’s rules, most 6th-10th rounders are throw-away/college senior picks these days.  So it’ll be awfully hard to depend on one of them turning into a 25-man roster guy.  The best bet out of this draft will be having either 6th rounder Cody Gunter or 7th rounder James Yezzo eventually matriculating to the majors.  The other guys in this category were 15k bonus college seniors, one of whom (9th rounder Jake Joyce has *already* been released).  Do we think either Gunter or Yezzo projects as a major leaguer?  Not right now: Gunter’s struggling in short-A for the 2nd year in a row and Yezzo is an undersized 1B showing little power.
• e. Maybe/inc: Right now the pickings for the guys taken 11th-20th look pretty slim too.  Three were senior signs who have already been released and we failed to sign our 16th round pick Willie Allen (though can’t fault the Nats for that: doing research on him for last year’s draft review showed all sorts of inconsistencies with him, including whether he’s even still playing baseball in college).  But 11th rounder John Simms is looking like a great find; he’s already in the AA rotation and holding his own (though you could argue it was out of need, not performance).  Among those left, 10th rounder Brandon Middleton and 15th rounder Isaac Ballou are starting and playing well in Hagerstown, 12th rounder Andrew Cooper is strugging in low-A, 13th rounder John Costa has yet to debut for the team thanks to TJ surgery, and 17th rounder Geoffrey Perrott was a senior catcher who got a grand total of 13 at-bats in 2013 and has remained in XST so far thisyear, perhaps to serve as a bullpen catcher for others remaining in Viera and perhaps because he was hurt most of last year and may still be recovering.  If Simms continues to rise and we get a couple more longer-lasting prospects out of this crew, we’ll convert this to a success.
• f. Maybe/Inc: The Nats picked seven college seniors in the 21st round or above and so far they’re all with Hagerstown.  Middle infielders Cody Dent (22nd rounder) and Willie Medina (31st rounder) both hit in the .220s last year, are hitting in the .220s (or worse) this year, and seem like they may not last the season.  However the pitchers in this bunch are looking better and better.  28th rounder Joey Webb has a 2.53 ERA, 30th rounder Ryan Ullmann has as 3.10 ERA and got a high-A up-and-back call-up, and 34th rounder Jake Walsh dominated Low-A and earned a call-up to Potomac.  Only 29th rounder Michael Sylvestri seems to be in trouble among these senior signs; after struggling in Short-A last year, he gave up a ton of runs in 6 mid-relief outings and is currently in re-assignment purgatory.  What of the non senior-signs?  24th round pick Matthew Derosier is struggling in short-A and 23rd round outfielder Garrett Gordon seems like he’s a bench player in Auburn.  But a revelation may be 25th round prep draft pick Travis Ott.  He holds a 2.10 ERA through 6 starts in Auburn despite being quite young for the league.  So, the trend seems good that we’ll get value out of the bottom part of this draft.

2013: Projected Failure: Sorry to say; no first rounder, a middle reliever out of your 2nd rounder, perhaps a 5th starter out of the 3-5 rounds, and some org filler from the bottom of the draft?  How many players from this draft do you realistically project to make the majors?

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2014: Owner: Lerner.  President/GM: Rizzo.  Scouting Director Kline.   Drafting 18th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $4,149,900

• a. Maybe/inc: 1st rounder Erick Fedde may project as a MLB rotation guy, but he’s not projecting as an ace level arm.  So if he comes back from surgery 100%, if he keeps moving up the chain, if he makes the majors and if he has an impact we’ll give this a yes.  Lots of ifs.
• b. n/a:  we failed to sign our 2nd rounder Andrew Suarez.
  
• c. Maybe/inc: The hopes here fall on 3rd rounder Jakson Reetz and 4th rounder Robbie Dickey, since our 5th rounder was a senior lefty out of non-baseball powerhouse Duke.   How do we dream on Reetz and Dickey?  Maybe Reetz turns into our next Derek Norris while Dickey turns into the next Austin Voth.  Lets hope so, because both so far have had rather inauspicious starts in the GCL (Reetz batting .220 and Dickey posting an ERA in the 12s).   To be fair Reetz is a kid and Dickey isn’t much older, so we have a long way to go before passing true judgement.
• d. No/inc: We failed to sign the 8th round pick Austin Byler (and from reading the tea leaves, it didn’t seem like we were ever even close).  Our 7th, 8th and 10th round picks were low-bonus college seniors with little hope of advancing.  So this category falls squarely on the shoulders of 6th rounder Austin Williams, who looks ok so far in Short-A.
• e. Far too Early: most of these guys who did sign are 15 games into short seasons.
• f. Far too Early: most of these guys who did sign are 15 games into short seasons.

2014: Not promising: An injured first rounder, no 2nd rounder, really just a handful of non senior-signs elsewhere in the draft.  As I opined in the previous post discussion, I just don’t like the looks of this class.

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So.  5200 words later, I think I actually like my guidelines.  I think though that the new CBA forces teams into making a bunch of “throw-away” picks in the 6th-10th rounds, so my criteria needs to be adjusted downward for that category in the last few years.  Otherwise I think it holds.

What say you?

Editor’s Post-posting thoughts.  Based on the analysis above, the franchise has 5 successes and 5 failures (or projected failures) in ten drafts.  After up and down drafts the first four years, we had three straight successes in 2009-2011, but now I feel like we’ve had three successive failures from 2012 onwards.  Here’s a sobering thought about those successes and failures: lets talk about bonus money spent.

• In the 5 drafts I call successes, the team spent (chronologically): $3,990,500, $7,619,300,  $18,806,000, $11,413,200 and $11,325,000 in bonus money.
• In the 5 drafts i’m calling failures/projected failures: $5,222,000, $4,766,500, $4,503,500, $2,678,100, $4,149,900

See a pattern?  With the exception of the unbelievable 2005 draft, the Nats have had successes when spending big money and failures when they don’t.  Maybe its just that simple.

I think, to be fair, it is also worth nothing the three distinct “eras” of Nats draft philosophy:

• Era 1: 2005-2008: MLB hamstrung budgets and Lerner penny pinching era.  2 successes, 2 failures.
• Era 2: 2009-2011: Lerner’s realize the Tampa Bay way: spending through the draft is the best way to acquire talent.  3 successes
• Era 3: 2012-present: the new CBA spells out draconian draft bonus policies.  3 failures.

Era 1 may be just the way it used to go; sometimes you’d get wins in the draft, other times you’d strike out.  Era 2 was the glory years of Nats drafting, though the cynic may point out that picking three consensus 1-1 talents and spending 8 figures in bonus money wasn’t that hard.  Era 3 is more troubling: why has this management team not done better in the CBA/limited bonus era?

 

I smell whiffs from 2008’s Aaron Crow debacle.

(Which, just to head off hindsight is 20/20 arguments, did result in a comp pick that turned into Drew Storen … but Storen was a huge overdraft at the 10th overall pick in 2009, a college reliever who was a quick sign.  The Nats left a lot on the table in the Crow non-signing, as discussed in this space recently).

Right now, as of the morning of the 2014 Rule 4 signing deadline day, there exists just a small handful of players from the first 10 rounds of the draft who have not signed.  According to MLB.com’s great draft bonus tracker, just NINE players out of the first 315 players drafted remain unsigned as of the moment of this posting.

Three of them are Washington Nationals draft picks.  And they include the two most important picks of the draft; i.e. our first two picks Erick Fedde and Andrew Suarez.

What is going on??   We havn’t seen these kinds of difficulties in signing guys since before the slot bonus system went into place.  What is Mike Rizzo doing?

According to reports (this Bill Ladson report quoting Jim Callis and Adam Kilgore), Fedde got a “$3M offer” from another team he he dropped to them in the 2nd round and (with notoriously difficult negotiator agent Scott Boras in charge) is holding out for more than the assigned slot bonus to his pick ($2,145,600).   The Nats can go a bit above the $2.1M figure without incurring penalties … but it depends on what happens with their other two marquee picks.  Media pundits (unnamed of course) are predicting a stalemate here.

Meanwhile, the general sense from reading the tea leaves is that Suarez will sign at or near slot (which makes you wonder what the heck is taking so long?), while unsigned 8th rounder Austin Byler seems to be unsignable at his slot figure ($145k) and will be returning to school.  Byler’s non-signing isn’t too much of a surprise; he was a 3rd round projected guy who slipped to the 8th round, and the Nats didn’t really free up that much cash in its other first-10-rounds of picks in order to get Byler the $600k it likely would have needed to sign him.

Aside: speaking of lack of signing bonus money for Byler; is overpaying its college senior signs?  They drafted four college seniors in the first 10 rounds (Carey, Gardner, Van Orden and Page) and gave them combined more than $200k.  Could that 200k have been better allocated?  Did those seniors need to be offered that much money?

It makes zero sense to me for Fedde not to sign frankly, even if he’s offered less money; by the time he rehabs his TJ surgery, it’ll be nearly the end of next year’s college season.  There’s just little chance of him going higher than he did this year, nor getting as much bonus money offered.  And if he has the slightest setback in his recovery, he’ll be lucky to be drafted in the first 5 rounds next year and will be looking at a tenth of the signing bonus offers.  And, if he doesn’t sign, he’s rehabbing under the care of his personal physician instead of an experienced professional major league team that has rehabbed probably a dozen TJ surgeries in the last few years, including some pretty significant and nationally renound names.  Why this is taking so long is just beyond me.

If the Nats fail to sign all three guys, they’ll have compensation picks in the form of the 19th overall pick in the 2015 draft for Fedde and the 58th pick for Suarez (if i’m reading the rules correctly that is; you’re supposed to get compensation for unsigned first, second and any supplemental round picks at your unsigned slot +1 in the following draft, irrespective of how many comp picks get stuffed inbetween rounds the next year).  I guess that’d make 2015’s draft pretty good.  But they’ll lose the Byler pick altogether.

Are you worried?

As we did last year, here’s a quick introduction to the Nats top 10 picks for 2014.

A quick glance on our high-end draftees from 2014 draft.  I’ll put in the rankings from several prospect ranking shops (Keith Law, Baseball America, MLB.com and MinorLeagueBall).  overall player ranking after the player name where appropriate (though as we’ll see, Keith’s top 100 quickly runs out of names).  Here’s a link to the draft order, and here’s a link to MLB.com’s fantastic draft tracker database for reference.

As he did last year, NatsGM.com‘s Ryan Sullivan is live-blogging and does a great job of pulling up stats on each of our picks.  I depend on his reports as well as those from the four links above to give a quick overview of our draftees.

Note: I wrote most of this over the weekend as the guys were picked; we’re already hearing plenty of rumors about signings.  I havn’t updated this post with such intel but I’m sure its readily available from Ladson and Kilgore and the like.

1st round/#18 overall: Erick Fedde, UNLV RHP (Law #27/BA #24/MLB #33/MinorLeagueBall #70).  Most of the credible mock drafts had the Nats drafting Fedde here, and that’s exactly what happened.  In my quickie preview post, I thought Fedde would be an overdraft and hoped that either Tyler Beede or Brandon Finnegan would drop.  Well, Beede went 14th and Finnegan went 17th.  I liked Touki Toussant as well as a prep HS that may drop to the Nats, but he went 16th.   I’m not sure I agree with pundits who say that Fedde was a “top 10 talent” prior to his injury; I still think this is an overdraft on Fedde given the fact that he’s rehabbing a blown UCL.  Look at the placement of Fedde on the four prospect ranking shops; that’s an awful lot of trust being placed into the hands of the surgeon, the rehab process, and the recovery.  That being said, looking at the next several players picked, there wasn’t a name that really stood out as someone that I would have rather had who at the same time was a prototypical Mike Rizzo pick  Maybe Connor Gillaspie would have worked (he went #20).  Ryan Sullivan thinks we got a steal here; i’m not so sure.  I think the Nats were looking at their board while the Giants were picking at #14, and then had their next best three names get snatched out from under them, leaving them taking a gamble on Fedde.

On the player himself; Fedde is tall (6’4″) but *skinny* (listed at between 165 and 180), sits 91-93 and touched 95 with excellent movement.  Secondary pitches can flatten out because of his lower arm slot, but he’s listed with a decent slider and decent change.   ESPN thinks he projects a 65 fastball and a 60 slider but needs to work on his command.  Very preliminary ceiling/projection is as a mid-rotation starter.   The thought is that he can fill out his frame and add velocity, though he’s done neither in his three college years.

He’s a Scott Boras client, he was a HS teammate of Bryce Harper, and he’s rehabbing a torn UCL, so he fits in nicely with the Nats on several levels.  It was easy to see why the mock drafts were all over the Nats taking Fedde.  In reality, I’ll bet the war room was rather dejected watching the three a-forementioned pitchers drop off the board in the 4 preceding picks to #18.

2nd round/#57 overall: Andrew Suarez, LHP from U-Miami (Law out of top 100/BA #75/MLB #86/MinorLeagueBall #103).   A re-draft (he was picked in the 9th round out of HS but chose to go to school), he suffered a torn labrum early in his college career but reportedly picked up velocity this past season and held it through most of the year.   Law alludes to other medical issues that clearly had him down on Suarez (Law ranked him lowest of my 4 resources).  He spent the year as Miami’s saturday starter (aka, their #2 starter).  BA mentioned him in their draft preview specifically because of his fantastic control; he had just a 1.34 BB/9 rate despite throwing a low 90s fastball that can reach 95.  He pitched a shut-out in game 1 of the Coral Gables regional, a 7-hit, 10K, 0 walk outing that matched his career high; nice way to finish off your college career (Miami was elminated from CWS play before Suarez could throw again).   Scouting reports say he profiles as a 4th starter.  (Note: my fingers just automatically typed Luis Suarez, aka Liverpool and Uruguay’s striker.  Part of me is in World Cup mode already).

3rd round/#93 overall: Jakson Reetz, prep Catcher from Nebraska (#38/#62/#40/#36).   A prep catcher isn’t who you normally expect to see this high on the National’s draft results, but his pre-draft rankings show that he’s clearly a steal at the mid-3rd round.  The question is; is he signable here?  $567k is his bonus slot figure; he might be a tough sign unless the Nats have a pre-draft deal with Fedde to save some money for a guy like Reetz.   His pedigree is good: MVP of the PG all-american game, member of the same world champion U-18 team that #1 overall pick Brady Aiken was on.   In prep games he was showing 91 from the mound and reportedly has a great arm, but some scouting reports say he may struggle to stay behind the plate.  As pointed out by NatsGM.com’s Ryan Sullivan, BA did a “day in the life” piece on Reetz that is worth checking out; once you watch this you’ll really like Reetz.  Last note: Keith Law even likes the pick and says he’ll sign.

4th round/#124 overall: Robbie Dickie, juco RHP from Blinn college in Texas (na/210/179/173).  95-97 on the gun, led his team to the Juco World Series, but he may project as a reliever thanks to questionable mechanics.   Quite a pop-up guy, but an over draft based on the rankings in the major publications.  He’s committed to Texas State if he doesn’t sign, which isn’t exactly a baseball powerhouse, so is this a value/slot saving pick?

5th Round/ #154 overall: Drew Van Orden, a senior RHP from Duke (na/395/na/na).  Good numbers on the year as Duke’s Friday starter (6-5, 3.19 ERA, more than a k/inning).  He finished off his college career with a 5-hit complete game shutout over Georgia Tech in the ACC tournament, Duke’s only win in their post-season tournament.  I like his pedigree despite the fact that he’s a senior 5th round pick with zero leverage.  Who are the Nats saving all this money for?  Update: Van Orden quickly signed, terms undisclosed.

6th Round/#184 overall: Austen Williams, junior RHP from Texas State ( na/#276/na/na).  Nats clearly saw something in Williams that other draft pundits did not; even MinorLeagueBall (who ranked to 350) didn’t have him listed.  Texas State’s friday starter continues a long trend of the Nats plucking talent out of Texas.  Williams posted solid numbers as Texas State’s Friday starter (8-3, 3.65 era, good K/9 rates).  I’m sure he’ll take a bit more than slot to sign, but the Nats should have some pennies saved.

7th Round/#214 overall: Dale (D.K.) Kerry, a senior Center fielder from the U of Miami (na/#332/na/#133).  MLB’s scouting report on him says he’s a great athlete and he has a “4th outfielder” projection.  Sounds like the perfect senior 7th round draft pick to me (sarcasm).  Ryan Sullivan is more bullish on him than I.

8th Round/#244 overall: Jeff Gardner, senior corner OF from Louisville (na/498/na/na).  He may be a senior, but he’s also the clean-up hitter for a CWS-bound team and had great stats on the year (.321/.403/.538 with 9 homers).   Not a bad find for the 8th round.

9th Round/#274 overall: Austin Byler, junior 1B from Nevada (94/123/166/271).  Well, now we see why the Nats are saving their pennies; getting Byler here is a find.  He should have been taken in the 3rd or 4th round if you believe the pundits, and he may take an over-slot deal to buy him out of his senior year.  He’s got serious power (he led his conference in homers and is an offensive threat) and would be a great find if he signs.

10th Round/#304 overall: Matthew Page, senior RF from Oklahoma Baptist (na/na/na/na).  A d-2 pick for a team that a) loves guys from the south west already and b) has shown itself more than willing to gamble on non D-I players.  I can’t imagine he’ll be expensive to sign.  He’s also the first player the Nats have picked that didn’t appear anywhere on any of the draft previews.

Summary: Through the first 10 rounds the Nats picked 5 pitchers and 5 hitters for good balance.  Of these 10 players selected, 9 are college.  So, in other words, this is exactly the type of draft we expect to see out of a Rizzo-run organization (with the possible exception of perhaps predicting a few more arms). 

Of these 10 draftees, I’d say that at least 5 are “expected under slot guys” (Dickie, Van Orden, Kerry, Gardner and Page).  You have to think the team may play some slot hardball with Fedde.   Suarez and Williams should sign for about slot.  That leaves two guys who may take over-slot deals to sign; the sole HS draftee in Reetz and the decently ranked Byler.  I’ll bet it works out and all 10 guys sign.

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Some useful draft links for you:

• Here’s the first round draft order for the 2014 draft.  Nats pick #18th.
• At mlb.com, here’s a tracker of the top 10 rounds of signings with known bonus figures.
• Detailed first round order (and why teams gained or lossed picks) from Bill Chuck on GammonsDaily.com.
• Allmetsports.com DC area Baseball signing status for all notable local players.
• BaseballAmerica’s Draft Preview with write-ups on top 200 players.  Furthermore for subscribers they have a top 500 list and Links to final college stats of all BA top-200 players.
• Keith Law‘s Mock Draft and top-100 list.  (espn insider only).
• MLB.com’s top 100 Prospect Watch
• MinorLeagueBall’s Matt Garrioch’s top 350 draft prospects.  But more importantly his Mid-Atlantic draft preview, a great resource with home towns and college committments of all DC/MD/VA players.
• MLB.com’s draft central home page, which includes the incredibly useful Draft Tracker database, which lets you search for players by Name, position, home state, school, etc.
• Yahoo’s Jeff Passan obtained copies of the letters MLB sent both to agents and teams, describing the “rules of behavior” agents and teams are supposed to follow.
• Draft Slot assigned bonus values per BA for the first 10 rounds.  After round 10, every subsequent spot has a slot value of $100k.  Here’s a link to the total bonus pool per team: Nats are at $5.275M for the whole draft.
• Quick link to the college stats of BA’s top prospects
• PerfectGame.org for information on prep players, college committments, etc
• d1baseball.com as an entrypoint to get to any college’s statlines.