Nationals Arm Race

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.

2016’s version of this post.

Its Draft Day!

The 2017 MLB rule-4 (Amateur) draft starts  6/12/17 at 7pm.  The MLB Network will have full coverage of the first round of picks. This post is my dumping ground of draft coverage for 2017.

This post uses last year’s format, with links to use to see draft prospect rankings, links to help cover the draft (which I personally come back to time and time again), some blurbs on local players of interest, and then links to a bunch of mock drafts.

Draft Coverage so far at NAR for 2017:

• Local Draft prospects of note for 2017: namely, J.B. Bukauskas, Adam Haseley and Pavin Smith (see more below)
• Mock Draft Overview for 2017.  The same top 5 names seem to appear … and the Nats are more and more rumored towards a problem child.

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Draft Links of importance

• MLB.com Official 2017 Draft Central home page.
• MLB’s Awesome 2017 Draft Tracker; you can slice and dice the draft 10 different ways, search by schools and home states, etc.
• Official MLB 2017 Draft Order, including slot values for the first few rounds. Nats pick 25th, then 65th, then 103rd, then 133rd and 30 more each add’l round.
  
• Official Draft Bonus Pool totals for 2017.  Minnesota most with $14M, Nats have about $5.5M.
• MLB Draft Database for all past drafts.
• Baseball-Reference Draft Tools: links to their draft database plus some custom reports.
• MinorLeagueBall.com’s 2017 Player profile index; an index of their profiles of all the top-end draft prospects for this year.

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Here’s a slew of Draft Prospect rankings : these are NOT the same as mock drafts; these are independent rankings of the players without consideration to draft considerations.  Apologies in advance; many of these are insider/subscription.  Fork over the dollars and subscribe and support baseball coverage that you like!

(Pundits to track: D1Baseball, ESPN Law, MLBpipeline, MinorleagueBall, USAToday, BaseballAmerica, PerfectGame, Scout.com, MLBDraftReport, BeyondtheBoxScore)

• D1baseball early top 100 HS/Prep Draft Prospects 12/2/2016: Greene, Adell, Lewis, Rogers, Hall.  No DC/MD/VA players in their early top 100 list, but two UVA commits here (Andrew Papantonis, Devin Ortiz)
  
• D1Baseball early top 100 College Draft Prospects 12/9/16: Kendall, Wright, Faedo, Bukauskas, Houck.  Other players with local ties mentioned include Pavin Smith, Kevin Smith, Adam Haseley, Ernie Clement, Hunter Williams plus a few others who might be top-10 round picks.
• BaseballAmerica top 200 Draft Prospects 5/4/17: Greene, McKay, Wright, Gore, Lewis.
• BaseballAmerica Top 500 Draft Prospects 6/5/17: Greene, Wright, McKay, Gore, Lewis.  Filterable by State, which is awesome.
• Fangraphs/Eric Longenhagen 2017 Sortable top 50 Draft Board 5/23/17: Wright, Greene, Gore, Lewis, McKay.
• MLBPipeline (Jim Callis/Jonathan Mayo) top 100 Draft Prospects: 5/26/17: Greene, McKay, Wright, Lewis, Gore.
• MLBPipeline (Callis & Mayo): top 200 draft prospects dated 6/5/17: Greene, McKay, Wright, Gore, Lewis.
• MinorLeagueBall.com (Michael Cook) Top 151 Draft Prospects 5/15/17: Greene, McKay, Adell, Wright, Bukauskas.
• ESPN (Keith Law) Top 100 “Big Board” Draft prospect rankings 6/7/17: Greene, Wright, McKay, Gore, Lewis.

Notice how nearly EVERY list has Greene as the best prospect in this draft?  That’s pretty consistent view … but there’s no chance that Greene goes #1 overall.  So thanks to the perverse risks associated with drafting prep kids, yet again we will likely see the best prospect not getting taken #1 overall.  This seems to happen nearly every year since the Strasburg/Harper drafts.   In 2011, Gerrit Cole went 1-1 when Anthony Rendon should have been.  In 2012 i think the “right guy” went 1-1 (Carlos Correa).  Imagine the Astros right now had they taken Kris Bryant instead of Mark Appel (who didn’t sign and who has yet to matriculate to the majors) in 2013 1-1 overall.  Brady Aiken 1-1 overall in 2014 was defensible at the time … but Carlos Rodon was the presumed 1-1 heading into the spring season.   I don’t think anyone disputes the Dansby Swanson 1-1 pick in 2015 (it was a weak class), but few think that Mickey Moniak was the best prospect in the 2016 class (most had it as Jason Groome or Riley Pint;  Groome fell to 12th thanks to some off-the-field stuff and is now hurt while Pint is struggling in low-A).  So its good to be the 2nd team picking this year.

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Now, some news about College Players with local ties who are serious draft candidates (meaning first couple of rounds projected or present on top 100 draft ranking lists).  Note that I’ve got a far, far larger list of local players that I’ll follow-up on after the draft; these are just the significant/top 10 round types.

• J.B. Bukauskas: has had a fantastic junior season and has become perhaps the 2nd best collegiate pitcher this class.  Still undersized … but there are some 6’0″ guys with success in the majors right now.
• Adam Haseley: has rocketed up draft boards by being perhaps the 2nd best two way player in college baseball.  Upper 1st round talent.
• Pavin Smith: 1B only but a sweet, solid bat.  Upper 1st round talent.

At this point, all three of these players are projecting in the first half of the first round; no other local player seems close.  There’s a slew of other local college kids mentioned in the BA top 200, which means they’re all likely 5th-8th round material.

Local Prep players of note who are serious draft candidates: none this year.  Unlike last year, where Joe Rizzo and Khalil Lee both were top 5 round picks, there’s nobody anywhere in the DC/MD/VA landscape that is threatening to be a top-end prep pick (at least as far as I can tell right now).

Nats Re-Draft players of interest: these are guys who the Nats have previously drafted but who did not sign.  Using the Nats Draft Tracker as a guide, here’s some prep guys we drafted generally in 2014 who are now rising college juniors and are bigger names in this draft:

• Stuart Fairchild, OF from Wake Forest: we drafted him in the 38th round in 2014; he’s now perhaps projected mid 2nd round.
• Evan Skoug, C from TCU: we drafted him in the 34th round in 2014; now he’s perhaps projected as a 3rd rounder.
• Tommy Doyle, RHP from Flint Hill HS/UVA: we drafted him in the 35th round in 2014, probably as a hat-tip to a local kid more than a possible signee.  He’s projected as a 6th rounder after a decent career at UVA coverting to relief.
• Quinn Brodey, RHP from Stanford: we drafted him in the 37th round in 2016; now he’s perhaps a 6th-7th rounder projected.
• Morgan Cooper: RHP from UTexas; we drafted him in the 34th round last  year in 2016: he chose to stay in school to build value and now is projected as a 5th-6th rounder.
• Tristan Clarke and Cory Voss: two Juco draftees from 2016 who are draft eligible for 2017.  Clarke started for UNO and put up solid numbers, albeit in the weaker Southland conference.  Voss only played part-time at UofA and isn’t a draft prospect.
• Other Prep draftees in 2014 not mentioned here who are not draft prospects:
  • Elliot Cary was a part-time player hitting .219 for Oregon State this year
  • Clay Casey appears to have transferred yet again, playing 2017 for Delta State and slugging his way to a 17-homer season.
  • Jon Little slashed.267/.351/.420 his junior year, starting in the OF.
  • John Henry Styles has had just one appearance this entire season, and he failed to retire a batter.

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Mock Drafts

See separate Mock Draft post.

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Here’s a quick recap of the year in stories on this blog, to tie a bow on 2015.  From each month, I’ve grabbed a couple of the more interesting or unique posts I did, with thoughts and follow-on.

(Here’s 2014’s review and  2013’s review as well, to see how far we have or have not evolved…)

Jan 2015:

• Holy Cow Scherzer! Nats make a statement by signing Scherzer for $210M; he does not disappoint with 2 no-hitters in his first season.  We’ll conveniently forget his 6+ ERA during crunch time when the team was caught and surpassed in the standings by the eventual NL champion Mets.
• Like the Janssen signing: Yeah; this one didn’t work out as well.

Feb 2015

• Nationals Prospect Ranks historically: I reference this post more for one of my better accomplishments lately; turning all my historical prospect rankings into one big XLS.  Here is that XLS in Google Drive, updated for the latest prospect rankings list I could find (BA’s year-end top 10 for the system).
• Qualifying Offers: Are they working? (2015 edition): Answer: doesn’t seem so.  And so far in this off-season, we’re seeing similar results.

Mar 2015

• Brady Aiken has TJ surgery, shakes up draft boards: Aiken eventually goes 17th overall and loses millions versus where he was drafted the year prior.  Hope he can come back from such an early TJ surgery.
• Nats Outfield … what happens next?  Big discussion once it became clear that both Span and Werth were not making the 2015 opening day lineup healthy.

Apr 2015

• Forensicane’s campaign finally fulfilled; Rafael Martin called up & Cedeno axed: the title speaks for itself.  Martin didn’t pitch much but certainly impressed with his debut.  Cedeno’s DFA seemed deserved at the time, but he pitched very well for Tampa after catching on there.
• Cole up … why not Roark?: My prophetic post predicting Cole’s meltdown in Atlanta … of course I couldn’t predict the Dan Uggla homer and 13-12 game, which I immediately put into …
• Greatest (and worst) ever Nats games & Events; updated for 2014 events and April 2015 Atlanta game: I’ll be re-doing this post soon for all the stuff that happened the rest of 2015 and the weird off-season the team has had.

May 2015

• 2015 CWS Field of 64 announced; teams and analysis: one of many CWS posts, culminating in UVA winning in Omaha in late June.
• DC/MD/VA District High School Tournament Report: 2015 post-season: May is Prep HS tournament time.  June has a ton of College and College World Series posts.  I know I don’t get a lot of comments on my HS and College coverage, but I enjoy following both and try to keep interest in local baseball alive.  FWIW, the area may very well have a first round pick in 2016 in Oakton HS’ Joe Rizzo.  More to come in February when I start up Prep baseball 2016 posts.

June 2015

• First Look: Nats top 10 draftees from 2015 Rule-4 Draft: The culmination of the pre-draft work for the Nats; digging in and looking at who we’ll be following from a-far for the next few years.
• 2015 Draft Results: local player interest draft results. This post is the end result of months and months of work, digging into players with local ties in order to follow and eventually publish where they’re going.
• Is Ross making the Nats re-think their future rotation strategy?  Yes, I think its safe to say he did.  Is Turner/Ross for Souza/Ott the best trade Rizzo has ever done?

July 2015

• State of the Nats at the halfway point 2015: Where I was noticing that our offense was holding on by a thread but that we’d still win the division by 10 games.  Yeah.  Didn’t think the Mets would find the second coming of Babe Ruth in Yoenis Cespedes and they would catch fire they way they did.
• Nats 2015 Draft Wrap-up: Nice wrap-up of the whole draft class.
• Papelbon for Pivetta: good trade, bad karma? Another prophetic blog post title, eh?

Aug 2015

• The Nats post-All Star game gauntlet of opposing Starting Pitchers: It was tough, and the team didn’t do very well against them.  They went 6-10 to open the 2nd half and went from 2 games up to 2 games back … and never made it up.
• Its make or break time; even more so than a week ago.  Arbitrary endpoints, ranting about the Papelbon trade, ranting about the manager.  Just a regular post about the 2015 Nats.
• Why exactly did the Nats call up Turner?? A question I keep asking to this day.

Sept 2015

• The Definition of Insanity… is apparently to keep watching the Nats play the Mets in September.
• I said “Call me when they Sweep Atlanta” … 115 comments on this post from the viewers, the season high by a lot.

Oct 2015

• GM for a day (or an off-season): what do you do to this team for 2016? A fun post to write.  Some of it has even come true!
• Rotation Reviews of your 2015 Playoff Teams & WC Picks: One of the reasons the October post output is way up; I did a bunch of prediction picks.  None of which were right of course.
• Chase Utley gets away with yet another dirty play; time to change the rules: F*ck Chase Utley, I hate that guy.
• 2015 Season Statistical Review of all Nats 2015 draft picks: A new feature I stumbled across that I’ll now make sure I find the time to do every year.
• Welcome Bud Black: haha; i wish I could un-post 🙂

Nov 2015

• My 2015 End-of-Season Awards Predictions: Only missed one BBWAA award this year.
• Three take the QO; but some still rolling the dice: First time for everything.  Murphy’s QO ends up costing the Nats their 17th overall pick.

Dec 2015

• Operation Bullpen Makeover Status Report: So far, so good.  Lots of new faces.
• Nationals/MLB Pitching Staff Year in Review; 2015: First in a series that is still being written as we speak.
• Murphy Signing: I guess I’m ok with it: A ringing endorsement!

 

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Total posts for 2015 (including this one): 115.  That’s down from 130 posts in 2014 and down significantly from 2013 (237 posts).  Wow, how in the heck did I do 237 posts in 2013.  That’s nearly a post for every weekday, all year.  Including this post, i’ve published 923 total since the inception of the blog.  When I hit 1000 i’ll do some cool retrospective or something.  Should happen midway through 2016.

923 posts; that’s a lot of writing.  I once calculated that a typical novel is between 90,000 and 100,000 words.  Well, most of my posts are between 1000 and 2500 words … so that means I’m writing about a book every 50 posts.  I’m in the wrong profession.  Of course, i’m not sure who would ever read a book about some random IT guy’s musings about his local baseball team.  🙂

I feel like we have a solid group always commenting, no trolls.  Very grateful for everyone who stops by and everyone who comments.  I wonder how we can get more readers; should I do more publishing on twitter when I post?  Probably.  Now that natsinsider.com is gone, we may struggle to get the word out since Mark was my primary feeder site.

We generally have 20-30 comments on each post, which is cool.  High comments on posts were 70 on a “Ladson Inbox”post in January 2015 and an astonishing 115 comments on the August “call me when we sweep Atlanta” post.

Happy New Year and thanks for reading in 2015.

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 🙂

We got word today that 2014’s #1 overall pick Brady Aiken did indeed suffer an UCL injury in his first 2015 start and underwent Tommy John surgery yesterday.

Awful break for Aiken, and a  huge shake-up for the top of the 2015 Rule-4/Amateur draft.

Quick oral history of the Aiken situation: Houston made him last  year’s #1 overall pick, then rescinded/altered their $6.5M bonus offer after having “concerns” about Aiken’s UCL when viewing his medicals.  Aiken’s representatives rejected the lowered offer (wanting Houston to honor their original offer), and in the end declined to sign the lower amount (reportedly $5M at the deadline), and Aiken became just the third #1 overall pick to fail to sign in the draft’s history.  Thanks to baseball’s convoluted draft bonus rules, the failure to sign Aiken led to a cascading effect, costing them enough “pool dollars” to have to also rescind offers to 5th round pick Jacob Nix and 21st round pick Mac Marshall (now at LSU).  Nix (rightly so) filed a grievance against the Astros for the situation and was awarded his full $1.5M promised bonus (which, in my opinion, should absolutely be coming out of the Astros’ bonus pool for what they did).  Nix and Aiken eventually enrolled at the IMG academy in Florida, a post-graduate prep school designed to be a place for budding athletes to play who may have lost their HS eligibility.  Both had planned on re-entering the 2015 draft.

My thoughts on this whole mess?

• I have to re-evaluate my opinion of the Astros organization’s behavior; previously I thought they were just being penny pinchers and were screwing with the careers of multiple amateur players (both Nix and Aiken lost UCLA scholarships over the mess).  Clearly they were right to be concerned about Aiken’s elbow, given that it tore within about 20 pitches of last being on the mound.  And now they get two top-5 picks out of a draft that does have some talent in it … and should have the money to sign them.
• That being said … what was the real difference between their initial $6.5M offer and the $5M final offer?  Think about it: why are teams so ridiculously obsessed with figures in the $1-$2M range during amateur signings, when teams are *routinely* giving out 8-figure deals to mediocre veterans?  The Astros gave Luke Gregerson 3yrs/$18.5M and Pat Neshek 2yrs/$12.5M deals this off-season; that’s a combined $30M for two middle relief right handers.  They’ve been the lowest payroll team despite a massive RSN deal and play in the nation’s 4th largest market.  You mean to tell me they couldn’t still pony up the $1.5M difference for the #1 overall pick in the draft?  They couldn’t have just gotten an insurance policy to cover their risk of moving forward with Aiken?
• If you were the Astros today, wouldn’t you rather have Aiken (with insurance policy), Nix and Marshall in the fold?  Do you think maybe your professional staff could have managed/mitigated this injury?
• Did Aiken cut off his nose to spite his face by rejecting $5M?  Even before this injury, he was already dropping on draft boards, no sure guarantee to go 1st overall in 2015.  And with Houston holding the #2 and #5 overall picks there was already a real possibility of Aiken dropping outside the top 5 (since clearly Aiken would have refused “re-draft” possibilities), which means he’d have a heck of a time getting anywhere close to even the $5M he turned down. At some point his adviser should have just accepted the deal, in my opinion.  The new rules just make it impossible to get anything close to the bonus he turned down unless you’re #1 overall.
• The situation kind of reminds me of the Matt Harrington situation, who turned down multiple bonus offers (one as high as $4M) and kept seeing his draft stock fall until he finally signed as a run-of-the-mill 13th rounder and quickly flamed out of pro ball.  His wiki page details the whole mess of a story.

There does exist a possibility of a team picking Aiken despite this injury.  Both Jeff Hoffman and our own Erick Fedde were picked in the mid-to-upper 1st round despite being rehabbing TJ arms.  And Aiken was more heralded than either guy.  I could see a team with a longer term view taking a chance on Aiken in the top 10.  A quick look at the 2015 draft order reveals some “gambler” type teams/GMs in the top 10 who could make a deal.  Assuming that your top-end names under consideration include the likes of Mike Matuella, Brendan Rodgers, Kolby Allard, Dillon Tate and maybe even someone like UVA’s Nathan Kirby , that could put teams in the 6-10 spot right in line to pick Aiken.  And that 6-10 range includes both Chicago teams and Boston, rich teams that could afford to wait him out.

One thing for sure; the odds of the Nationals getting another shot to pick a TJ case are slim; we gave up our 1st rounder to sign Max Scherzer and won’t pick until the 58th overall spot (compensation for not signing Miami’s Andrew Suarez last year).  I don’t think Aiken lasts til the 10th pick; certainly he won’t be there in the mid 2nd round.

Tough break for Aiken; hope he can salvage some bonus money and start his career.

Other opinions/hot takes I’ve read of use:

• Jeff Ellis at Scout.com predicts the same that I do for Aiken’s draft status; top-10.
• David Schoenfield at ESPN talks about Aiken and the “inequalities” between being born in the USA and elsewhere in the draft/signing markets (and the discrepancies are ridiculous).
• Dave Cameron at fangraphs has some quotes from Aiken’s social media posting announcing his surgery and some critical analysis.

Post-posting update: presumed top-5 draft talent Kolby Allard is also out for the season with a back injury, further thinning the list of names in consideration for the #1 overall pick so far.

Another post-posting update: on 4/1/15, Duke ace (and NoVa native) Mike Matuella announced the he too has to have Tommy John surgery.  That’s three presumed top-5 picks in the upcoming draft now out with season-ending injuries.  Wow.

 

When we hit 20 MLB pitchers going under the knife for blown Ulnar Collateral Ligaments (UCL) on the 2014 season, I posted on possible reasons for the epidemic.  By the time the season was over, more than 90 players in professional baseball (and a handful of marquee amateurs, including two first round picks and our own) had gone under the knife for blown UCLs/Tommy John surgery.  2014 was the year of the elbow ligament, no question, in terms of volume and awareness.

This post lists all the major league pitchers who had the surgery this year, with links to the announcements as they happened, along with stills of the pitchers’ mechanics to do a quickie thumb nail analysis of mechanics and whether there’s a relationship to the injury. At the bottom i’ve captured any significant news related to the surgery, MLB being proactive in preventing the injuries, and other TJ news.

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First, here’s the complete Tommy John fall-out for the year for major league arms.  According to the great injury tracking links below, no less than 91 players in all levels of pro baseball had the surgery in calendar year 2014, of which 29 were MLB-experienced pitchers.

(data from baseballheatmaps.com, which has detailed Disabled List data).

• Jonny Venters, recovering from his 2nd TJ surgery, re-tore the ligament and is going for his THIRD.
• Jeremy Hefner, already on the shelf from a TJ surgery *last* year, suffered a big set-back and may have to have a 2nd procedure (announced 8/11/14)
• Tyler Skaggs was diagnosed on 8/10/14 with needing the surgery.
• Nate Jones: diagnosed 7/31/14.
• Tyler Chatwood: diagnosed 7/17/14
• Masahiro Tanaka, diagnosed with torn UCL 7/10/14; a huge blow, nearly as big of an announcement as Jose Fernandez’ if he has to get TJ surgery.  No announcement yet though that he’s having the surgery.  But, as of 8/5/14 he’s re-habbing and experiencing no pain while throwing, and eventually was able to avoid the surgery.  For now.
• Bronson Arroyo diagnosed 7/8/14, a surprise considering his durability and soft-tossing nature.
• Trevor Bell, diagnosed 4/23/14 but finally getting the surgery 7/16/14.
• (… we go more than a month without another diagnosis after getting them nearly daily in April and May.  Odd).
• Sean Burnett: diagnosed 5/28/14 (would be his 2nd)
• Chris Withrow: diagnosed 5/29/14 (though technically he’d been optioned to AAA; not sure if this should count as a MLBer)
• Martin Perez: diagnosed 5/15/14
• Jose Cisnero: diagnosed 5/14/14.
• Jose Fernandez: diagnosed 5/13/14.  Wow, biggest name to fall yet.
• AJ Griffin: getting the surgery 4/27/14
• Pedro Figueroa: diagnosed 4/24/14 (his 2nd, first in 2010)
• Ivan Nova: diagnosed 4/25/14
• Josh Johnson: diagnosed/announced 4/23/14, surgery 4/24/14.  His 2nd (first in 2007).
• Matt Moore: surgery 4/22/14
• Cory Gearrin: diagnosed 4/8/14
• Bobby Parnell: diagnosed 4/2/14
• Erik Davis: diagnosed 4/2/14
• David Hernandez: diagnosed 3/31/14
• Peter Moylan: diagnosed 3/22/14 (his 2nd)
• Bruce Rondon: diagnosed 3/21/14
• Patrick Corbin: diagnosed 3/17/14
• Jarrod Parker: diagnosed 3/17/14. (his 2nd)
• Brandon Beachy: diagnosed 3/17/14 (his 2nd)
• Kris Medlen: diagnosed 3/9/14. (his 2nd)
• Luke Hochevar: announced 3/7/14
• Cory Luebke: surgery in 2/4/14 (his 2nd)

10 of these 29 pitchers are getting the surgery for the 2nd time.  Wow.

Here’s links to other notable non-MLB pitchers who have gotten the surgery as well in 2014:

• Jamison Taillon: the Pirates #1 pitching prospect and one of the best pitching prospects in the game.  Diagnosed 4/6/14, surgery 4/9/14.
• Danny Rosenbaum: Nats AAA starter and long-time farmhand.   Surgery 5/8/14.  Tough for Rosenbaum because he’s a MLFA this coming off-season, now facing a very uncertain future.
• Miguel Sano: one of the best prospects in the minors, had the surgery 3/12/14.  He’s not a pitcher, and he initially injured his arm playing in the Dominican Winter League, but it still costs Minnesota one of its best prospects.
• Jeff Hoffman, ECU’s right handed starter and consensus top 5 pick in the 2014 draft, hurt his arm and was diagnosed on 5/8/14.  He dropped 5 places from his likely drafting spot by the Cubs at #4, which cost him about $X in slot dollars.   We talked about whether the Nats (picking at #18) were a likely suitor for him at the time of the injury in early May.
• Erick Fedde, UNLV’s friday starter and projected mid-1st round pick, was diagnosed two days after Hoffman on 5/10/14.  He dropped perhaps 8 places from his estimated drafting spot of mid 1st round and was picked by Washington.  His injury didn’t really cost him much in slot money thanks to the Nats paying over-slot.
• Our own Matthew Purke, diagnosed and set for TJ surgery 5/29/14 after really struggling out of the gate this year for Harrisburg.   Purke may face an options crunch by the time he’s done re-habbing, thanks to his MLB deal signed on draft-day.  (Update: the Nats never let him get there, releasing him on 11/14/14).
• Chad Billingsley having flexor tendon surgery while trying to recover from his 2013 TJ surgery.    This isn’t counted as a TJ, but is noteworthy.
• Not a pitcher, but key Orioles player Matt Wieters had to have TJ surgery on 6/18/14.
• Matt Cain dodged a bullet by just being diagnosed with elbow chips, but still had season-ending elbow surgery on 8/5/14.
• Padres uber-prospect and 2012 first rounder Max Fried went under the knife in mid-august.
• Yu Darvish didn’t fall victim to the TJ surgery, but an elbow issue is shutting him down in late August, just the latest nail in the coffin of the Rangers’ season.
• Jonathan Mayo discussion on elbow surgeries and prospects from Mid-Late August.

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Here’s quickie images of every MLB starter diagnosed this year as they land to make a quick judgement about their mechanics:

 

 

 

Quick and Dirty Mechanics analysis (images in same order as list of pitchers above, which is chronological in order of diagnosis in 2014):

• Inverted W: Hefner, Skaggs, Withrow, Griffin, Nova, Gearrin, Beachy, Hochevar
• Sideways M: Ventors, Chatwood, Bell, Burnett, Fernandez, Johnson, Davis, Moylan, Rondon, Parker, Medlen
• Inverted L: Jones, Tanaka, Arroyo, Perez, Cisnero, Figueroa, Moore, Parnell, Hernandez, Corbin, Luebke

Conclusions? None.  They’re all over the road.  TJ injuries this year happened to those thought to have “dangerous” mechanics and clean mechanics.  TJ injuries happened to the league’s harder throwers (Rondon, Ventors, Fernandez) and its softest throwers (Medlen and Arroyo, both of whom are usually at the absolute bottom of the league in terms of fastball velocity).  Starters and relievers, no discernable pattern.

I think all you can conclude is this: if you throw a lot of innings, you’re more prone to injury.  I know, ground breaking analysis.

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Other notable/interesting links I’ve collected on the topic over the length of the season:

• Yahoo’s Tim Brown interviewed Zack Greinke (published 5/15/14)who says he made a conscious decision to throw fewer sliders, noting that he could really feel it in his elbow after starts where he threw too many.  This tends to support the notion that sliders make a difference.
• Jerry Crasnick interviewed commissioner Bud Selig on 5/15/14 and Selig said he’s “concerned.”  Great!  On a scale of “Resolve Oakland/San Jose territorial rights” concerned to “Resolve MASN dispute” concerned, I wonder where he falls?  Maybe he’ll form a blue-ribbon committee that can meet for several years without arriving at any solutions.
• Stephania Bell‘s articles on the spate of TJ injuries: from April and again in May.
• Nate Silver‘s new blog 538 chimes in in mid-may.
• Neil Weinberg from Peter Gammons‘ website posts his own theory on 5/16/14 that is basically related to the rise in youth/showcase events.
• Shawn Anderson from the blog HallofVeryGood.com posts his theory (overuse).
• An older link to Will Carrol from July 2013 talking about the surgery, how its done, who’s had it and some other great stuff.
• The American Sports Medicine Institute (led by Dr. James Andrews) released a statement on 5/28/14 on the issue of Tommy John surgeries (as pointed out by David Schoenfield and/or Craig Calcaterra in late may and/or Jerry Crasnick on the same day).  Their basic point: don’t throw with max effort.
• Dr. James Andrews announced that he’s releasing an app to help keep pitchers healthy.   Per screen shots, it will be relatively simple and will have pitch counts, age and rest days calculate a max number of pitchers that a player can throw today.
• An interesting analysis of Kansas City’s Yordano Ventura after he was diagnosed with a non-UCL related elbow injury in May.
  
• Thoughtful piece from Dirk Hayhurst about the quest for velocity and the value of soft-throwers like Mark Buehrle.
• Danny Knobler special piece to the BleacherReport in June 2014 discussing “child abuse” of kids over-throwing, throwing too much, too hard, too soon.
• A sleeve has been announced that may help prevent TJ injuries (its called the Motus Pitcher Sleeve).  Dirk Hayhurst subsequently did some research and interviews about the sleeve and offers some thoughts.
• CBS’s Jon Heyman breaks the news that #1 overall pick Brady Aiken may have an “elbow ligament issue,” thus holding up the signing.  Wow.  As we all know, this turned into a big-time stalemate, the non-signing of Aiken (which cascaded down and cost the Astros their 5th round pick too), possible grievances, possible lawsuits, all sorts of NCAA eligibility concerns, and a whole big black-mark for the Astros organization.  All over $1.5M.  Remember; this is the same team that gave $30M last off-season to 5th starter Scott Feldman.
• There was a two hour special on the injury on MLB Radio Networks on 7/17/14 that I hope they replay or transcribe to the internet.
• Bud Selig still awaits the Tommy John study in Mid July 2014.  If its anything like his other blue-ribbon panels, he’ll be waiting a long time.
• Discussion about youths with UCL/TJ injuries in USA Today on 7/23/14.
• Study from USA Today on how prep pitchers are avoiding TJ.
• MLB unveils “Pitch Smart” guide in Mid November to help youth’s understand workloads.  Also discussed by Jeff Passan.

Hope you’ve found this trove of TJ links as interesting as I have.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/reversestandings

Your Arizona Diamondbacks!   Here’s next year’s top 10 (click on the above link for the full first round; the Nats will pick 30th out of 31 picks next year if we keep the pick).

(Another more complete post on this topic from MinorLeagueBall, including all the comp picks, bonus allocations and whatnot.)

2015 pick #	Team	2014 W	2014 L	2014 W/L Pct
1	Arizona Diamondbacks	64	98	0.395
2	Houston Astros
3	Colorado Rockies	66	96	0.407
4	Texas Rangers	67	95	0.414
5	Houston Astros	70	92	0.432
6	Minnesota Twins	70	92	0.432
7	Boston Red Sox	71	91	0.438
8	Chicago White Sox	73	89	0.451
9	Chicago Cubs	73	89	0.451
10	Philadelphia Phillies	73	89	0.451

Houston retains the #2 overall pick after failing to sign last year’s #1 Brady Aiken.  Teams that tied in records are given priority based on last year’s W/L record, meaning that Houston picks before Minnesota, the White Sox before the Cubs and Phillies, etc.   Houston, for their prolonged incompetence, gets the 2nd and 5th pick next year, and I’m sure they’ll figure out a way to out-smart themselves and screw it up again.  And that’s if they even keep the picks: 5th rounder Jacob Nix had his deal axed when Aiken’s deal went south, thanks to the ridiculous new signing bonus rules.  Nix has filed a grievance and if the Astros are forced to honor his deal, they’ll lose one or both of these picks (and maybe more).

The Diamondbacks with their fresh and completely inexperienced General Manager Dave Stewart now have the honor of selecting one from quite a few interesting candidates for #1 overall right now.  Aiken presumably will pitch a year at JuCo and be a completely legitimate shot to go 1-1 again (assuming he doesn’t get hurt).  But he’ll also be looking for significant money.  Duke’s Michael Matuella (who is a local kid, hailing from Great Falls and who attended Georgetown Prep) has been shooting up boards.  A couple of other prep players are considered upper first round talent (Brendan Rodgers in Florida, Mike Nikorak in Pennsylvania, Kolby Allard in California).  And, with a rising class of college juniors we have more than a few big-time college guys who may push Aiken down off the top spot.  Namely, Walker Buehler from Vanderbilt, Phil Bickford (late of Cal State Fullerton) or maybe even the likes of Kyle Funkhouser (Louisville) or Carson Fuller (Vanderbilt).  In fact, Vanderbilt may be like UCLA was a few years back, with two starters selected in the top of the first round.  And like always, some one may come out of nowhere to claim the 1-1 spot with an under-slot deal, much like the Astros did in 2012.

The top 10 for next year is rounded out by four of the wealthiest clubs in the game (Boston, both Chicago teams and Philadelphia).  Which also means that along with Texas, half the teams who finished in the bottom 10 this year were among the highest spenders in terms of payroll in 2014.  You can’t fault Texas necessarily, but you can certainly continue to mock Philadelphia.  How does Frank Wren get fired but Ruben Amaro keeps his job?

I’m sure, based on comments in the previous thread, that some will think the results of the Nats 2014 draft will be overblown.  Fair enough.  Yes the draft is a crap shoot, especially after the first round.  You can take that angle and tell your self that its not that big of a deal that the team blew its 2nd and 8th round picks.

But this fact remains: At the draft signing deadline for the 2014 rule-4 draft, out of 315 players taken in the first 10 rounds (and supplimentals), just six players were unsigned.  And two of them belong to the Nats.  This team is doing squat in the international market and, outside of a few marquee names, has a pretty thin farm system right now, and needed to get high-end talent out of this draft.  But they didn’t.

Here’s my (glass is half empty) summary of the top 10 rounds for this team now:

• An over-slot starter coming off of Tommy John surgery (which doesn’t have a 100% recovery rate, lets remind ourselves) who may or may not have even been a top-15 talent (as he was paid) before he got hurt.  Every draft pundit I saw had him in the late 20s factoring in his injury.
• Four college senior/throw away signings who all scream “org guy” and likely all wash out within a couple years.
• A massive over-slot HS catcher who, if everything goes *perfectly* for the kid’s development, we may see at the big league level 5 years from now.
• A Juco pitcher who so far is getting *hammered* in the rookie league.
• A 6th round pitcher from a middling college in a low-end division 1 league.
• A compensation pick in the middle of the 2nd round next year.

Wow.  I’m overwhelmed with anticipation to see how our 2014 class turns out!  To say that Mike Rizzo has gambled this entire draft on the future potential of Erick Fedde is an overstatement.  Most scouting reports on him have his ceiling as a 3rd starter at best, not exactly the same as drafting a Tyler Kolek or a Carlos Rodon.  If Fedde flames out or is converted to a reliever (as more and more it seems last year’s pick Jake Johansen will be doing thanks to his apparent inability to pitch more than 4 innings at a time without getting blasted), we’ll be talking about the “hole” this draft leaves in the system for some time.

Two of the other unsigned players from this draft are far more high visibility: the situation with Houston and Brady Aiken (and its fall-out consequences of costing them Jacob Nix and to a lesser extent 21st round pick Mac Marshall) is a huge problem for baseball.  I agree with Keith Law wholeheartedly; the Astros reneged on a draft-day deal with arguable “findings” in the medicals, and that haggling cost them another pre-arranged deal with Nix.  Both players have serious cases for a grievance; the Astros pulled back on verbal agreements that may end up being legally binding, AND both are high school kids who failed very high-profile professional negotiations, likely negating their NCAA eligibility/accepted scholarship offers to UCLA.  Its a mess all around.

Personally, I hope both players file a grievance with the union and are declared free agents, free to negotiate with whoever they want.  Certainly there will be another team that looks at Aiken’s medicals and has no problem giving him far more than the $6.5M bonus (approx) that was pulled back.  I read an opinion yesterday that said he could get a 6yr/$20M deal given his capabilities.  It highlights the grave need for a “player combine” similar to what the NFL does, where players showcase for scouts all together and get consistent medical advice that is available to all teams.

Sorry to sound so negative, but taking a high-profile/high-cost injury-risk pitcher for the 3rd time in 4 years (Giolito, Purke), missing on your 2nd rounder, and missing on the one potential “over slot” guy that you should have been saving your pennies for by drafting throw-away college seniors in rounds 5 through 9 is a failed draft for me.  The Nats are going to have to get some “finds” out of this crew, or out of the rest of the class, to make up for these mistakes.

While researching for the #1 overall pick Starting Pitching matchup post, I found myself typing up little mini biographies on each of the pitchers.  I ended up moving that content to a new post, which you see here.  This is probably the last draft-related post for a while, until I summarize how our draft picks did at the end of the season.

Here’s a biography and career summary of every pitcher who’s been taken #1 overall in the history of the MLB draft, which started in 1965.  PeterGammons.com has a review of all #1 picks, which looks like a nicer-formatted version of the b-r.com page.  Dave Cameron wrote a WSJ article talking about the fact that just two HS arms have been drafted 1-1 prior to 2014 and they were both failures, and Baseball Prospectus’s Steve Goldman printed his own own version of this same post in 2009 with great insight not otherwise available, but it was light on details for the last 5 or so guys.

Believe it or not, there’s only been 17 pitchers picked first overall (including 2014) … and there’s *never* been a prep right handed starter picked.   Fourteen of the seventeen first overall pitchers selected came from college, and twelve of those fourteen were right handed pitchers.

Here’s a brief history of each #1 overall pitcher.

• 2014: Brady Aiken, LHP from Cathedral Catholic HS in San Diego, drafted 1st overall by the Houston Astros in 2014.  Issues with pre-draft consensus 1-1 Carlos Rodon led the Astros to go with just the third prep pitcher ever to go #1 overall.  Aiken is considered the best talent in this draft by nearly every pundit, with a live arm, good mechanics, 3 excellent pitches and good command.   He quickly signed a below-slot deal, saving the Astros a ton of money that should enable them to sign over-slot deals later on in their draft.  There’s plenty of draft coverage of Aiken in the normal places, so we’ll focus on the previous guys who by now have at least a bit of pro experience.
• 2013: Mark Appel, RHP from Stanford, drafted by the Houston Astros in 2013.  Appel had quite a draft day history; he was picked in the 15th round out of HS and didn’t sign.  And then in 2012 he was thought to be the #1 draft prospect in the draft (the first year where there were significant restrictions on bonuses by slot) but fell to #8.  The Pirates drafted him at #8 but couldn’t put together an over-slot enough deal to convince him to forgo his senior year.  So that’s what he did; pitched his senior year and then went #1 overall to Houston, who got him to sign an under-slot deal soon after the draft.   Appel was assigned to low-A to finish out the 2013 season and did well, but has struggled mightily in 2014 for Houston’s high-A team.  Some say that he has been unable to adjust to Houston’s “tandem” starting scheme, where guys throw fewer innings/pitches per outing but throw more frequently (every 4 days).  I agree; I think Houston is really foolish to take a prized possession such as Appel and shoe-horn him into a weird/non traditional rotation experiment.  Put him in AA, put him throwing regularly every 5 days and see what he can do.  As of this writing, he sports an 11+ era in the California League, having given up 10 runs in one 1 1/3 inning-outing at the end of May.  The word on the street was that he was suffering from a hand issue which prevented him from locating (but didn’t sap his velocity); still; that’s an awful lot of hits and runs to give up to A-ball players for a guy who (in some opinions) could be in the majors right now.  Is it too early to worry?
• 2011: Gerrit Cole, RHP from UCLA, drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Cole was part of an amazing 1-2 punch at UCLA in 2011 (his rotation mate was Trevor Bauer, taken 3rd overall in the same draft.  Amazingly, UCLA didn’t even advance out of its own regional despite having two top-3 starters in their rotation).  Cole didn’t pitch in 2011, but “solved” high-A and AA in his first pro season in 2012 and was called up in mid 2013 once he’d cleared super-2 status by the cost-conscious Pittsburgh Pirates.  He was excellent in 2013, maintaining a sub 3.00 FIP for the year and helping Pittsburgh make the post season for the first time in a generation.
• 2009: Stephen Strasburg, RHP from San Diego State, drafted by Washington.  We all are quite familiar with the story by now; Strasburg was a laconic out-of-shape  hurler in high school who barely merited a college spot, then re-made himself into the “greatest pitching prospect of all time” while at San Diego State.   Despite his reported bonus demands (he ended up with more than $15M deal) and his representation (Scott Boras), the Nats never seriously not selecting him with their first round pick.  The team played the “service time” game with him, keeping him in the minors until his super-2 eligibility was exhausted, then he struck out 14 Pirates in his MLB debut.
• 2007: David Price, LHP from Vanderbilt, drafted by Tampa Bay.  Price was the friday starter for Vanderbilt, who entered the 2007 post season as the #1 overall CWS seed but who somehow lost in their regional.  Price signed late (this was before the moved-up signing deadline and often big-money draft picks had to wait for the signing deadline to be announced) so he didn’t debut until 2008.  He quickly proved to be un-hittable in high-A or AA and was promoted to the big club in September of his first pro season.  He was up and down (both to and from Durham and in terms of performance in 2009) before exploding onto the scene in 2010, going 19-6 and finishing 2nd in the Cy Young race to Felix Hernandez.  Price won the Cy Young in 2012 in a close race and is generally been considered one of the best 10-15 pitchers in the game.  The biggest question with Price now is where he’ll end up; he’s arbitration eligible and earning a significant portion of the Tampa payroll, and his name has been in the trade rumors for two years running.  However 2014 may finally be the time Price moves on; Tampa has the worst record in the majors and probably starts making moves as soon as the all-star break passes.  I look for Price to join a playoff contender and have a real impact in 2014 and 2015 before his 9-figure payday arrives.
• 2006: Luke Hochevar, RHP from Tennessee/Indy league, drafted by Kansas City.  Hochevar burned quite a few bridges in Los Angeles prior to his joining Kansas City; he was drafted by the Dodgers twice, the second time agreeing to and then reneging on a 1st round deal worth nearly $3M in 2005.  Instead he played Indy ball and went 1st overall in 2006 to the Royals, who gave him a (now banned) MLB deal with significantly more money than the Dodgers offered.  He debuted in 2007, but generally struggled as a starter for the Royals for the next 5 seasons (compiling a 38-59 record in those years).  In 2013 he remade himself as a wipe-out 8th inning guy, posting a 215 ERA+ for the rising royals.  Unfortunately, he sucummed to the dreaded Tommy John disease early in 2014 and had surgery on 3/7/14.   Hochevar’s injury couldn’t be more badly timed; he’s a free agent this upcoming season and likely will have to sign a non-guaranteed deal until he can show he’s recovered.
• 2002: Bryan Bullington, RHP from Ball State, drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Bullington’s selection by the penurious Pirates was considered a “signability pick,” with the GM given direction to sign a “safe” college pitcher as opposed to one of the prep talents that were higher ranked on most draft boards.  So Pittsburgh selected Bullington (in lieu of B.J. Upton, Prince Fielder or a slew of other now-successful MLBers from the 2002 draft).  To be fair, Bullington was considered the #1 college arm in the 2002 draft, but few thought he was the #1 overall talent.  He held out for months, finally signing in October of 2002 for $4M.  He progressed slwoly through the Pittsburgh system, debuting in September 2005.  He was hurt though, got diagnosed with a torn labrum and the Oct 2005 surgery cost him all of 2006.   He never was really effective afterwards, sputtering through 2007 and part of 2008.  Pittsburgh waived him in 2008.  After that he bounced around 3 organizations in the next 3 years, ending up with a callup by Toronto in late 2010 where he threw 8 innings of shut-out ball to earn is sole major league victory.  For the last three years he has pitched in the Japanese Nippon league.
• 1997: Matt Anderson, RHP from Rice, drafted by Detroit.  Detroit picked the Rice hurler believing that his position (closer) and his velocity (100mph capabilities) would mean that he was quick to the majors and they were right; after dominating high-A and AA, he was in Detroit’s bullpen by late June 1998.  He had a great debut season but mostly struggled with control issues (career 5.5 bb/9) as a 7th/8th inning guy.  He tore a muscle in his shoulder in 2002 (allegedly by participating in an Octopus-throwing contest earlier in the day), which sapped him of his velocity upon his return.  Detroit sent him to AAA in 2004 and then released him at the end of the season.  After 2005, he bounced around 3 different organizations, attempted a comeback in 2011 with the Phillies and now is completely out of baseball.
• 1996: Kris Benson, RHP from Clemson, drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Unlike the Bullington pick, Benson was the consensus #1 player in the draft, having just completed an undefeated junior season at Clemson, leading them to the CWS, and being named the College player of the year.   He spent two nondescript years in the minors and joined Pittsburgh’s rotation in the 1999 season.  He had two good seasons, then blew out his elbow and missed all of 2001 recovering from Tommy John.  He returned to the mound in 2003 and pitched like a #3/#4 starter for several years until being befelled again by injury.  This time it was more serious; a torn labrum.   By this point he had been traded from Pittsburgh to New York to Baltimore and had brought his “road show” along with him (he was married to former stripper Anna Benson, who on more than a few occasaions made headlines thanks to her curious behavior.  It is alleged in some circles that the Mets traded Benson just to rid themselves of his wife’s antics).   He missed the whole 2007 season and a good chunk of 2008 with shoulder soreness, bounced around a couple more organizations, and called it a career after 2010.    He made 200 career starts in the majors and had a 70-75 record all in all.  He filed for divorce from his (crazy) wife, who then was arrested after showing up at his house with weapons while wearing a bullet-proof vest.   I’ll be honest; his devotion to charitable causes doesn’t seem congruous with his marriage to an ex-stripper.  Maybe that’s a bit judgemental on my behalf 🙂
• 1994: Paul Wilson, RHP from Florida State, drafted by the New York Mets.  Wilson was part of a trio of high-end Mets pitching prospects who were expected to be the next wave of power arms for the team (himself, along side of Jason Isringhausen and Fairfax’s Bill Pulsipher).   Wilson’s career peak may have been the year after he was drafted, throwing 180+ innings in the minors.  He struggled in 1996 at the major league level and subsequently had to have Labrum surgery.  That cost him most of 1997 and 1998 … then to add insult to injury he tore his UCL and had to have Tommy John in 1999.   By this point the Mets were apparently tired of waiting for him to develop and traded him to Tampa Bay.  There, he finally got back on the field in 2000 and pitched well enough to earn a 4yr deal from Cincinnati.  Unfortunately, he tore his rotator cuff, underwent his third surgery as a professional … and never made it back afterwards.  He tried to rehab the arm in the minors in 2006, suffered a set-back, took a non-guaranteed deal in 2007, had a set-back, and tried Indy ball in 2008 before being released and retiring.  Despite all these injuries he managed to make 150+ major league starts.
• 1991: Brien Taylor, North Carolina HS, LHP, drafted by the New York  Yankees.  One of only three high school pitchers ever taken number one overall and (excluding the two most recent draftees) he’s the only player on this list who never appeared in the majors.  Taylor was hitting 98-99 as a HS pitcher, had an absolutely astounding 21 K/9 rate (he struck out 213 in just 88 HS innings), and by more than one scout’s opinoin was the greatest high school pitching prospect the game has seen.  Unfortunately he suffered a significant shoulder injury (a rotator cuff tear that separated the cuff from the bone) in a bar fight while in the minors, missed an entire season after surgery, and lost 8mph off his fastball.  The Yankees released him without his ever appearing above AA.  After bounching around odd jobs, he was arrested for cocaine trafficing in 2012 and is currently in federal prison.  ESPN has a great oral-history just posted about Taylor, with all sorts of quotes from Yankees officials of the day.   He’s a sad story all around.
• 1989: Ben McDonald, RHP from LSU, drafted by the Baltimore Orioles.   He was the consensus #1 overall pick, the best player in the college game the year prior, and had just led USA baseball to the gold medal in the 1988 olympics.  He is one of the most “close to the majors” pitchers ever drafted.  He signed on August 21st and made his MLB debut just 18 days later, pitching out of the bullpen.  In July 1990, he pitched a 4-hit shut-out in his major league debut, a game I distinctly remember watching on TV.  McDonald was a phenom and was going to bring Baltimore back to the promised land.  It never happened: McDonald struggled with injuries and ended up leaving Baltimore after his initial deal ended.  In Milwaukee he was pitching well but suffered a torn rotator cuff, from which he never recovered.  McDonald was out of baseball at the age of 29.  In the years since, he was elected to the College Baseball Hall of Fame, a nod to his completely dominant career at LSU.
• 1988: Andy Benes, RHP from Evansville University, drafted by the San Diego Padres.  Career 1989-2002.  Benes was a “pop up” guy who went from being an unknown prospect to a first rounder thanks to an amazing 21-K outing his junior year in college.  The Padres were “drafting for need” somewhat and had targeted a quick-to-the-majors college arm to be their #1 pick, and Benes was the best available choice.  He was a multi-sport player in college, which some pundits believe limited his pitching development.  He was known to have an excellent fastball with great command … and little else.  Nonetheless, he flashed through the minors and debuted in 1989, finishing 5th in the Rookie of the Year voting.  For the next six years he was basically a #3 starter/innings eater for San Diego, never missing a start, putting up great K/9 numbers and compiling a near .500 record for a series of decent-to-awful Padres teams.  He was traded to Seattle in 1995 (for one Ron Villone) in his walk year to join the Mariners for their playoff run, then signed a 2-year deal with St. Louis.  He pitched well in St. Louis, even getting Cy Young votes, but then a contract snafu led him to join Arizona ahead of their debut season, where he threw the first pitch in franchise history.  After his stint in Arizona, he came back to St. Louis but a series of injuries cause him to miss significant time during his last two seasons.   He pitched excellently in the 2nd half of 2002, but his declining health (he suffered from an arthritic knee, which sapped him of his power, forced him to pitch with a knee brace and caused him to become more of a finesse guy later in his career) caused the Cardinals to decline their 2003 option on Benes.  Frustrated with his health and unwilling to pitch anywhere but in St. Louis, Benes retired in the winter of 2002.
• 1983: Tim Belcher, RHP from Mount Vernon Nazarene College, drafted by the Minnesota Twins.  Career 1987-2000.   Technically Belcher was a #1 overall pick twice.  He was drafted by Minnesota #1 overall but didn’t sign (Minnesota was known to be cheap with their money back then), and then was picked #1 again in the January 1984 supplimental draft phase by the Yankees.  Belcher visited two more organizations before making his debut, getting snagged by Oakland from the Yankees as FA compensation, then getting flipped to the Dodgers after Belcher struggled in the minors.  He was immediately effective for Los Angeles though, giving them several good seasons after finally debuting at age 25.  He threw EIGHT shutouts in 1989 enroute to a 5th place Cy Young finish, his most effective season as a pro.  He was flipped to Cincinnati (for Erik Davis) and bounced around 5 other orgnaizations from there, always featuring as a #3-#4 starter quality guy who stayed relatively healthy and ate innings but was nothing more.  His career was ended thanks mostly to an elbow surgery late in 1999; he tried to come back in 2000 but was mostly ineffective and hung them up in spring training of 2001.  He served as a coach in the Cleveland organization for most of the rest of the decade but (as far as I can tell) has been out of the game since 2011.
• 1981: Mike Moore, RHP from Oral Roberts, drafted by the Seattle Mariners.  Career 1982-1995.  Moore was already a known quantity, having been drafted in the 3rd round out of High School.   After being drafted by Seattle (who by 1981 also had former #1 overall pick Bannister on their payroll), Moore made just 14 minor league starts before debuting in the majors in April of 1982.   Predictably, he got hammered.  Seattle was generally awful during Moore’s entire tenure there, despite his putting up several 5-6win seasons.  When he made it to free agency, he joined Oakland and immediately became the leader of a world series winning squad.  He finished his career off by vastly underperforming during a 3yr/$10M contract with Detroit, ending with his being released a month before his contract ended.   He ended up with a career profile quite similar to some of the names above here (especially the likes of Benes and Belcher): decent career, #3 starter ceiling, .500 pitcher.
• 1976: Floyd Bannister, LHP from Arizona State, drafted by the Houston Astros.  Career 1977-1992.  As with Moore after him, Bannister was a 3rd round pick out of HS but opted to go to Arizona State, where (like McDonald and Benson after him) he was the collegiate player of the year and the clear #1 overall prospect in the draft.   And like several guys before him, he ended up being less of a total Ace and more of a #3/#4 starter, .500 career record kind of hurler.  He probably had his best season for the White Sox in 1987, but knocked around three more organizations and Japan after that, retiring in 1992 with 363 career starts.
• 1973: David Clyde, Texas HS LHP drafted by the Texas Rangers.  Career 1973-1979.  The first ever pitcher taken #1 overall was Clyde, who turned into a cautionary tale of what NOT to do with your prep draftees: Clyde was a Texas-based high school phenom who had an amazing senior year and was the consensus #1 overall pick.  But Texas did something rather extraordinary; they drafted Clyde and then immediately put him on the major league roster.  He ended up starting 18 games for Texas as an 18 yr old, mostly as a publicity stunt by the owner, looking for increased box office revenue.  He got hurt, was traded to Cleveland and was out of the league by the age of 24.  His wikipedia page is a good read; after retiring he went through some tough times but seemed to come out ok.

Best career of any #1 overall pick by total bWAR: Andy Benes with 31.7 bWAR compiled over a 14 year career where he was basically a .500 starter (career record: 155-139, career ERA+ was 104).   Belcher didn’t quite have the bWAR but had the longest career of any of these guys.  You can probably argue that David Price is more successful already by virtue of his Cy Young award.

Least successful #1 overall pick: clearly Brien Taylor, the only one of these 17 players who never reached the majors (excepting recent picks Appel and Aiken of course).  A couple of the other picks here at least made the majors but compiled negative bWAR for their brief careers.

 

I saw a cool stat while idly watching a Nats-Pittsburgh game a few weeks back.  The match-up between Stephen Strasburg and Gerrit Cole was the 11th time ever that #1 overall picks faced each other in baseball history.

What a great stat.  So naturally I wanted to look up the other ten.  I was hoping that I could find this data in the Baseball Reference Play Index, but couldn’t find it, so I went with a “brute force” method of finding the 11 matchups by scouring b-r.com’s play index data for each of the handful of pitchers entire career game logs.

The draft has existed since 1965.  In that time just 17 pitchers have been drafted #1 overall (including this year), and a few of them barely had careers.  Thus the rarity of this occurence.  While researching this article, I found myself looking more closely at all seventeen #1 overall picks, but moved that to a subsequent post, so look out for that in the future.

Meanwhile, here the 11 matchups are, in descending chronological order:

• 11th: Stephen Strasburg vs Gerrit Cole 5/24/14: Strasburg gives up 3 in 7 while Cole gives up 2 in 6 and gets the win.  Pittsburgh d Washington 3-2.
• 10th: David Price vs Luke Hochevar 8/21/12.  Seven years have passed since the last 1/1 matchup by this time.  Here, both pitchers threw 8 shutout innings (Hochevar giving up just 1 hit) and Kansas City prevailed by getting a run in the 10th.  This game was likely the greatest game Hochevar ever pitched (game score of 87), slightly better than a 3-hit shutout he had in 2009.   Hochevar was pretty-well awful as a starter for years with Kansas City but transformed himself into a great middle reliever in 2013; he suffered a blown elbow and had Tommy John surgery in March.
• 9th: Kris Benson vs Paul Wilson 5/16/05:  Nearly a decade has passed since we had a #1 vs #1 matchup.  Here, neither guy was pitching terribly well in 2005, but Benson got the better of Wilson on the day.  Benson gave up just 2 runs in 7+ innings while Wilson got beat around for 7 runs in 5 1/3.   After the game, Wilson hit the disabled list and eventually had shoulder surgery for labrum and rotator cuff issues, which cost him the rest of 2005 and all of 2006, and he never appeared in another game.  So Wilson’s last ever MLB appearance was his sole #1 versus #1 matchup.
• 8th: Ben McDonald vs Tim Belcher 6/27/96: McDonald was enjoying a nice bounce-back season after leaving his original team (Baltimore), and threw a nifty 7ip/3hit/1 run performance to beat Belcher’s Royals.
• 7th: Ben McDonald vs Tim Belcher 4/11/94: McDonald was off to a great start for Baltimore, while Belcher was not for Kansas City.  Odd how these two guys both met up again, both with new different teams.   McDonald again threw 7+ innings of 2 run ball to beat Belcher on the day.
• 6th: Ben McDonald vs Mike Moore 9/2/92: Their second meeting in two weeks, McDonald threw 6 innings but Moore threw 9 innings of 1 run ball; the game was won in the 10th by Baltimore.
• 5th: Ben McDonald vs Mike Moore 8/23/92: Moore again got the better of McDonald, who gave up 6 in 6 for the loss.
• 4th: Andy Benes vs Tim Belcher 4/8/92: Benes got the better of Belcher on the day, though both pitched well.
• 3rd: Ben McDonald vs Mike Moore 5/7/91: McDonald hit hard early and Moore gets a win over his fellow #1 overall pick.
• 2nd: Mike Moore vs Floyd Bannister 6/24/1988.  Moore pitched a 4-hit shutout to beat Bannister and the Royals in a rematch of their first 1-1 meeting four years prior.  Bannister gave up 7 runs (4 earned) in 3 2/3’s innings to get knocked out in the first ever matchup of former #1 overall picks.
• 1st: Mike Moore vs Floyd Bannister 6/27/84: The first ever meeting between #1 overall picks took nearly 20 years to occur, thanks to just a couple of pitchers being taken first overall in the first two decades of the draft and thanks to bad timing.  This meeting was nothing to write home about though; neither guy pitched that badly, but neither figured in the decision after each gave up 3-4 runs in 5 innings.

Mike Moore appeared in 5 of the 11 one-vs-one matchups and his teams were 4-1 in these five games.   Bannister’s teams went 1-1 in his two appearances.  Ben McDonald also appeared in 5 of the 11 one-vs-one games and his teams went 3-2 in the games.   Belcher’s 3 games all resulted in losses for his team, despite (arguably) Belcher having the most accomplished career of any #1 overall drafted pitcher.   There’s only been 3 such meetings in the last 20 years, all featuring more recently drafted pitchers.

I also found these games where two former #1 overall picks both appeared, but one (or both) was in relief:

• Kris Benson vs Andy Benes 7/20/02: Benson got the start and the win while Benes pitched 3 innings of mop-up duty as St. Louis fell behind by 10 runs.
• Tim Belcher vs Matt Anderson 9/7/00: Belcher got the start and the win with 6ip/3er, while Anderson pitched the last out of the 8th for the losing team.
• Tim Belcher vs Matt Anderson 7/14/98: Belcher got the start and got blasted; Anderson pitched the 7th and got a hold.
• Mike Moore vs Floyd Bannister 6/12/92.  Moore got punched out of the box early and Bannister picked up the victory by pitching the 14th inning.
• Ben McDonald vs Floyd Bannister 5/17/91: McDonald started and pitched a complete game win while Bannister relieved the losing starter in the 5th.
• Mike Moore vs Floyd Bannister 4/17/91.  By this time in their careers, Bannister was relegated to the bullpen, but they did “face” each other in this game.  Moore threw 7 innings of 1-run ball for the victory.

Just for completion sake, who are the 6 pitchers not mentioned already who were picked #1?  That would be 2014’s Brady Aiken, 2013’s Mark Appel (neither of which has appeared in a major league game yet, obviously), along with Bryan Bullington (who bounced around the league for a few years but never matched up with any of his fellow draft picks), Brien Taylor (the 1991 #1 overall pick who never made it above A-ball), and David Clyde (who was the first pitcher to go #1 overall but didn’t last long enough to get any matchups with subsequent picks).

Stay tuned for a look at all seventeen of these guys, their stories and their careers in a future post.