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.
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.
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.
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.
Mock Drafts
See separate Mock Draft post.