Nationals Arm Race

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.

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.

Its been a while since we hyper-monitored for the #1 pick in Nats town … but for draft-wonks its a fun time of the year.  The tail end of the season, especially a season where multiple teams were in “rebuilding mode,” is fun to see who’s in line for the #1 overall pick next year.

Reverse standings updated at Baseball America: here’s who is in line for the top 10 picks next year:

So, as of 9/22/16, the Twins have a 5 game “lead” over Atlanta for the #1 overall pick, and they’re bottoming out, having gone just 6-24 in the last month or so.  Meanwhile, the Braves, who everyone thought was the shoe-in for the worst team this year, has a 17-13 record in its last 30 and has shown signs of life enough so as to cost themselves the #1 pick next year.  At the rate they’re all going, Atlanta may end up dropping even further down thanks to the Reds and their historically awful pitching.  Arizona has been playing decently but comes to Washington for a 4-game set.

Here’s a quick look at the 2017 candidates for going #1 overall.  Mind you this is amazingly early, especially for the high school kids, but there’s a few specific names that are rising above the others in this class.

High Schoolers in competition for 1-1 overall:

• Hunter Greene ss/rhp Notre Dame High, CA (UCLA commit). 2015 18U tema as a Jr. Standout at PG Nationals 2016. two-way talent, 95-97 on the mound but also a fantastic hitter. 18U National team trials.  Standout at Area code games.  Basically Greene is so talented on both sides of the ball that there’s disagreement as to which way he should go.  Most pundits think he’s drafted as a pitcher and if he can’t cut it that he can move to the field.
• Jordon Adell of/rhp Ballard High, KY (Louisville). 18U National team trials.  Area Code stand out.  He is a hitting prospect through and through; he won the HR derby at the Area Code Games.

There’s a distinct gap between Greene/Adell and the next grouping of HS players, which include a couple of high-end lefty prospects in D.L. Hall and Trevor Rogers, a couple of middle infielders in Brady McConnell and Royce Lewis, and a powerful 1B prospect from Miami named Alejandro “Alex” Toral, but the two above are the cream.  Its worth noting; no prep RHP has ever gone 1-1, which works against Greene in that slot.

Collegiate players in competition for 1-1 overall:

• Jeren Kendall OF Vanderbilt. 2016 Collegiate National team
• Alex Faedo rhp Florida. 2016 Collegiate National team
• Kyle Wright rhp Vanderbilt.  2016 Collegiate National team
• Brendan McCay of/lhp Louisville. All-American as a Soph. 2016 Collegiate National team
• Jacob “J.B.” Bukauskas rhp UNC/Ashburn. 2016 Collegiate National team

I think they’re ranked roughly in this order too; Kendall is the name most frequently mentioned as 1-1 overall candidate right now; safest pick, an OF from a baseball factory.  I think Faedo and Wright go before local product Bukauskas, but its definitely looking like he’s projected top-10 at this point.  McCay is right there as well, with a great pedigree and likely being a 2-time All American by the time he’s done.

But we’re an awfully long way from next June.  Nobody had Mickey Moniak at the top of their boards at this time last year.

PS: i’ve got a draft version of the “Local 2017 draft candidates” to watch, but in a spoiler (we won’t publish it until next Feb/March) there’s nowhere near the projected local talent in 2017 as there was this year (when we saw two local prep players drafted in the top 3 rounds plus a few other local guys in the top 10).  But right now here’s who i’ve got as the best local prep players for 2017.

• Kyle Whitten, RHP/1B from Osbourn Park in Manassas, VA. WWBA 2015 with Team Stars, 2016 Evoshield 17-U team.  At the USA Baseball 18U national trials in June 2016 (and made 40-man roster).  Early commit to UVA.  Evoshield 17U team at 2016 Marietta/Cobb.  PBR Class of 2017 top 10.
• Tyler Solomon, C/1B from Battlefield HS in Haymarket, VA.  2015 WWBA Team Evoshield 17-U, 2016 All 6-A North Region 2nd team.  2016 Evoshield 17-U team.  At PG National 2016.  At the USA Baseball 18U national trials in June 2016.  Early commit to Vanderbilt.  Evoshield 17U team at 2016 Marietta/Cobb.  All PBR DC/VA team 2016.  PBR Class of 2017 top 10.  Area Code Games 2016.
• Jeremy Arocho, SS from Old Mill HS in Glen Burnie, MD.  2015 WWBA Team Evoshield 17-U, 2016 Evoshield 17-U team.  At PG National 2016.   18U National team trials.  early commit to Maryland.  Evoshield 17U team at 2016 Marietta/Cobb.  Area Code Games 2016.
• Matt Cooper, C/1B from Norfolk Academy.  2016 VISAA Division I all-state.  2016 Evoshield 17-U team.  At PG National 2016.  Early commit to Clemson.  2nd Team all-Tidewater 2016 as a junior.  American Family 2016 1st team All-Virginia as a junior.  Evoshield 17U team at 2016 Marietta/Cobb.  All PBR DC/VA team 2016.   PBR Class of 2017 top 10.  Area Code Games 2016.
• Tanner Morris, MIF from St Anne’s-Belfield HS/Miller School of Albemarle.  2015 WWBA Team Evoshield 17-U, VISAA A All-State 2016.  2016 VISAA Division II all-state.  2016 Evoshield 17-U team.   At PG National 2016.  Early commit to UVA.  American Family 2016 1st team All-Virginia as a junior.  Evoshield 17U team at 2016 Marietta/Cobb.  All PBR DC/VA team 2016.   PBR Class of 2017 top 10.  Area Code Games 2016.

They’re the only three players from DC/MD/VA who were invited to the 18U team trials.  Four of these five were the sole local reps at the Area code Games.  So its probably safe to assume at this point they’re among the best 2017 draft candidates.  But are they top-5 rounds good?  We’ll see.