[Westheim]

2018 DRAFT POOL ANALYSIS

The 2018 draft pool was going to be a bit lop-sided. There was lots and lots of pitching in there; not pitching we had tabbed as being of superstar quality, but a number of potentially good or serviceable major league pitchers. Even picking in the last quarter of the first round you could still be confident to grab something to hang your hope onto for two or four years.

The report that Gabriel Martinez compiled on hitters, however, was a bit appalling. There was but one catcher on our shortlist that was even remotely interesting, and it was not that easy to find a good outfield prospect, either. This was probably not going to be a draft where you could heal the serious ills down on the farm if your lower minor league teams weren’t hitting any balls. (sorrowful look on the face)

Well, Martinez found some time between snitching with hour-long phone calls to Mexico to compile the annual hotlist, and it is indeed lopsided. Players with an * indicate high school players:

SP Antonio Moreno (12/12/12) *
SP Adam Garrett (12/15/15) *
SP Jimmy Jackson (12/15/9) * - BNN #5
SP Mark Morrison (12/12/13) *
SP Pete Molina (11/14/14) *
SP Markus Bates (14/12/11) *
SP Travis Giordano (13/12/11) *

INF Guillermo Obando (17/6/12) * - BNN #7
1B Lee Breidenbach (11/14/11)
INF Jeff Christiansen (14/8/9)

LF/RF/1B Luke Gross (5/15/15) * - BNN #3

That last one is not a typo. Martinez rates him a 5 in contact. He has great success in high school because everybody throws right down the middle, and he has obvious power. But even right down the middle, he tends to swing over high fastballs – somehow – and he swings over stuff in the dirt anyway. He swings at everything. He swings at the kid in the first row dropping his popcorn. There is a solid case to be made that the kid will get eaten by sharks in professional ball unless somebody can seriously electrocute him and make him selective in his approach. He is incredibly tough and powerful, with the body of an ancient Greek demigod, but goddamnit he can’t hold still when the pimpled kid on the mound throws another 81mph fastball over his catcher.

Martinez deviates far from the BNN top ten, with only three common listings. The top two picks by BNN are outfielders, with LF/CF Adrian Reichardt in #2, who is high on our extended shortlist, but not something that made us giddy. The BNN #1 pick was mind-boggling. They picked Chris Hollar, a high school outfielder. Martinez showed me video. He was off the Gross mold, only worse in almost every regard. It was not a pleasure to look at him. How he made it to #1 was beyond Martinez, and also beyond me, frankly.