[Westheim]

2000 AMATEUR DRAFT PREVIEW

The Raccoons will have a much more simple time at draft day than the last few years. We have the fifth pick in every round, plus the sixth of 41 picks in the supplemental round. Nothing more. Nothing less. No “7 out of 66” or other lottery pick masses.

This will be a very particular draft. Vicente Guerra studied the draft pool extensively and he says there are several Hall of Famers in there, and they are almost all outfielders. Vince states that this is the outfield-richest draft pool he has seen. Other areas are under-represented, especially catching and middle infielders with potential impact.

There is however one player in the draft that is very likely to get picked very high and with him you don’t draft for “in two or three years”, but for right now. He was batting .360/.457/.500 for Ohio State at the time the draft pool was officially released. It is already known he will demand more than $1M as signing bonus. He’s a corner infielder. Vince says, this guy is major league ready right now. Give him four weeks to warm up in AAA, or maybe even less, and then let’s go. With our homegrown problems to fill the corners competently, this would be a big fit. Problem is, between us and 22-year old Daniel Sharp are four other teams that will pick first. (OSA doesn’t rank him very good, though, yet BNN has him #4)

Top crop of the pool according to Vince:

SP Kevin Edwards (17/6/20)
SP Fernando Piquero (13/16/10)
SP Henry Becker (13/15/13)

RP David Sutherland (20/17/11)
RP Matt Cash (18/15/12)
RP Jeff Paul (18/13/10)

1B/3B Daniel Sharp (20/10/20)
1B/3B Alfredo Gonzalez (14/17/9)
1B Jens Carroll (19/5/12)

LF/RF Ron Anderson (20/16/18)
OF Rich Mason (14/13/13)
OF Hector Maestas (13/12/15)
LF/RF Apasyu Britton (15/6/14)
OF Jose Robles (15/7/13)
OF John Alexander (12/12/11)
OF Matt King (16/2/11)
LF/RF Justin Foster (15/4/11)
LF/RF Alejandro Rodriguez (16/1/15)