THIS WEEK IN FIGMENT BASEBALL
December 9, 1936
POST-DRAFT EDITION
The last December draft in Figment baseball has been completed. The good news for those teams who did not feel as happy as they hoped with their haul this time around is they will get to do it all over again in six month as the league transitions to a June draft.
Here are some of my thoughts after observing the 1936 draft and then we will hear from some local newspapers on drafts for their individual clubs.
BEST DRAFT CLASS - Hands down it is the New York Gothams but when you consider it felt like they owned half the picks in the first 3 rounds they better have come away with a big haul. The Gothams might have gutted a championship club last summer but they used many of the proceeds from that fire sale to restock their cupboard. The biggest move of the draft was the Gothams trading the 5th and 13th picks of the first round to move up to number two and select high school phenom Walt Messer. Messer, who many feel could one day be as good as Keystone superstar Rankin Kellogg, was just one of 3 first round picks the Gothams ended up with. New York not only picked up the second best position player available but they also got the second best pitcher, at least according to the mock draft, when they landed 20 year old lefthander Bunny Edwards, who was 20-5 over 3 seasons at Red River State, with the 7th pick. Add in Fred Vargas and Ed Stoddard, a pair of corner outfielders both ranked in the top ten of the mock, and the Gothams draft was a homerun.
MOST QUESTIONABLE FIRST ROUND SELECTION- The Toronto Wolves left a lot of GM's asking their scouting directors if they missed something after Toronto grabbed third baseman Joe Kleinman 10th overall. Kleinman, who played at Coastal New Jersey College, was not listed in OSA's five round mock draft. He was very consistent over his three seasons of college ball with the Seahawks, hitting .303 over 165 games. He is an outstanding defensive third baseman who could possibly handle a shift to second or perhaps even shortstop, but the question is will he be consistent enough at the plate. The Wolves might know something the rest of the league doesn't but right now it feels like Kleinman was a big reach. Toronto did end up with a pair of first rounders after dealing minor leaguer Jack Goff to Brooklyn in exchange for the 16th overall selection. It was used on Jim Morrison, a high ceiling 21 year old lefthander who won 21 games the past 3 seasons for Indiana A&M. He is a groundball pitcher with 5 offerings including a terrific curve ball and OSA feels he has a golden arm and should be a top of the rotation pitcher.
TEAMMATES DRAFTED: The top pair of drafted college teammates this year were Jake Creel and Joe Zell, double-play partners from Ferguson College in Greenville, North Carolina. Each was listed as a first round prospect in the mock draft but only Creel, at 12 to Cleveland, was taken in the first. Zell was the 18th pick as Baltimore grabbed him with the second selection of round two. Zell started 181 games over three seasons and boasts a .277 batting average. He was ranked 11th in the mock draft, two spots ahead of Creel, who played two seasons for the Wildcats and hit .271. Ferguson has done a pretty good job producing middle infielders as shortstop Bill Smith was a fifth round pick of Montreal in 1934 and is coming off a decent season at Class B Mobile while last year Ferguson alum Larry Bartlett was taken by St Louis in the 15th round. The second baseman hit .311 this past season as a rookie pro at Class A Hartford.
Two high schools also had middle infield duo drafted. The Henry Snyder Tigers in Jersey City, New Jersey saw second baseman Ted Brown selected by Montreal in the third round while his doubleplay partner Lee Scott went one round later to the Chicago Cougars. Brown hit .547 with 4 homeruns 26 games as a senior and has committed to Chesapeake State while shortstop Scott hit .455 with 3 homers. Scott will go to Oklahoma City State if the Cougars do not convince him to turn pro. The Cougars also grabbed half of the Milligan College High School duo as they selected Eddie Curtis from the Memphis, Tennessee school in the 7th round. Milligan's Tommy Mickens went 15 picks earlier to the New York Stars. Curtis, a shortstop nicknamed 'Slick Eddie' , is a three year starter with a .503 batting average while second baseman Mickens also started for three seasons and has a .440 career high school batting average.
WHAT THE LOCAL REPORTS ARE SAYING:
Various comments on the draft courtesy of hometown news sources
NEW YORK GOTHAMS - New York is abuzz with the news they club drafted both the number 2 ranked hitter and second ranked pitcher this week. The Gothams obviously have a lot of new players in their system with all of the extra picks and they have high expectations for their early picks but they also hope the sheer volume of middle round picks will yield a few gems and make their minor league system much stronger. Getting both Messer and Edwards is huge. Plus Vargas and Stoddard were pretty highly thought of corner outfielders by the mock. The Gothams scouting team had the four them ranked 3, 5, 7, 10 on their draft board.
PHILADELPHIA KEYSTONES (excerpt from an interview with Keystones Scouting Director Harry Dunn as published in the Philadelphia Inquisitor)- The Keystones had a very high pick for the first time in a while and needed to hit on it. We have a propensity for adding pitchers to the organization, so Dunn was resisting the urge. The scouting team was very high on Bunny Edwards and the only available player above him on his list was Billy Woytek. Philadelphia had taken a second baseman first overall right before the human GM-era, Howie Shifflett, and the returns on that pick have been okay (not a home run, more of a double). I was a little reticent to use the pick on a second baseman, but he reportedly has the tools and my top prospect at second base, Marshall Strickland, took a slight step back, so he might not be a future stalwart for the Keystones that I thought he would be at that position. Austin Moore came on, but Woytek is a player that might eclipse both after his first minor league season.
Beyond Woytek, the Keystones were happy to nab Hank Beckman, as he was the last in the tier on my list. Hans Wright may be the first prospect to find himself in a post-Kellogg Keystones lineup. Frank Bennet is a player who can play all three outfield positions, as well as both corner infield spots.
The Keystones also dealt for Pete Asher from the Cougars for a 7th-rounder. Asher will put some pressure on Bob Cleveland at short and Shifflett and Cy Cox at second base in Spring Training. He'll definitely have an inside track on making the club, but the question is whether he will make the club at the expense of either Cleveland, Shifflett, Cox or Steve Summers.
No local picks in the first 9 picks, which the Keystones usually like to have at least one from the Delaware Valley.
BOSTON MINUTEMEN(from an article in the Boston Record) - Boston was picking from the 11th position for most of the draft. When you are in that spot you really have to play the wait and see game. A lot of guys that we coveted were simply taken before it was Boston's turn to select. Our first pick of the day was 3B Denny Andrews. Andrews, who was the 5th rated prospect on scout Johnny Robards list, and 7th on the OSA Mock List, fell all the way to Boston thanks to a run on pitchers. Andrews has shown hints of having the raw power that organizations covet out of a corner infield spot. If anyone remembers the Minutemen took Mack Sutton who also plays 3B with their first pick from last years draft. The organization does not let things like that bother them as competition breeds greatness and trade chips.
Without a second round pick the Minutemen sat pat until they picked twice in the 3rd round. Cal Howe is a college outfielder with a very high upside according to OSA. He doesn't have the raw power that Boston was looking for but he was great at getting on base in three college seasons. the second 3rd round pick was C Bob Artesan out of Midvale HS in Utah. The idea here is that Artesan can be paired with another 1st round pick from a year ago in Bill Van Ness (Boston's top prospect as of this writing) to form a formidable 1-2 punch behind the dish. 4th round selection Si "the Rock of Rochester" Crocker showcased one of the best power bats in all of the HS prospects available. If Crocker can hit for any average at all his power will make him a player of note in the Boston organization.
In rounds 5-8 Boston did their own run on starting arms. Generally speaking, Boston like to draft pitchers that have more than three pitches in their arsenal. However Boston had to deviate slightly from that plan based on some favorable scouting report for 6th round selection Joe Sargent who OSA feels can develop into a mid-rotation piece. Aside from Sargent, 5th round selection Johnny Coon, 7th round selection Tom Martin and 8th round choice Edsel Jones all feature a variety of offerings. Last season Boston was very good (or lucky) with all of their mid round pitching selections as the C level Hattiesburg staff dominated posting a team SP ERA of 2.54 and leading the Hatters to 103 victories on the season. The whole pitching staff will be promoted so replacements were needed. With the last two picks of the day Boston went with Jim Hill who could play 5 different positions giving whatever manager gets him some options and Jim Kline a slick fielding SS that will need the bat to develop if he is going to hang around for more than a year.
MONTREAL SAINTS (courtesy of the Montreal Star quotes from Saints scouting director Fred Rowe) - I love drafting in Figment- mainly because of the variance for folks based on scouts and not having those stars. Sure, there is a good deal of similarity in that who did not have Pestilli #1 or at lest top 3 and a few others at the top, but then from there it gets interesting fast. For instance, at 8 in the draft, Montréal was able to draft our scout's picks 10, 12, 16, 20, and 24 and we are real happy with Doyle in the first round.
Doyle would be pitcher Wally Doyle, who was the fourth pitcher selected in the draft at 8th overall. The 18 year old lefthander was 9-1 for Waco High School in Texas this season and his 29 career high school wins ties him for the fifth most all-time. OSA feels Doyle could easily front a team's rotation and he has great raw stuff but needs work on his command.
CHICAGO CHIEFS- (from the Chicago Daily News) With no first round pick due to the trade that brought Rabbit Day and a World Championship to Whitney Park the Chiefs primary focus was collecting a bunch of high school arms with their mid-round selections. The organization likes to lean towards ground ball pitchers and they added Bob Ferraiuolo (round 3), Jim Fitts (round 7), George Scruggs (round 8), Nelson Bailey (round 9) and Jim Taylor (round 10). The 3rd rounder, Ferraiuolo is a sidearm pitcher out of Grafton University but like the others specializes in ground balls. Bailey is a local kid who was 8-3 for Lake Zurich in his only season of high school ball.
BROOKLYN KINGS(press release from Kings Scouting Director John Spears)- We feel trading our first round pick for Jack Goff was a nice safe option. The son of former Kings pitching legend and current bench coach Danny Goff, Jack is just 20 years old and has two injury free minor league seasons under his belt as a top 100 prospect. We might have got a higher ceiling guy such as Jim Morrison that Toronto took with the pick had we kept it, but that comes with perhaps more risk as well. Not picking until the 5th round doesn’t give us much to choose from so we gambled on Manny Franco maybe putting things together at one point and reclaiming the ability that earned him High school All American status as a junior before regressing this past season. Franco is also a local kid, having pitched for Old Westbury High on Long Island. Other than that we obviously didn’t get much. Maybe Roger Landry’s cousin develops and hopefully the curse is lifted with our selection of Ferdinand Hawkins grandson Ian Weber in the 9th round.
OTHER NOTES
CHIEFS FIND THEIR MAN
The Chicago Chiefs have announced that bench coach Joe Ward has been named as the new manager, with Dolph Geis being added as the bench coach. Prior to being brought in as the bench coach in Chicago last season, Ward had spent 7 seasons as the manager in Montreal, compiling a 481-532 record. Geis--a former Pittsburgh outfielder--spent 1936 managing Salem in the COW League. The job with the World Champions became open when 66 year old James Gentry decided to retire as skipper and go out as a winner.
Rumour has it Ward was not their first choice as the Chiefs had unsuccessfully tried to lure coaches from several other organizations but, surprisingly, none jumped at the opportunity to take over a championship team. One of those said to be under consideration was Brooklyn Kings pitching coach Bill Libby, but he reportedly turned down the offer because he had recently signed a 3 year extension with the Kings.