MLB Draft (June 4-6)

[Frayed Knot]

Two weeks until draft time.

Mets will have 12 picks in the first 10 rounds as follows:
12th, 35th, 71, 75, 107, 140, 170, 200, 230, 260, 290, 320 - and then obviously continuing with each 30th pick.

What makes the first ten rounds particularly crucial is that this is the year the new draft cap system kicks in. Each club will now have an overall $$ cap on all picks in the first ten rounds; the precise value of that cap will vary according to how many picks a team has and exactly where those choices sit.

Under the old system, each pick had a specific bonus �recommendation� that MLB pressured teams to hold to but had no specific enforcement procedures to make them stick. Under the new system each draft slot will still have a target price which will all stem from MLB�s devised bonus for the #1 overall pick. This year the bonus for that 1/1 pick sits at $7.2 million and each succeeding pick is based on a decreasing percentage of that going through to the final pick of the 10th round at $125,000.

Specifically for the Mets that means a �slot� for their #12 pick of $2.55 mil; for their #35 pick of $1,467,400; for the #71 of $723,600; for #75 at $680,400 and so on, for a total cap for the twelve choices of $7,151,400, a figure that sits at 9th most among all teams.

Now teams are NOT required to stick to those prices for any individual choice but must stay within their ten-round cap on their choices as a whole. What this means is that going over for one player must be balanced off by either going under or not signing one of the others. Teams will face financial penalties and/or the loss of future draft choices for exceeding their specific cap.
Picks made after the tenth round are not subject to the teams� overall cap except for those bonuses in excess of $100,000.

And now you know what gave Bryce Harper the incentive to leave HS two years early.


The one legit upside of this (unless you�re part of the mainstream media who seem to believe that part of their job description is to campaign for ways to save team owners as much money as possible at the expense of the very talent they're drooling over at that moment) is that it removes the power MLB had to make teams sit on already agreed-upon contracts for fear that one above-slot deal made public would inspire other above-slot demands. Now agreements reached in advance of the deadline date can actually be completed and announced instead of being part of the phony dance where nothing could be finalized for days or weeks while MLB stalled at �approving� the contract. This, along with the signing deadline moved up a full month to mid-July, should get particularly those top picks under contract and actually onto teams in many cases while the minor league seasons are still in progress.

[nymr83]

New rules = Improved NY-Penn League play?

I don't think I'm a fan. What if a team wants to "overpay" 9 guys and tell their 4th round pick "eh, nevermind, here's a 5K offer". There should be a minimum bonus tender by round (say 1 mil, 750k, 500k, etc) and if you don't make it the guy becomes a free agent.

[Edgy MD]

There shouldn't be a minimum anything or a maximum anything. Guys should get what their talent commands on the market.

[Frayed Knot]

Nymr83 wrote: New rules = Improved NY-Penn League play?

That's part of the idea, to get the new crop into the NYP and other short-season leagues scattered around the country more quickly than in the past (which, in turn, could bump short-season players up to the next level). The new deadline will do that more so than the cap rules.

I don't think I'm a fan. What if a team wants to "overpay" 9 guys and tell their 4th round pick "eh, nevermind, here's a 5K offer". There should be a minimum bonus tender by round (say 1 mil, 750k, 500k, etc) and if you don't make it the guy becomes a free agent.

I'm sure teams were trying to devise ways to circumvent the cap before the ink was dry on the agreement - as capitalism always does when you attempt to artificially limit it.

[Frayed Knot]

Pre-draft "buzz" seems to be linking the Mets mostly to HS position players which, if true, would make it two years in a row for such animals following a stretch featuring mostly college hurlers.

Mock drafts are usually about as accurate as long-range weather forecasts, but MLB.com has their Top-20 guesstimate up - interesting mostly for the thumb-nail sketches of the likely pool of candidates we'll be hearing about in the next two weeks more than for the specific order/projections.

In addition to the SS Gavin Cecchini out of Louisiana which MLB.com's Mayo lists here, BA linked them recently to a couple of HS outfielders from Texas; Courtney Hawkins, and Alabama; David Dahl

[Edgy MD]

Dave Dahl. Gotta be.

Great baseball name and Alabama outfielders are all through the DNA of this team: Mays, Agee, Jones, Otis, George Foster, Johnny Lewis, Terrence Long.

[nymr83]

Edgy DC wrote: There shouldn't be a minimum anything or a maximum anything. Guys should get what their talent commands on the market.

Don't let the ultimate goal be an obstacle to progress. Accepting that the draft isn't going anywhere, at least not yet, do you object to my suggestion?

[Edgy MD]

I'm in favor of fewer regulations.

What my strategy would be to do the most effective draft job within the regulations? I dunno.

I imagine I'd go around offering bonuses to guys I didn't draft, totally undermine the system and get kicked out of the league for trying.

[bmfc1]

How about this guy?
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1195022-new-york-mets-why-they-must-draft-rhp-marcus-stroman

[Frayed Knot]

Yeah, he's been getting a lot of attention, and of course stories about him rarely get more than a sentence deep without mentioning his (lack of) height.
Everything I've read shows him going 1st round although I'm not sure about as high as #12 although, again, that may just be height-a-phobia. Almost certainly will not be there for our 33rd pick.
The MLB.com piece linked above shows him going 16th to Washington
Hadn't realized until your link that he was a Long Island boy originally.

[bmfc1]

Peter Gammons wonders if Fred Wilpon will want the Mets to draft this left-handed pitcher who is Jewish and wears number 32 for Sandy Koufax:
http://espn.go.com/blog/high-school/baseball/post/_/id/915/top-lefty-fried-happy-at-new-home

[seawolf17]

Future first-rounder Travis Jankowski -- as hot as anyone in the country right now -- and the Seawolves (46-11) took the America East tournament easily last week, and head to Miami (36-21) to face off with UCF (39-20) and Missouri State (43-15) later this week. Games will be played at Alex Rodriguez Stadium. (HA!)

Keep the hot streak alive, fellas.

[Frayed Knot]

From MLB.com which lists him as #33 on their board (hmmm, right about where we pick).

If teams are looking for a top-of-the-order catalyst with speed, then they might head to Stony Brook, N.Y., in droves this spring.
That's what Jankowski has to offer. He has excellent hitting skills, showing the ability to spray line drives to all fields, albeit without much power. He's got above-average to plus speed and combining that with good reads and jumps on the basepaths, he's a big-time basestealing threat. His speed helps him on defense as well, where he has outstanding range to go along with very good instincts in center field. His arm is playable in center and his accuracy makes up for average arm strength.
Jankowski knows who he is as a player, a very aggressive speedster who knows how to bunt, get on base and wreak havoc with his legs. Teams looking for a basher will look elsewhere, but Jankowski's tools will definitely get a long look as June approaches.

[Vic Sage]

GO PATS.... um, i mean WOLVES!

[nymr83]

Every time I see a prospect described as having speed and no power I think of Jason Tyner.

Trust your scouts and your stat geeks (please tell me you have both, right?) And take the best player on your board... But if its close, I'd tend to avoid guys whose best "tool" is speed and opt for the guy who hits well, doesn't embarass himself in the field (projects to a corner spot but not DH), and hits some doubles that the scouts see turning to homers when the kid fills out his frame.

[Edgy MD]

Well, it's a subtle but important distinction between the guys scouts see as having little little to no power but hopefully will make up for it in other areas such as speed and contact and plate discipline and guys that have projectable power, which is what you seem to be describing at the end of your post.

Few players hit the draft with fully realized power, and fewer still become productive big leaguers.

I mean, fear Jason Tyner, sure, but fear Rob Stratton, too.

[Vic Sage]

Edgy DC wrote: Dave Dahl. Gotta be. Great baseball name and Alabama outfielders are all through the DNA of this team: Mays, Agee, Jones, Otis, George Foster, Johnny Lewis, Terrence Long.

He's got the alliteration of a superhero's secret identity.
The MMMS says "yea, verily, yea!"

[Frayed Knot]

Edgy DC wrote: Well, it's a subtle but important distinction between the guys scouts see as having little little to no power but hopefully will make up for it in other areas such as speed and contact and plate discipline and guys that have projectable power, which is what you seem to be describing at the end of your post. Few players hit the draft with fully realized power, and fewer still become productive big leaguers. I mean, fear Jason Tyner, sure, but fear Rob Stratton, too.

Yeah, the counterpart to the 'speed but no power' description is the one you often read about a prospect who has tons of power but at the same time "has some swing and miss to his game", and I don't think there's an accurate road map to determine which end of that theoretical spectrum is more likely to succeed.

The knock on Tyner, in retrospect, (I mean aside from the fact that he didn't turn out to be good enough but that happens to all kinds of picks) was that he never showed signs of being the classic ball-hawking CFer that would fit his slap-hitting speedster model. Brett Butler had a good and lengthy career but it wouldn't have been much of either had he not been a top-notch defensive player for much of that time.

[Ceetar]

Tyner managed to stick around through 2009. .323 career slugging. He did finally get that one home run.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Frayed Knot wrote: Brett Butler had a good and lengthy career but it wouldn't have been much of either had he not been a top-notch defensive player for much of that time.

Brett Butler was one of his generations best leadoff hitters, maybe even the best, second only to Rickey, finishing in the top 25 in MVP voting regularly for almost a decade. If Brett couldn't field a lick, he'da still succeeded as a top notch DH. Jason Tyner was no Brett Butler, glovework notwithstanding.

[Edgy MD]

Leadoff Hitters Who More or Less Spanned the Eighties, Ranked off the Top of My Head

1. Ricky Henderson
   
2. Paul Molitor
   
3. Tim Raines
   
4. Lou Whitaker
   
5. Brett Butler
   
6. Steve Sax
   
7. Otis Nixon
   
8. Lonnie Smith
   
9. Tony Fernandez
   
10. Vince Coleman
    
11. Mookie Wilson
    
12. Willie Wilson

Others, of course, would have been among the greatest leadoff hitters, had they been in a position to bat leadoff more --- Robin Yount, Eric Davis, Ryne Sandberg, Wade Boggs, Willie McGee.

Tony Fernandez at his best was great, but he gets partial credit for batting leadoff only about half the time and coming up a few years after most of these guys. Willie Wilson spanned the decade, but he had his best years before the decade really unfolded, and was pretty lousy by the end of the eighties.

[Frayed Knot]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Brett Butler had a good and lengthy career but it wouldn't have been much of either had he not been a top-notch defensive player for much of that time. Brett Butler was one of his generations best leadoff hitters, maybe even the best, second only to Rickey, finishing in the top 25 in MVP voting regularly for almost a decade. If Brett couldn't field a lick, he'da still succeeded as a top notch DH. Jason Tyner was no Brett Butler, glovework notwithstanding.

Of course he wasn't - even as Butler was always the ideal to which a player of Tyner's skills would hope to emulate.
Now the odds of him ever being Brett Butler were always remote in the same way the odds of Baltimore 2010 #3 overall pick Manny Machado becoming the next ARod are minute even though both are a tall, multi-skilled SSs of Hispanic origins from Miami taken at age 18 at the top of the draft. But even if Tyner's offensive talents were enough to have made him a sort of BB-lite for a while the margin of error for doing so would have been a helluva lot larger had he been a go-get-em CF rather than the noodle-armed and so-so gloved corner guy he turned out to be.

Bottom line: if you're drafting a guy on account of one outstanding skill, make sure that there is at least something else in the guy's toolbox to fall back on. Otherwise, if that one tool slips from great to merely decent, you're in deep shit.

[seawolf17]

I don't think of Molitor as a leadoff guy, but I guess he was, more often than not. I guess I think of him older.

My point -- at least on Jankowski -- is that he's more than Tyner was. Tyner is/was a "can't steal first base" guy; speed but not much else. Jankowski can hit, and draw walks, and play defense as well as run. Butler is a much more apt best-case comparison.

[Edgy MD]

Of course, but that was the best-case comparison for Tyner right up until it became an impossible case. it just didn't work out.

(Googling "Jason Tyner" & "Brett Butler": About 68,400 hits. Make that 68,401.)

[Edgy MD]

Jason Tyner's middle name: "Renyt." What the Hell?

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Edgy DC wrote: Jason Tyner's middle name: "Renyt." What the Hell?

Finally, we discover the real problem with Tyner: his parents Mxyzptlk'ed his power, contact skills, and defense to the fifth dimension.

[Frayed Knot]

seawolf17 wrote: My point -- at least on Jankowski -- is that he's more than Tyner was. Tyner is/was a "can't steal first base" guy; speed but not much else. Jankowski can hit, and draw walks, and play defense as well as run. Butler is a much more apt best-case comparison.

Not sure that Tyner's amateur record tagged him as a 'can't steal first guy'. He certainly became that as he moved up the ranks but that's not the same as knowing it was that way all along. I even remember the Mets getting some kudos for that pick (Peter Gammons comes to mind) and I certainly don't remember it being considered that big a stretch to draft him at #21 - almost certainly higher than your guy will go.

Now having said all that, this Jankowski guy sounds like he at least has the potential for more gap power than Tyner ever did (he's bigger for one thing) so, as I was saying up above, hopefully there's a larger margin for error if the guy doesn't turn out to be everything you hope for - and few drafts picks ever do.

[bmfc1]

http://metsmerizedonline.com/2012/05/mlb-mock-draft-2-0-is-gavin-cecchini-the-future-mets-ss.html
New mock. Seawolf's guy is at 31.

[Vic Sage]

it would've made more sense for Boston to draft him when Stony Brook players were still "Patriots".

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Dahl and Cecchini are working out at Citi Field now for the brass.