MLB DRAFT - 1ST DAY REVIEW

The first days results are in the books and although it makes some people crazy to do, we are going to do a bit of an analysis of a couple of teams first day drafts.

For comparison sake, I used Baseball America's Prospect rankings, since historically they have covered high school baseball and college baseball as well as anybody. But you could just as easily use Stats Inc., Rivals, Scouts or your local area scout's opinion for that matter. As long as they have a pre-determined "draft-board" to determine "value". Understand, everyones determination is going to be different due to the inherent subjective nature of the exercise. I use BA because it's readily available and they do a lot of pre-draft research and interviews to form this draft board consensus.

One thing I noticed though was after the first round, even as early as the supplemental round, the picks began to diverge from the list quite a bit. BA had a pretty decent track on the first round picks, not too much "reaching" down the list.

Some of that is due to the issue of "sign-ability" or prospects pricing themselves out of a particular spot where a team might like to draft them. But you would think then that they would just go down the list to the next highest ranked prospect and find value there.

I looked at the Giants (of course), the Tigers (since they drafted Casey Crosby) and the Braves (since they have a well earned reputation for drafting and developing players (the second part of this equation) and the Devil Rays (because you can take the boy out of the Trop, but you can't take the Trop out of the boy.

from baseballamerica.com (Figures in parenthesis are BA's Prospect rank before the draft).

2007 Draft: Detroit Tigers

Round Overall Player Position School State
1 (4) 27 Rick Porcello rhp Seton Hall Prep, West Orange, N.J. NJ
1s (96) 60 Brandon Hamilton rhp Stanhope Elmore HS, Millbrook, Ala. AL
2 (101) 91 Danny Worth ss Pepperdine CA
3 (200+) 121 Luke Putkonen rhp North Carolina NC
4 (130) 151 Charlie Furbush lhp Louisiana State LA
5 (43) 181 Casey Crosby lhp Kaneland HS, Maple Park, Ill. IL

(574) 631 +57 Overall as far as value.
They get premium pick Porcello late in the first round and Casey Crosby a potential sandwich rounder in the fifth round.


2007 Draft: San Francisco Giants

Round Overall Player Position School State
1 (14) 10 Madison Bumgarner lhp South Caldwell HS, Hudson, N.C. NC
1 (33) 22 Tim Alderson rhp Horizon HS, Scottsdale, Ariz. AZ
1 (40) 29 Wendell Fairley of George County-Lucedale (Miss.) HS MS
1s (41) 32 Nick Noonan 2b Parker HS, San Diego CA
1s (200+) 43 Jackson Williams c Oklahoma OK
1s (200+) 51 Charlie Culberson 2b/ss Calhoun (Ga.) HS GA
5 (200+) 164 Chance Corgan rhp Texas Christian TX

(728) 351 A -377 Overall Ranked vs. Picked
Picked three guys not rated by Baseball Americas Top 200 Prospects. Either the Giants know something about scouting that everyone else has not discovered yet or they just flushed a golden opportunity to get better in the future.

2007 Draft: Atlanta Braves

Round Overall Player Position School State
1 (9) 14 Jason Heyward of Henry County HS, McDonough, Ga. GA
1s (84)33 Jon Gilmore 3b Iowa City (Iowa) HS IA
2 (58) 69 Joshua Fields rhp Georgia GA
2 (118) 78 Freddie Freeman 1b/rhp El Modena HS, Orange, Calif. CA
3 (171) 108 Brandon Hicks ss Texas A&M TX
4 (147) 138 Cory Gearrin rhp Mercer GA
5 (200+) 168 Dennis Dixon of Oregon OR

(787) 588 -189 Overall Ranked vs. Picked
The Braves early picks were OK, continued their tradition of finding local talent and grooming it for The Show in Atlanta.

2007 Draft: Tampa Bay Devil Rays

Round Overall Player Position School State
1 (1) 1 David Price lhp Vanderbilt TN
2 (200+) 65 William Kline rhp Mississippi MS
3 (96) 95 Nicholas Barnese rhp Simi Valley (Calif.) HS CA
4 (106) 125 David Newmann lhp Texas A&M TX
5 (200+) 155 Dustin Biell of Inglemoor HS WA

(603) 441 -162 Overall Ranked vs. Picked
Went off the reservation early with Kline, other than that not bad overall. Looking for pitching and maybe now a little more geared towards college pitchers who are closer to major league ready. Seems to be a better approach then to trust HS kids to their player development system. A least where pitching is concerned, the Rays track record has been woeful.