Baseball drafts since the last CBA, at least, have been slightly more unpredictable than usual. While the maxim of “best player available” in the first round usually holds true, all it takes is one brief discussion with scouts and the front office before you’re playing a game of under-slot: taking a lesser talent, and then believing you can make better use of your money elsewhere in the draft. I personally think that’s a silly game entirely, mostly because it leads to results that aren’t exactly sorted in the way a draft should be. This time around, traditional draft strategy won out.
There was just a sliver of buzz that the Orioles were going to play such games (prompting some LOLrioles snickering online) with their first overall pick that ended up going to Adley Rutschman, but instead he went first, and the rest of the usual order then followed. The Royals took their preferred pick in Bobby Witt Jr., and then the White Sox took the best bat available in Andrew Vaughn.
The Marlins went slightly out of their development/scouting mold by grabbing the obvious choice of JJ Bleday, a polished corner outfielder out of Vanderbilt, and that could be an inspired pick; if the rebuild picks up, he should be at the forefront of their restructuring. The Tigers took the best prep bat available in Riley Greene at fifth overall, and the Padres took the 80-runner in CJ Abrams at sixth.
The other theme of this draft is the dearth of pitching, because the first pitcher didn’t go until the Reds took Nick Lodolo of TCU. If you’re going to take the first pitcher then a college lefty isn’t a bad bet, even if the profile is a back-end starter. For a team already building around talents like Nick Senzel and Luis Castillo, you still need those types of players, too.
Another interesting pick was for a catcher, when the Braves took Shea Langeliers in the compensation pick for Carter Stewart at ninth. Langeliers doesn’t have the bat that Rutschman does, sure, but he’s a plus-plus defender out of college that could see himself at SunTrust before you twist and turn.
The Mets were typical Mets by somehow taking a high schooler who’s almost 20 years-old in Brett Baty, and while he does have an excellent physical tool set, it’s kind of a red flag when a player hasn’t seen advanced competition near his twenties.
Keith Law also had an interesting note about a value pick, this time by the Diamondbacks, who took Corbin Carroll. He may have been a top-five talent dinged for height and cold-weather, and they pulled a similar strategy with Alek Thomas, and he’s hitting .311 in Low-A right now.
The only other team that had a shock-pick like the Mets was Houston, who picked Korey Lee, who never appeared on a top draft prospect list and was hitting just .238 at Cal last year. Maybe they saw something, but maybe we think that because they’re the Astros.
Otherwise, the board fell rather normally, and we should be in for an interesting ride the rest of the way. Another maxim of the draft is that there is a similar amount of talent in each and every draft and the only thing that can be considered “weak” or “strong” is the very top, so in theory there is value all over the place; it should be fascinating to see who takes advantage.