Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Quick Draft Recap

Overall I'm happy with what the M's accomplished in the draft. I'll get into that later, but here's a rundown of what the M's did with their first 5 picks (Rounds 2 and 3 were "pickless" because of the the Belsextreson signings). You'll have to scroll down to read the scouting reports when you click on the link):

Round 1: Jeffrey Clement -C- USC Story

Round 4: Justin Thomas -LHP- Youngstown State (2005 Horizon League Pitcher of the Year) Scouting Report

Round 5: Stephen Kahn -RHP- Loyola Marymount (2004 WCC Pitcher of the Year)Scouting Report

Round 6: Lance Lynn -RHP- Brownsburg, Indiana (Apparantly threw 189 pitches in a high school game. Has signed with Ole Miss) Scouting Report

Round 7: Robert Rohrbaugh -LHP- Clemson Scouting Report


What I like the most about this is that there is an abundance of college pitchers. That tells me the Mariners are moving away from the traditional high school phenom approach. As I said in a previous post, college pitchers have a better track record in the bigs. This in addition to the following has made me feel good about the direction the organization is going:
1. The Freddy trade from last year in which the FO made a move to get some good, young talent
2. The offseason aggressiveness
3. The recent Olivo, Valdez/Morse moves which attempted to address the catcher and shortstop problems (as best they could at this point in the season)
4. The hiring of Matt Olkin, giving them an in-house stat geek with sabermetrics influence on moves they make

This season and offseason will also be a good test for the front office, but so far I like what I see.

Here is the entire first day actionDay One

And Lookout Landing was cool enough to post the continued draft results today...It keeps going and going....

2 comments:

  1. Nice post Mike. I think, obviously the Mariners have decided that in fact Olivo is not the future. Listening to KJR AM some the guests they have had on said Clement could be ready for 2007 which would be great if we could get that fast of a turn around on this pick.

    College pitchers??? Hell yes!! Look at the A's, most of their former studs came from college. I remember in college hanging out with CWU baseball team and talking with one of their coaches. He told me that the general trend he sees for success is hitters going to Minors out of High school and Pitchers going to College. It might be interesting to see if this holds true. Maybe Ill run a comparison and see if this is true for many of the big names out there today, it would be interesting to see.

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  2. Trav if what you're hearing comes to fruition, think about who will be on the 2007 team: Felix, Clement, Snelling, Choo, Sherril, etc. That's a bright future. That HS/College comparison would definitely be worth looking into.

    PWhit I think you're right with Bavasi. After the Guillen, Aurillia, Spiezio, etc. debacles I think things have gotten much better. Even those moves may have been a situation where his hands were tied. Still plenty of time to blow it though.

    You guys think Meche can hang with DTrain tonight?

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