Complete 2008 Draft: | Round by Round | Draft by Major League Club | Scouting Reports |
If baseball drafts could be named like Chinese calendar years, this would be The Year of the Catcher. Plate defenders have been in radically short supply for years, so much so, that we suggested that they wear an endangered species logo on their unis back in 2005.
There have been a few guys with good arms and good bats, but very few.
Nature hates a vacuum, and, while it has taken a couple of years, the college ranks in particular have seemed to respond by retooling some bigger bats to the plate rather than the first corner or the outfield.
The talking heads of ESPN may have informed you that all of the good picks were gone by the sandwich (compensation) rounds, but we were seeing some really interesting picks well into round four, and a continuation of the cult of the catcher into the lower rounds of the draft, suggesting that clubs are gearing up to clean house and really re-establish the position throughout the farm system to build a new Bench or two.
The Tampa Bay Rays, who have had a lot of number one picks, took Timothy Beckham, arguably the best five-tool player in the draft. The Rays are looking for him to follow in the rapid footsteps of top prospect Evan Longoria, rather than the plodding pace of former first-rounder B.J. Upton, or the turbulent ride of the not-so-dearly-departed Delmon Young.
This edition of the draft has been heavy on catchers, pitchers and shortstops, light on outfielders, who have been in very heavy concentration over the past couple of years, and baggers, although many of the shortstops drafted will be looking at other placements on the points of the infield.
Vanderbilt's baseball program, which was already A-List, went super-nova this year. Likewise it was a good year for players from Stanford, University of Miami (FL), Florida State, Miami, and the University of New Orleans. Some of the other baseball powerhouse schools, most notably Cal States Long Beach and Fullerton, were much late bloomers. In the Ivy League derby, Yale was first and frequent on the board, while Harvard and Princeton lagged.
There are age belts of players in the green cap of major league's established core, and a few clubs have a lot of players reaching their prime, or a bit more on the downhill slope. The concentrations, particularly in the upper rounds, were much heavier in college students, suggesting that clubs are looking for more immediate needs to be filled than players to develop over time.
Archbishop Rummel HS, which is usually a decent contributor, was largely absent from the proceedings, while South Florida's American Heritage School turned out a near record crop of top picks, and the Puerto Rico Baseball Academy (HS) had, as usual, a strong showing.
Distribution of players from around the country still shows that the scouts, while they make trips into the badlands of baseball, largely enjoy the warm weather in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and California. To the picks from distant Hawaii and the sole entry from Alaska, we salute you!
The Cape Cod Factor
One thing that became very clear was how much the Cape Cod League has risen to top-tier status of the pre-draft beauty contests. Where the AFLAC picks once seemed to be leading indicators, if a player wants a shot at the first round, they had best get to the Cape, and do well there for the clipboard crowd. Almost every first round player had some outstanding play in the CCL that either raised their stock in the draft or kept them there. Plus, you get to meet Scott Boras, the Darth Vader of the Deal to Bud Selig's Princess Leia, if you are that good.
Compton. Compton. Compton.
Nothing is harder to wear than MLB's hair shirt on race. Of course, if you have been as historically racist, not only against blacks, but hispanics and asians, as MLB has been, you have a little apologizing to do for the next half-century or so.
MLB's main message throughout the draft was focused on everyone KNOWING, with a big K, how much effort the organization is making to revive baseball in the African-American communities across North America.
The Compton Baseball Academy, a variation of the baseball academies that MLB runs in places like the Dominican Republic and Mexico, produced a number of top draft picks this year.
The Compton program is to be applauded for its hard work, but, the question is, in light of the obvious effort by MLB to scratch its very itchy race relations in general and salve its strained relationship with the African-American community in particular, are these athletes really that good, or are they being given undue attention because MLB is trying to woo African-American athletes off of basketball courts and football fields and back to the national pastime?
Only the roll-out of these players into the trial-by-fire that is the farm system will tell if they stack up legitimately, or if these players are being used more for promotional purposes.
If Compton is the real deal, though, and MLB really has tapped into a wealth of tremendous talent, why haven't they been scouting that talent in the years before the program at the inner-city schools where most of these kids play? Why aren't there fifty Comptons one for each state, or three hundred for the major cities of North America?
Compton's over-hype during the telecasts brings up, again, the oddity that is the draft. There are a lot of players the MLB's experts just plain out miss. Unlike other sports' drafts, which are a focus of the best of the best, baseball's draft has become an increasingly smaller part of the overall MLB recruiting picture if you're talking about MAJOR LEAGUE players..
So many MLB-callibre players sign as free-agents, and come in from the international end undrafted, that, unless MLB can re-shape the international and domestic recruiting into one more unified talent pool of the best of the best, the June draft is really geared more towards stocking the minors than picking the players of tomorrow for the majors.
Draft FYI
Technically, this should be called the MiLB draft. 99.95% of players drafted end up in the minors. Also, there is no guarantee that being drafted, even in the first round, assures you of a major league roster spot, although clubs committing millions of dollars in signing bonuses and performance incentives tend to want to recoup their investments in the first and second rounders.
What is often forgotten, particularly in the sanctioned coverage of the event, where all roads must lead to the major leagues, is that teams are not just drafting for their major league club. The draft goes down 50 rounds because MLB needs players at class A Midwest League Beloit as much as they need talent at MLB Boston. Most players, particularly from the third round down, might have nice minor league careers, if they sign, but never see a day in the major leagues. There is nothing wrong with that, either, as they become the hometown heroes of more than 200 parks around the country, more than three hundred if you include Mexico, the DR, and all of the players who spin out of the MiLB system into the indy leagues.
There is also the pernicious problem of the experts being just dead-bang wrong. Baseball's pitch counts and radar guns may make it seem more like a science, but, you can come back to this feature in future years, and pick out a dozen or more players who rose out of the lower depths of the draft to become superstars, or top-rounders who disappeared into obscurity.
The pressure of the minor league system, and the increased competition in a play-every-day baseball world filled with lots of instruction, advice, self-scrutiny and self-doubt, can upend every variable on a scout's clipboard within two years.
The Coverage
Day one of the draft was a televised spectacle that barely crept into eight rounds, six plus two shorter compensation rounds. Day two flew by at record pace, and still took more than eight hours to move more than 1500 players over 52 rounds. ESPN-2 for the first and the Comp A rounds, then over to MLB-TV online for the remainder.
MLB-TV had an odd habit of breaking down. Every so often, when the video buffers got full, instead of continuing, the video dropped into your laptop or desktop would begin to repeat itself. Refreshing fixed the problem, but it was an annoying glitch that caused a couple of Groundhog Day moments. |
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Driving the Devil Out of Loss-ANGLE-eeze
There is always the unintended humor that comes with every draft. During day two, the Tampa Bay Rays collected a few bucks in mock fines for the commentator's repeated use of "Devil" in their name.
The best moments came during the televised portion of the program, on day one of the draft. One would think, with the money that MLB spends to stage the perfect production, that someone on the crack MLB.com or ESPN-2 staffs should have hired a staffer to give some pronunciation guidance to their talking heads and to MLB commissioner Bud Selig calling out the first couple of rounds.
While the scouts televised got the names of towns large and small correct 100% of the time, because they've probably found every last motel and greasy spoon in each of them personally, ESPN and MLB staff blew it with abandon. FYI, Bossier is not "Bossy-err," but "Bo-shure" We'll cut them some slack. Milwaukee is probably the smallest town they visit.
Still, you would think, even with Selig's many years as commissioner, he would know that it is "Loss An-gel-ess" not "Loss-ANGLE-eeze." Ah, but what can you expect from a guy who spends his time in the ivory towers of "New-Yawk?"
GO TO THE DRAFT
You can see Lary Bump's round-by-round commentary to round 20 on the particulars of each phase of the draft, and the players worth noting, by clicking on Round-by-Round. We have selected scouting reports and video of some of the top players touted in the pre-draft as well.
Watch for the breakdowns by club and position later today and tomorrow.
- Brian ROSS
Complete 2008 Draft: | Round by Round | Draft by Major League Club | Scouting Reports |
