There is a site www.draftsite.com that has a 10 round 2011 MLB mock draft up. I thought it would be interesting to take a look and then compare with some other draft sites. The Giants have picks 29, 49, 87, 117, 148 and then ever 30'th pick after 148 through round 50 Here goes:
Round 1 Pick 29: Phil Evans, SS, HS. Evans is at the extreme skills end of the age-old tools vs skills debate. He's 5'10", 180 lbs without any single outstanding tool but he just DOES everything right. The major question seems to be whether he can stick at SS in the pros. There are pretty smart baseball people who think he can. Ceiling is a solid-average fielding SS who hits about .280 with 20 HR's and 20 SB's. Floor? Well, an excellent fielding 3B, or 2B who hits about .280 with 15 HR's and 10 SB's. I don't subscribe to Keith Law's columns but I've heard he loves Evans as does Frankie Pilliere who writes draft stuff for fangraphs.com.
Round 1S Pick 49: Zach Cone, OF, Georgia. Cone is having a terrible season: .285/.341/380 with 11 SB's. He was one of the more highly touted college hitters coming into the season though. The Giants have a recent track record of grabbing formerly highly ranked prospects whose stock drops in their draft season so this wouldn't be a shock either.
Round 2 Pick 87: Cody Kukuk, LHP, HS(Kansas). Kukuk is a tall LHP, 6'4" who hits 88-90 MPH with the heater. Good projectability. John Klima of baseballbeginnings.com likes his arm action. The video I saw shows a very attenuated follow-through. It looks like there's some things Tidrow could iron out fairly quickly that might bump the velocity up to the low-mid 90's.
Round 3 Pick 117: Dante Bichette, Jr, 3B. HS. A pure hitter with MLB pedigree. Finished 2'nd in the 2010 International Power Showcase. Reminds me a lot of Tommy Joseph, but slightly less stocky and maybe a better athlete. He has played SS in HS but projects as a 3B. Seems like a John Barr type hitter.
Round 4 Pick 148: Kyle McMyne, RHP, Villanova. McMyne is Villanova's Friday Starter. So-so record this year: 4-6, 4.74, 62.2 IP, 36 BB, 73 K's. Don't have a scouting report on him.
Round 5 Pick 178: Hawtin Buchanan, RHP, HS. Buchanan is a huge(6'8", 240 lb) HS pitcher from Mississippi. Found a video on this kid and I absolutely love it! Great looking delivery. Hard, tailing fastball with a nice looking power curveball that he can throw for strikes. Not sure why we haven't heard of him before or why he would fall to round 5. The Giants have a recent history of finding high upside HS arms in rounds 5-10, so I could also believe this one. Yeah, if the Giants got him in round 5, looks like a steal!
Round 6 Pick 208: Matt Andriese, RHP, UC Riverside. Andriese has put up so-so numbers this year: 3-3, 2.33, 69.2 IP, 16 BB, 54 K's. He reportedly hits the mid 90's on radar gun readings though. The Giants have a very active scout in the Riverside/Inland Empire area so I this makes some sense. Dan Runzler came from UCR.
Round 7 Pick 238: Andrew McKirhan, LHP, Texas. A reliever for Texas. Seldom used, unimpressive numbers. All I can say is the Giants usually take a few guys like this and they often turn into something good.
Round 8 Pick 268: Brian Billigen, OF, Cornell. .296/.410/.617 with 8 HR's, 10 of 13 SB's. Don't know anything about him. I will say that 8 HR's with the BBCOR bats is pretty good.
Round 9 Pick 298: John Hochstatter, LHP, HS. Big HS lefty with projection. Currently 84-86 on radar guns.
Round 10 Pick 328: Jeff Schaus, OF, Clemson. .299/.411/.409 with 6 of 11 SB's. Nothing that stands out her except maybe plate discipline.
What do you think of this mock draft? Would you be happy with it if that's how it fell? The key is clearly Phil Evans. He could be the steal of the draft. I tend to be a tools guy myself, but a awful lot of those don't pan out. I would also like to see more pitching taken early. This is a pitching heavy draft and the Giants are thin on organizational pitching right now, so it seems like a perfect year to rebalance.
BA has the Giants taking HS RHP Dillon Howard at #29. Howard is a big, hard throwing RHP who pounds the zone with a sinking fastball and reportedly already has an advanced changeup. Most other mock drafts have Howard going 4-5 picks higher than #29 though.
mymlbdraft.com has HS Catcher/1B Nick Delmonico at #29.
bleacherreport.com had Trevor Bauer falling to the Giants at #29 with St John's SS Joe Panik in the 1S at #49. I would think I had died and gone to heaven if Bauer fell all the way to the Giants but most experts I've read recently have his stock skyrocketing and him going in the top 10 if not the top 5.
Mock Draft Mania also has Bauer at #29 with Hawaii 2B/OF Kolten Wong at #49. That would be very cool, but not gonna happen.
Pinetarpress.com has a mock draft with HS switch hitting OF Josh Bell at #29. I absolutely love what I've seen of Bell. He's the Austin Wilson of this draft as far as I'm concerned. He's a good student from a highly educated family so may not be signable. Committed to Texas.
Deep Leagues mock has UNC SS Levi Michael at #29 with Jason Coats, OF, TCU at #49. Michael has had a good season: .336/.482/.503 with 12/13 SB's. He is thought to be able to stick at SS in the pros. Coats his having a down year so far: .297/.384/.506 with 6 HR's and 7/9 SB's. Coats hit .361 with 13 HR's last year.
Sully Draft has Vandy 3B Jason Esposito at #29. Espo is having a decent season, but no quite up to last year's, at least so far: .344/.429/.541 with 5 HR and 11/19 SB's.
If the Giants want to really go for broke with their first round pick and take the guy who might be the BPA, Brian Goodwin, a 5 tool OF who is playing JUCO ball in Florida this year has been projected at the end of the first round or early supplemental round in a lot of drafts. I would love seeing Goodwin taken by the Giants at #29.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Jason Esposito would be awesome, but I'd be happy with Levi Michael. Bell is intriguing; I'll have to read more about him. As for pitchers, Buchanan looks very interesting. It looks like he's committed to Ole Miss, so it looks like we'd have to overpay him in the 5th round to entice him to sign.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know what to think about Kolten Wong. I'm inclined to ignore any college 2B, but I've heard that this might be the guy that is the exception to that rule.
I'd be happy with Esposito along with 2 pitchers with the 1st 3 picks. I don't think Bauer will be there, how about Tyler Anderson of Oregan? Its a pitching heavy draft, so there has to be pitching available that Dick Tidrow likes during the Giants early picks. Evans sounds promising as a SS. Cone sounds similar to Kieshnick. Its been fun watching Kolten Wong play for the past 3 years. Peter Gammons compared him to a young Carlos Baerga when he saw him in the Cape Cod League. Don't let Wong's size (5'9") fool you, he has a lot of tools that can help a team win games. Here is my favorite Kolten Wong moment: During last years WAC Tournament, Its the 9th inning 2 outs runner on 1st base and Hawaii down by 1 run and Wong at the plate. Hawaii was 1 strike away from being eliminated from the tournament when Wong blasts a 2 run walk off homerun over the right field fence. Hawaii ended up winning the WAC tournament advancing to a regional. Wong is the type of player you want up with the game on the line. Whoever drafts him will get a very good baseball player.
ReplyDeleteI like BA's pick of Dillon Howard at #29, but I read it might require $3 million to steer him away from his committment to Arkansas. I like Bichette Jr. also but he has a committment to the University of GA. He has the same type of inside out swing as his father. I'd like to see them draft a starting pitcher they can fasttrack thru their system.
ReplyDeleteThere is no way that Bauer is still on the board at #29, especially if he continues to lead the nation in K by a large margin for the second year in a row. Sites that link him to the Giants are just being lazy, basing it on his loose similarities to Lincecum.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Lyle and Anon 1 on Wong. The Giants place a lot of weight on Cape Cod performance and Wong was MVP. He may not have stand out tools but also does not have glaring weakness and has that intangible quality of "winner". He could move quickly through the system and be a solid starting 2B for the better part of a decade.
Purke's status seems to be dropping rather rapidly. His shoulder is supposedly ok so the drop in velo may be due to mechanics. Some teams may be scared off but the Giants under Barr have "specialized" in tarnished talent. He's a draft eligible sophomore so would have some leverage but if he's smart he'll sign rather than risk any further drop in the '12 draft (yeah, like any "advisor" would suggest taking what you can get now...). It's the type of high risk, huge reward gamble the Yanks or Red Sox would take and if any system could straighten an arm out it is the Giants.
Hey, thanks for the comments everybody! Another name I've seen at #29 is LHP Josh Osich. He only pitched a No-No against none other than UCLA and Trevor Bauer yesterday!
ReplyDeleteWhat do people think of Derek Fisher? I've seen drafts that have him in the late first round or supp. round. I think he would be a good pick.
ReplyDelete