Day 2 of the MLB First Year Player Draft saw the Giants load up on college arms and intrigue over the new CBA bonus rules bubble to the surface. Let's break it down:
Round 2 Martin Agosta, RHP, St Mary's. Local kid who was afraid he might get drafted by the Dodgers. He's a bit undersized but has MLB velocity in the low-mid 90's with solid secondary stuff. Ceiling is a #2-3 starter with a high probability of reaching his ceiliing. Solid pick for Round 2. Matt Garrioch had him ranked as the #10 prospect left on the board, so the Giants got him 10 picks lower than Garrioch's ranking.
Round 3 Mac Williamson, OF, Wake Forest. LH hitting power OF who has enough athleticism to play CF but profiles more as a RF. Former pitcher with a rifle arm. Hit 17 HR's this season but with just a .286 BA. I tend to be somewhat suspicious of any college hitter who can't crack .300. Garrioch had him ranked #50 left on the board, so again, if you go by rankings, the Giants got solid value here.
Round 4 Steve Okert, LHP, Oklahoma. Big lefty(6'2", 219 lbs), FB goes 90-97. He slider is "death to lefthanded hitters." LOOGY is his absolute floor, but some scouts think he has a chance to start. With the going rate for good LOOGY's hovering around $5 M, That's a pretty good investment in the 4'th round!
Round 5 Ty Blach, LHP, Creighton. Blach is a bit smaller at 6'1, 200 lbs. More of a polished college lefty with command of 3 average pitches. FB goes 89-94 and his changeup is better than his breaking ball. Probably ceiling is a #4 starter with average probability of reaching it.
Round 6. Stephen Johnson, RHP, St. Edward's(Texas). Ranked #63 in BA's Top 500 taken at #208. Not sure why he fell. 6'4", 205 lbs college division II reliever who's FB has hit triple digits. Struck out 63 batters in 36 IP, May have some command issues that limit his ceiling, but definitely a live arm.
Round 7. EJ Encinosa, RHP, Miami. Another big(6'5", 242 lb) college reliever who closed out 8 games for Miami. FB goes 93-94 with sink. Lost the closer role to wildness and tends to show up his infielders if they make mistakes behind him. Definitely a major project in several ways, but another live arm.
Round 8 Joe Kurrasch, LHP, Penn State. No scouting report. Starter at Penn State. Pretty good K rates.
Round 9 Shilo McCall, OF, HS. McCall is a HS player who has said he intends to sign and turn pro. 6'2', 205 lbs, but looks shorter and thicker in the scouting video I saw. Runs well for size and has some power, but scouts see him as a tweener. Kind of a poor man's Alex Bregman. I say he should be moved to 2B ASAP.
Round 10. Trevor Brown, C, UCLA. Drafted as a catcher, but has played several positions. Hit .322 for UCLA playing mostly 1B.
Round 11 Ryan Tella, OF, Auburn. Draft eligible soph, so could be a challenge to sign. 6' 175 lbs. Profiles as a CF. Has as short swing and sees a lot of pitches. .360/.448/.508, 5 HR, 17 SB, 4 CS.
Round 12 Jeremy Sy, SS, Lousiana-Monroe. No scouting report. .330/.436/.506, 15 2B, 7 3B, 4 HR, 14 SB, 4 CS in 233 AB's. 5'11", 180 lbs. Sr. Value of this pick depends on whether he can stay at SS or not.
Round 13 Ryan Jones, 2B, Michigan State. 5'10" scrapper who doesn't do much but hit line drives. .359 career hitter in college.
Round 14 Tyler Hollick, OF, JC(Arizona)- Hit LH. Hollick was his region's JC player of the year. "Videogame numbers"- .475/.605/.636 with 7 2B, 8 3B, 1 HR, 52 BB, 61 SB in 162 AB. BA: "short, compact swing and always puts together quality AB's. He's a gap-to-gap leadoff type. Has played 2B and could be moved back.
Round 15 Leonard Rojas, C, Miami-Dade JC. No scouting report.
Considering where they were drafting and the bonus budget they have to work with, I think the Giants did about as well as they could. They got two high ceiling/high floor college starters in the first 2 rounds, a bunch of projectable arms later in the draft. I like the hitters they got better than some. It looks to me like the Giants are looking more for hitters who will give you good AB's than they have in the past. I'm not as high on the HS kid as some, but he does seem like a scrapper who could develop a decent hit tool.
Draft Grade so far: B!
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Alex Wilson was drafted by the Braves, not the Giants.
ReplyDeleteOK, that makes sense. I'll fix that, thanks. BA was messing up all day, but I don't like MLB's draft tracker format.
DeleteI'd like the Steve Edlefsen project to end.
ReplyDeleteMac Williamson is a RH hitter. Two flags against him: his age and his contact issues. Still, he's a 5 tool player, if that bat comes along...
286/396/589 with 23BB/41K and 17 HRs
336/480/573 with 63BB/53K and 10 HRs
Both stat lines played in the ACC. Both got drafted, but 100 spots later gets us the guy up top and the line below belongs to Richie Shaffer.
I'll take Mac and Stratton over Shaffer and a pitcher in the 3rd. Huge project, most likely the contact issues will doom him and the age puts him behind the 8 ball, but if he can put it together with that RH power, we could be in business.
I've been reading on PG and BA, a bunch of silliness erupted in rounds 6-10. The Giants did it in their fashion: draft pitchers who would sign. Tons of seniors, record setting, got drafted.
They were trying to draft McCall starting in the 5th. So some of these guys really are filler. It doesn't let em off the hook completely, but that appears to be what happened. And if the video you saw was the MLB one, I think the aspect ratio is screwy on it, makes him look squat. He looked like a Stryker Trahan type to me. New Mexico Gatorade player of the year. I want to know more now.
Looks like teams are hoping the college seniors will sign for peanuts allowing them to move the rest of the slot money up to higher rounds. By the time you get to rounds 6-10, though, you're not talking about all that much money so they may not gain much from that.
DeleteWhat do you mean by "They were trying to draft McCall starting in the 5th"? Were they negotiating with him to ensure that he signs, and it took from the time of the 5th round to the 9th round before he agreed?
ReplyDeleteYep, it looks like that's what Shank is referring to. Link into the Farmington Daily Times below, replete with photo of McCall in a Giants cap:
Deletehttp://www.daily-times.com/ci_20787513/piedra-vistas-shilo-mccall-drafted-by-san-francisco?source=most_emailed
Thanks for providing that link, very enlightening! Never knew that so much was going on. I mean, I know there was some stuff, but this round by round negotiating is a huge new level of detail for me. I now am looking forward to seeing what money Shilo got from the Giants, as the implication is that they will go over slot for him to sign him in the 9th, it would give us an idea of what they were hoping to sign him for in round 5.
DeleteI wonder if stuff like that happened before this new slotted world. I mean, I assume there was some talk with prospects during the draft and such about what they want to go pro, but to negotiate round by round like this, was that enabled by the slotting rules now, or something that normally happened with a lot of the drafts before? Anybody heard of this stuff going on before?
I wonder if the agent called any other team and told them that they are negotiating with the Giants. What if...
DeleteI guess the strategy is to pre-negotiate literally hundreds of deals before the draft. You do hundreds of them because you don't know who will be available when you draft, and you don't want to tip who you like. Imagine the mess if every team does this.
I hope this means that McCall will sign immediately and get assigned to AZL and play right away. None of that waiting till August (or July now) stuff.
From what I heard before, when teams are overslot, signings approval is delayed by the Commissioner's office, to buy time for other teams signing players in the same part of the draft.
DeleteI think most agents would call other teams that had shown interest before and shop what the Giants were offering. Miami was interested, and not surprisingly, D-backs too, it's their backyard. That he fell from the 5th round, I think it speaks to that no team was offering what the kid wanted.
According to the article, he got $50K less than what McCasland was offered. McCasland reportedly was offered $200K, so that would imply he signed for $150K. Their 5th round pick was slotted for $224.5K. Their 7th round pick was slotted for $144K. His pick was slotted for $125.6K. $150K is what the 220th pick got (Twin's 7th round pick). So it seems like they offered $100-125K at first but then decided that they could pay him more by the time they selected him. And for all we know, he could have been letting the Giants know what the other teams are offering as well. Maybe that made the Giants move quickly.
Oh, sounds like the Giants and he agreed on a price, so there should be no reason for him not to sign immediately, the issue is probably more when the MLB will approve it. It might depend on signing some under slot guys first to enable signing McCall overslot.
DeleteAccording to Perfect Games, Shilo signed for $200K, where Fla-Giants had predicted on MCC. Apparently the final offer to McCasland was in the $250K range and the number I found was one of the interim ones.
DeleteContinuing from my post that the Giants draft was depressing, now looking at other teams draft boards it makes me a little bit more pleased with the outcome, although they didn't take any of the top HS pitchers or hitters that were available, nothing wrong with taking a flyer and see what happened. The guy that most stood out was Stephen Johnson, was really hoping the Giants to get him and they did. Not happy with Williamson, think he was also an overdraft as BA had ranked him in 220-240 range. By the way of the 15 picks, 5 players were only ranked in BA top 500: Stratton, Agosta, Williamson, Johnson, Encinosa. I thought they passed on some pretty good college bats. In all not a terrible depressing draft like I had said but not much upside with these group of guys either except from Stratton and Agosta.
ReplyDeleteA lot of complains about these new CBA rules.
How is the amount of total budget for a teams top 10 Round picks assigned? Is it W-L record, free agent signings, amount of picks?? Just don't know. Would be glad if someone explained
DrB, you said your grade is a B. Why so far? Do you think the Giants can get some guys that can still improve that grade?
Very unlikely that rounds 16-40 will change the grade.
DeleteTotal slot bonus budget is determined by draft order and number of picks. Each pick is assigned a slot bonus which is heavily front loaded falling from around $7 M at #1 overall down to $1.8 M by #20 where the Giants picked. Extra picks in the supplemental rounds will get you extra slots and therefore extra money to allocate. Since the Giants were picking in the bottom half of the first round and had no suppemental picks, they ended up with one of the lower slot bonus pools in the draft.
From my research of the Giants in the early 2000's, I found that when I compared where the player was selected with where he was on BA's Top 200 list, the Giants typically drafted guys when they wanted, not where they were slotted. I think that led a lot of observers to say that the Giants did that to pay less in bonuses.
DeleteSo I researched their bonus payments and found that except for one draft, the Giants typically paid in line with what that group of picks (I compared with 5 ahead and 5 behind), and generally paid over slot for their first round picks. So they were never saving any money by overdrafting.
Here is my impression why they do that: because the bird in the hand is infinitely better than losing him to another team. The pundits talk about value and talent, but obviously, not all people are equally skilled in evaluation. At some point you have to trust your personnel, else why are we using them? So you grab the guy you want, when you want, if you think he is worth that slot amount.
I should note here that one strong impression from analyzing the bonuses is that previously teams would draft high school players later in hopes that should they impress later (since some are still playing as of the draft) and then they would pay more than "slot" to get that player. That would be one reason to draft senior players in this draft, in order to build up a buffer to sign a high school student later that you like still, just like before.
Of course, another good reason to go after seniors is that they pretty have no choice but to sign with you, so you can lowball them slightly to build up a buffer for other players (in case, say, Stratton wants mid-teen draft money, $2.25M and not the $1.85M we are slotted with). Same effect as above, but more "evil" if you will, as above you select players because they probably sign lower, but in the latter you force them to, as they have no alternative, realistically.
But why not go cheaper in order to ensure you get the quality guys you are targeting to improve the system? Frankly, the vast majority of draft picks never amount to anything in the majors. So low-balling most picks (whether by agreement or coercion) in order to ensure you can sign the guy who can really impact your farm system is a sound strategy to me. The rest are ultimately organizational fillers and cup of coffee guys, so why not spend less there and more with the ones the scouting department thinks are potential keepers?
Heres a scouting report on Shilo McCall from Fla-Giant:
ReplyDelete"We finally get another position player with exciting upside and athletic tools - 6 rounds after the first one. Unfortunately, I find it hard to believe that he could be bought out of his Univ. of Arkansas scholarship for only $125K. When I look at his swing and build I'm strongly reminded of another HS kid that the Giants drafted from a neighboring state back in 2009 - Tommy Joseph. McCall's got a similar look and swing to Joseph, but he's also a well above-average runner (6.6 60 yard) whereas Joseph was as slow as a turtle. McCall's swing features a short load that's quick to the ball and generates impressive power and bat speed while remaining balanced and smooth throughout the swing - and he doesn't resort to a big leg kick or long stride to generate his bat speed. McCall also has an above-average arm that plays in RF. He is a bit thick-looking in his lower-body at this age, so I wonder if he'll have to avoid getting too big and less athletic as he matures - signaling a worsening of his OF defense and forcing a move to LF or 1B. Here's PG.com's scouting report on McCall (I don't think that their view of his arm jibes with what I've seen and read - though he could use some mechanical tweaks to make his throws better):
"McCall is a 2012 OF with a 6-1 205 lb. frame from Farmington, NM who attends Piedra Vista HS. Thick, very strong
athletic build. 6.62 runner, quick first step, left field arm strength, can improve throwing fundamentals. Right handed
hitter, spread stance hitting, aggressive swing with very good bat speed, looks to pull, maintains balance well, upper
cut swing plate, gets extension out front, present power, can drive the ball hard. Nice speed/power combination. Very
good student."
Check out Kelly's link above. Sounds like he signed for at least Round 5 money, if not better.
DeleteSome names still on the board for Day3:
ReplyDeleteTy Gaffney, OF, Stanford.
Pepperdine MI's
Greg Larson, RHP, Florida
Look for the Giants to grab another HS player or two who will sign for $100 K. They've done it in recent years. No reason to stop now.
2 OFs I want: LG's man Breland Almadova, and Jacksonville's Dan Gulbransen.
DeleteThey are still on the board? Yes, by all means let's draft them. I wonder is they may be planning to stay in school and that's why they dropped?
DeleteA couple more names out there who the Giants have drafted in the past:
ReplyDeleteAndrew Barbosa, LHP, Central Florida
Andrew Triggs, RHP, USC.
Wow! 2582 Views yesterday. That's more than twice the highest total since the blog was started! Thanks for reading, everybody and thanks for the great discussions in the comments.
ReplyDeleteThe other number that when astronomical is the number of references to stairs in MCC... You'll be famous forever.
DeleteGlad I could give the MCC boys and girls one more inane thing to brighten their day over there.
DeleteYeah, they have long memories there, mine is putting another post on Jerome Williams rejoining the Giants a few years back. I guess that is what is more important to them.
DeleteHence why I prefer commenting here. :^)
About Joe Kurrasch, you can find some information about him at this web address: http://www.centredaily.com/2012/06/06/3219471/giants-draft-kurrasch.html.
ReplyDeleteThe article states that his fastball sits 88-91 and touches 93. It also says that he has control of his changeup, curve, and slider.