They’re the big winner in my book. They came away with two top 15 draft prospects and spent over $11 mill on the draft. Dayton Moore is obviously focusing on projectable high school players, and they drafted a ton of young pitchers with upside.

Quick thoughts on your thoughts.

Boston had a nice draft, but I would’ve liked it a whole lot better if Casey Kelly was a RHP rather than a SS.

The Tim Melville signing is nice but should not be overstated. He’s an interesting prospect but almost every part of his game is projection. Hopefully the Royals take it slow with him.

Prediction: Aaron Crow goes mid-first round next year to the first team that realizes that he has basically no leverage when they get a compensation pick if he doesn’t sign. Crow tries to hold out but ends up conceding the point and signing for approx. $3M.

I didn’t get the impression that Marlins drafted Skipworth solely because he was a catcher. It seemed like a situation where a team found that they had a really good feel for a player with premium talent. I think that tends to be underrated as far as a player’s ability to develop in an organization.

Jason Castro wasn’t a horrid pick at 9 . . .perhaps not a huge ceiling but a solid enough looking player with a high floor. The Astros’ farm system needs pretty much anything and everything . . .not a sexy pick but he’ll be useful. And let’s give the Astros at least a little credit relative to previous draft efforts . . .they cut a nice little check to Ross Seaton.

the definitely didn’t get the best talent, but considering that their first pick was in the supplemental first, it has to be looked at as an early success. They arguably got three first round talents in DeVall, Spruill, and Thompson, some other high-upside guys in Stovall, Kimbrel, and Hoover, and signed each of their top 15 picks.

picked a catcher just to pick a catcher. The Marlins in particular picked a guy who had drawn raves. Folks from PG and BA both mentioned that Skipworth’s skills wouldn’t be out of place for a #1 overall guy.

I didn’t like the Castro love early in the year considering his crap track record and I think Stanfurd dudes often get overrated but then I saw him at the CWS and he looked GOOD. Big, real athletic, super arm. Probably still a reach at 10, but if you like a guy, you like a guy.

and say I think the Indians are winners. I don’t think they became winners until the four overslot signings but I think this draft has yielded them seven prospects (Chisenhall, Haley, Phelps, Putnam, Berger, House and Stowell) who could be classified as 1st-3rd round in ability. I don’t think Tice belongs in that category but he could have serious upside because of his power. Except for Tice, their draft looks short on power. They did get some serious arms in the group and some nice hitting middle infield prospects. I don’t think they got a superstar potential pick but got solid depth for the organization.

The early teams got the potential superstars, no question in my mind. Another late picking team, the Red Sox did real well. I think their 1st round pick, Kelley, could have gone much earlier and wished the Tribe could have picked him instead of Chisenhall. Now I am not so sure.

I think it isdifficult to say the Yankees are losers. Even though they seriously blew it with Cole and should have known his signability problem like everyone else, they have thrown a lot of money at some high risk, high reward types. That is typical of their drafts. Though all they really have to show for it in recent drafts is two outstanding but injury prone pitchers and a 4A, I think time will tell if the philosophy works.

what do you not like about Skipworth?

are the winners got 4 players who at 1 point or another were seen as first rounders in Posey Gillapsie Kiesch and Crawford would have been nice to add O Sullivan but, this adds great depth to our system and blends nicely with our high ceiling players becuase as you all know we got as much of that as anyone…….not like I’m biased?

mostly because i’m one move away from disowning the club, but *the phillies had their best signing of the decade. easily. *

they drafted and signed 10 HS players, plus they signed 6 from junior college (or dropout, or from a foreign national program). in that pack, they got 3 HS arms with mid 90s FBs (gose, knapp, and cosart, gose is currently playing CF, but if he bombs out and commits to pitching, he’s got a great FB from a big, LH frame), they got THE top junior college arm in colby shreve. they got two phenomenal hitters in zack collier and steven susdorf, though it’s not certain that either will hit for a lot of power. AND, as if none of that’s enough, 4 of their college draftees are already playing for the low A affiliate (michael stutes, vance worley, michael cisco, and eryk mcconnell.

just about any phillies fan that follows the draft will say that they didn’t want hewitt, but i can guarantee that beyond that, they’ll still agree with my assertion that this draft will yield more than any since before i was born in 1987.

i expect 7 players from this draft to immediately be in BA’s top 30 (collier, gose, knapp, worley, pettibone, shreve, and cosart), and i think there are quite a few more who have the potential to get there down the line (hewitt, may, susdorf, cloyd, schwimmer, stutes, hamilton, overbeck, cisco, etc.).

okay i’m being a homer and it probably couldve been better if they signed a couple tough signee HS picks like Warren/Elgie/Maronde plus a couple polished college pitchers Rusin/Guilmet, but that didnt happen

for the first time ever, this cheap team went over slot…yes f u selig and your slot BS!!
went over slot: dixon/coleman/hunter

they were able to sign 9 of 11 BA top 200 ranked players

what they did do is get several college infielders in weeks/christian/coleman

college pitchers Ross/Hunter (their health is scary, but could pay off huge)/Capra/Daniel Thomas Univ of South FLorida (throwing 98mph in Northwest league) /Fitts

one of the better college catchers in paramore

Dixon/Barfield/Leyja have been very nice surprises at their levels.

overall, lots of pitching and speed, athletic types

i think they would’ve spent more and signed more than 27 of the 50 players…but their BS line was saying they spent a huge chunk of their budget on Inoa and other Intl signings

Okay, what I’m about to say isn’t entirely fair because I don’t remember where I read it, but I read somewhere that the Marlins really wanted a catcher, and were hoping Posey would fall to them. When that didn’t happen, Skipworth was their backup plan because they wanted a catcher.

Likewise, and much worse, the Astros were looking for a catcher at #10, and when neither Posey nor Skipworth fell to them, they had Castro as the #3 catcher on their board, so they took him.

NOW. I have NO direct evidence for this except something I remember reading, so feel free to ignore all that.

Even if you do, though, the general consensus (aside from the Marlins and Astros and their fans) is that Skipworth and especially Castro were overdrafts. There aren’t too many rankings of the top picks from the draft that include those two in the top ten, let alone #6 for Skipworth.

Rather than Skipworth, wouldn’t you rather have Yonder Alonso, Gordon Beckham, Aaron Crow (assuming you’d pay the extra $750K and get him signed) or Justin Smoak? I mean, maybe you can argue that you like Skipworth more than one or even two of those, but all four? There isn’t one guy there you’d take over Skipworth?

And Castro… I mean, even if you for some reason you wouldn’t take Smoak, I’d probably take the five guys after him over Castro. And you could make an argument for several of the other guys after him.

As to the argument that Castro’s a safe pick, and that’s what the Astros needed… When you have one of the two or three weakest farm systems in the game, you need upside, not safeness. You want to get some stars in there, not more guys with low ceilings. Do you want Castro, who maaaybe has a slightly better chance to be a league average catcher, or someone like Smoak or Wallace, who could turn into absolute monsters at 1B, and aren’t exactly risky propositions?

Okay, I’m done now. While I argue aggressively (as always), I acknowlege that these are just my opinions, and I look forward to hearing yours.

(Even if they’re wrong.)

(And everyone else knows it.)

(Yes, I’m kind of a jerk.)

they’ll have the #1 pick because they’re horrible and they get the #9 pick back. So basically every team just drops down one slot after #9. So if a team gets the 9th pick in the 2009 draft, they’ll actually be getting the #10 pick due to the Nationals inability to sign a stud like Crow.

Still the Nationals should be in good shape for the draft next year, that is if they stop being cheap.