Draft Preview - Oakland Athletics

The eighth team draft preview on my blog focuses on the Oakland Athletics and their scouting director Eric Kubota.

Here's an excerpt from the writeup, which features small writeups on 25 players involved with Kubota's work:

Eric Kubota was quite young for a scouting director when he was named to the position following the 2001 season. He followed Grady Fuson’s footsteps when Fuson moved on to the same role for the Texas Rangers. Fuson’s been in and out of both Texas’ and San Diego’s front offices since then, yet Kubota remains in the same place, executing drafts for the same general manager in Billy Beane. Kubota held a variety of scouting and administrative positions within Oakland’s front office before his promotion, and Oakland is the only club he has ever worked for. Now he stands as the second-longest-tenured scouting director in baseball with the same team, with his drafts equaling the Marlins’ Stan Meek, the Phillies’ Marti Wolever, and two drafts behind the Rockies’ Bill Schmidt. Bill Gayton, Roy Clark, and Dana Brown all had more years with their respective clubs entering the offseason, but each moved on. It’s easy to say that Kubota now brings a wealth of experience to his position. Since he has a longer history, trends might be a little easier to spot. In general, Kubota does indeed prefer the college arm over the prep arm, though that’s more of a trend in early rounds in recent years than an overall trend. They invested $925,000 in Ian Krol a year ago, so Kubota doesn’t have an overall aversion to prep arms. On the offensive side of the ball, Kubota’s also leaned heavily toward collegiate athletes, with Max Stassi representing the largest investment in a prep bat in Kubota’s entire draft history. Looking at geography, another trend is Kubota’s slight leaning towards players in the western half of the country. There is a good amount of overall balance geographically, but the slight lean towards western players is apparent. That was a little more pronounced in 2009, though I don’t think that was a conscious decision, instead more of a product of them picking the best player on their board.

Direct link here.

As always, read about the 2010 MLB Draft Notebook and pre-order it here.

What do you think? What will the A's do?