Draft Preview - Milwaukee Brewers

The fifteenth team draft preview on my blog focuses on the Milwaukee Brewers and their scouting director Bruce Seid.

Here's an excerpt from the writeup, which features small writeups on 5 players involved with Seid's work:

Bruce Seid took over Milwaukee’s amateur scouting department for the 2009 draft season after former scouting director Jack Zduriencik left to become the Seattle Mariners’ general manager. Zduriencik had been a holdover from Dean Taylor’s days as the Brewers’ general manager, and he had stuck around through current general manager Doug Melvin’s tenure, and he had consistently produced excellent players that moved quickly to the Major Leagues. Seid’s transition from area scout to scouting director was very quick, as he only spent two years in-between, both as the Brewers’ West Coast crosschecker. Despite the lack of time at the higher level, Seid’s long history of experience in scouting is definitely helpful. Seid’s deputy is Ray Montgomery, another former crosschecker, and their combined scouting experience makes for a solid drafting team. It’s tough to really judge trends off of a single draft, but I also wanted to be careful and not include the picks of Zduriencik, as anytime a team has to replace two crosscheckers, as well as the top levels of their scouting department, drafting philosophy will undoubtedly be different. Just from a high-level look, the main trend you can see from the 2009 draft for Seid is that there is a preference for big-bodied college pitchers with a good fastball. Both Arnett and Heckathorn are big kids, and there’s no doubt that those frames played a part in Seid’s decision to draft them. Hitters were harder to judge, as overall tools were important for Davis, hitting tools were important for Walla, and defensive tools were important for Garfield, but in general I’ll simply say that Seid showed a willingness to go anywhere for hitters, both at the prep and college levels.

Direct link here.

I'm also running a special on the 2010 MLB Draft Notebook, as the next 14 buyers will be entered in a drawing for an autographed baseball from Jameson Taillon. If you'd like to read more about the promotion, go ahead and do so here.

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What do you think? What will the Brewers do?