Draft Preview - Florida Marlins

This was my draft preview from last Friday, but I was away from the computer and unable to post it, so here it is.

The nineteenth team draft preview on my blog focuses on the Florida Marlins and their scouting director Stan Meek.

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

Stan Meek is one of the most respected evaluators in the game of baseball. Having run seven drafts with the Marlins now, he’s right up there with the most experienced scouting directors of the game. He rounds out that experience with an additional seven years of experience as a national crosschecker, five years of area scout experience, and 14 years of coaching at the collegiate level. It doesn’t take a genius to understand the type of respect that such an amount of experience commands. Meek is signed through 2011, and he probably has better job security than almost any scouting director in the business. Knowing this background, let’s step into Meek’s recent history for some trends to his drafting. It becomes immediately apparent that Meek prefers prep players over collegiate ones, with the collegiate players all having either solid to plus tools or plus pitches. In terms of pitching, Meek loves the projectable prep arm, especially from the left side when they’re available. That will produce a larger number of busts than a lot of teams, but will also end in bigger successes with the ones that do end up being hits. On the hitting side, Meek loves power and speed, especially in some form of a combination. Matt Dominguez offered the hitting tools, without the speed, but he had a power arm and plus glove instead. In general, every hitting prospect that Meek drafts will have either speed or power, some with both, though those are rare in any draft class. Geographically, it should be noted that the Marlins WILL TAKE someone from California in the first day. It’s almost an inevitability. California is their breeding ground. In addition, Texas gets a fair amount of their attention, and they’re not afraid of cold-weather states. These are all trends to keep in mind, though the past is not always the predictor of the future that us historians like to think it is.

Direct link here.

I'm also running a special on the 2010 MLB Draft Notebook, as the next 6 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 Marlins do?