Blue Jays MOD #4

One week away for the Minor League Ball Community Mock Draft!

It's time to start focusing in on rankings. Our strategy seems pretty clear - focus on upside in the prep ranks, with a preference to offense if it makes sense at the draft spot. Given the Jays' approach under the Anthopoulos era, and given what they've had success with, it seems unlikely that the Jays draft a college player early on unless there's a significant, unforeseen drop of one.

As we get close, it seems that there's a pretty clear top-10 or so in the draft class, that would be incredibly unlikely to make it to the Jays at 17 or 22 in our mock-world, where things like actual signability are unknown and given less importance. That top 10 (in somewhat random order, Buxton, Appel, Gausman, Almora, Correa, Zimmer, Zunino, Fried, Giolito and Hawkins) can probably skipped over for our own purposes here, though if any of them, particularly the high schoolers were somehow available at the Jays spot, they'd obviously be worth jumping on.

From then on though, let's focus on our rankings! Names to consider:

Prep hitters: SS Gavin Cecchini (who seems to be our top choice from previous MODs), OF David Dahl, OF DJ Davis, OF Lewis Brinson, C/OF Stryker Trahan, SS Addison Russel, 3B Corey Seager (unlikely due to his Boras affiliation), 3B Joey Gallo, SS Tanner Rahier, 3B Carson Kelly, SS Jesmuel Valentin-Diaz, OF Rock Rucker

Prep pitchers: RHP Lance McCullers Jr. (Boras), RHP Zach Eflin, RHP Ty Hensley, RHP Nick Travieso, LHP Matt Smoral, RHP Walker Weickel, LHP Hunter Virant, RHP Lucas Sims, RHP Duane Underwood, RHP JO Berrios, RHP Shane Watson

College hitters: (LOL!) SS Deven Marrero, 3B Richie Shaffer, 3B Stephen Piscotty, OF Tyler Naquin, SS Nolan Fontana, OF Victor Roache, 1B Adam Brett Walker, C Josh Elander, OF Travis Jankowski, OF Barrett Barnes

College pitchers: RHP Marcus Stroman, LHP Andrew Heaney, RHP Michael Wacha, RHP Chris Stratton, RHP Chris Beck, LHP Brian Johnson, RHP Pierce Johnson, LHP Alex Wood, RHP Nolan Sanburn, RHP Jake Barrett

Feel free to assist in any way you feel like here - you can share your top rankings overall, some names/rankings to consider at each of the Jays picks, or any other way you want to approach it. Also feel free to add names that I missed, information/arguments for any of these players or challenge the strategy.

Thanks for your help!