Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 464: Breaking Down the Amateur Draft

Episode Date: June 5, 2014

Ben and Sam talk to Nick J. Faleris about the way the amateur draft works, the top talents available, and what we might see in the first round.

Sun, warm on my face, I hear you down below. I'm moving slow, and it's morning. And it's morning probably two days of draft shows and amateur prospects are not our specialty. So we have brought in someone who's been covering the draft exhaustively for baseball prospectus now for, for months really, and ramping up particularly lately Nick Folaris. And well, first of all, welcome Nick. Hey guys, thanks for having me. So you have been pumping out these positional previews with in-depth scouting reports and video on just, you know, every player of interest in the draft, which starts tonight and continues for the next couple days.

And to find your coverage at BP, we put up a draft index at the top of the page that links to all the stuff you've done. index at the top of the page that that links to all the stuff you've done um and you know hopefully unlike the the mock draft sort of thing which which we've also published courtesy of perfect game but that's the kind of thing that that doesn't really last it's not really of interest beyond beyond the first round once we know who went where we don't need to read those predictions anymore but the the stuff that you have done over the past weeks and months is something Prospectus today and during the draft. And so thank you for coming on to share your expertise and also doing so at the site. So you sent an email earlier today that I was copied on,

and I thought it was interesting that you had done some work on sort of valuing where picks will go, and you came to some conclusions about the depth of this class so can you explain what you did and and what you have discovered sure so basically when uh to take a step back when an area scout submits a report on a player at least for the organization that i worked with prior to joining BP, you submit a player not with a round in mind, but with a price tag in mind. So you say, this guy is a $400,000 kid for me. And that generally indicates about what round you would recommend drafting that player.

But it could also mean if that player slips in the draft, I'd be willing to go up to this amount, which may be over slot, to sign that player. So that's the practice I've gotten into is basically identifying draft talent more by price tag than by round. And the way the process works for me, I completely separate from looking at what the actual slot values are. I take a look at about 150 to 180 prospects that I find interesting or I would think would be draft worthy. And I assign a price tag to those players, line them all up.

And then using just a basic chart on Excel, I'll graph both the slots and the price tag players in order and just see how they match up. And generally how this works is there's more money available in the draft than there is value on the player side, meaning teams have more money to play with than they do valuable items to go bid on. Or I guess not bid on, but to spend on. And this class is unique in that pretty remarkably, my value line matched up

within a couple hundred thousand dollars up top and then within a couple tens of thousand dollars down past the 100 to about 125 range, almost exactly with the slot. And so what that means is it's an incredibly deep draft, first of all. And second of all, you're going to have a chance, using my own valuation as an example of what an actual organization might be doing, you're going to have a chance to draft either at slot or above slot someone who's more valuable than the slot that you're actually picking at, if that makes sense. So even if everyone were to come off the board exactly as I have them ranked, which isn't going to happen, the guy who's left is going to be someone who's worth the money that I'm going to be paying. And that's pretty remarkable. That almost never

happens in the draft and certainly doesn't happen going all the way down to the third or fourth round. And where are the strengths, positionally speaking, as you see it? So the biggest step is on the high school pitching side, primarily right-handed pitchers. College pitching is very strong as well, although it's taken a big hit with injuries. Most notably, obviously, Jeff Hoffman, who had a good chance to go in the top three picks overall, lost to Tommy John Surgery. And Eric Fetty from UNLV, another top 10-ish player, lost to Tommy John Surgery. And then there are some other arms who have had some questions, such as Brandon Finnegan, who's a TCU lefty. He was a potential top 10 overall guy,

and he may have slipped a little bit because of some concerns about his shoulder so the college ranks uh up top took a hit but generally um still very strong positionally on the pitching side and the high school class is ridiculously deep on the pitching side there will be you know high school arms available in the third round, 70 picks in who are deserving of a million dollars. Kids who are probably available after the first 100 picks are going to be on the board that are signable that are deserving of a million dollars. And again, it doesn't happen. Usually, you have a kid maybe on projection who you're willing to go that high for, but not someone on present stuff that looks like a good bet

and a good investment at that amount of money. So there are years where the draft will be deep in some particular area, and then there are kind of eras that will be deep in some particular era. And as Jason has noted, we're in an era where there's not a lot of young power hitters, for instance. And so with this, the depth of power arms in this year's draft sort of fits with what we see throughout pro baseball right now right where there are a ton of strikeout pitchers and velocity is going up across the sport is the power arms uh kind of surplus in this year's draft uh indicative of the years that are coming as well like our next year and the year after's drafts also looking like they might be

deep in power arms, or is this really a one-year spike? Well, I think generally speaking, power is up at the amateur level, and that's, you know, I would say a product of there being an increased focus on radar gun reading. So kids at a younger age are, you know, contracting pitching coaches, they are going to camps, they're working with travel teams, and they're doing everything they can to increase their velocity, you know, from weight training to working on advanced mechanics at a younger age, that are really geared towards those radar readings,

because those radar readings are what get kids one scholarships and two drafted so i think part of this is just a focus in the industry to get kids throwing harder earlier and we'll see you know over the course of the next five ten years what the fallout from that is or you know will we see an increase in injury? Will we see, you know, less refinement in secondary offerings at an amateur level and more developmental focus on that at the minor league level? You know, I don't know. It'll be interesting to watch, and I think it'll take some time to establish enough data to do probably meaningful research on that, but you two would probably know better than I would as far as how large of a pool you need in order to start drawing some useful conclusions. So I think the big thing is that there's been a focus at the amateur level for the

last few years at least to really pump up velocity and make that a focus of development. And do you get a sense of whether there's a prevailing attitude one way or the other with teams fearing to take pitchers with a high pick because they've proven so breakable? Or are teams going the other way and saying that because there are so many pitchers who break, we need to stockpile them, we need to acquire a lot of pitchers? Has it gone one way or the other in your mind? No, I think it depends on the organizational philosophy i think for the most part you have teams who recognize the risk that comes along with drafting a pitcher and it's and it basically comes down to you know we need people to throw baseballs for our teams you know at the minor league level at the major league level we

need to acquire them in some way so whether it's in free agency or whether it's spending money on them in the draft we have to do it there are certainly teams that prefer to take a bat when you're talking about drafting early in the draft and investing two million three million four million five million you know they'd rather do that with a hitter and try and find those arms later on in the draft you certainly see that with teams but as far as an overall strategy that avoids investing in pitching in general i mean i think everyone just realizes this is this is part of the risk right now and you know maybe maybe some teams will skew towards the bats early on when we're talking about the larger investments but i think generally everyone's just just come to the conclusion that pitchers

are going to get injured and we hope it doesn't happen too often to our guys and i've wondered whether there's been any shift in how teams are valuing risk versus ceiling or certainty versus ceiling because i've seen a couple stories and this is you, semi-amic-dotal, but I've seen stories from people with the Phillies and the Blue Jays about how they are re-evaluating their draft philosophy. Alex Anthopoulos said that I'd say a big part of refining our process is we're starting to examine the level of risk we're willing to take. It doesn't mean we'll be risk-averse, but maybe not take the same level of risk. It doesn't mean we'll be risk averse, but maybe not take the same level of risk. And then Marty Wolver, the Phillies scouting director, said something sort of similar that he said, I think we need to try to single out some more advanced hitters and try to focus on that versus the high ceiling, what they could possibly be player, take a good look at what they are right now versus what they might be down the road.

And he says he thinks that's something that's happened throughout baseball, that teams are spending a lot of money, so they'd like some return on their money. And there was a discussion about this on the most recent episode of Fringe Average between Jason and Mike, where Jason was sort of talking about how his own thinking on this has evolved and how if he were given the choice between a guy like Tyler Kolek, sort of the extremely hard throwing, but maybe riskier pitcher, and a guy like Aaron Nola, who maybe doesn't have the ace ceiling, but is more likely to get there. He thinks that he has become more likely to go with the Nola type of player.

Do you think that that's happened in general around baseball? Are teams doing a better job of evaluating that risk and factoring it into their decisions? I think teams in general are doing a better job of trying to find a balance between the two. I mean, certainly teams are looking for impact in the draft, right? The obvious example is Mike Trout. If you find a Mike Trout in the draft,

you've helped your team for the next eight years with elite-level production at bargain prices. So I think that's still the focus. The way I look at it, and I think this is consistent with how a lot of teams handle this is you can identify sort of tiers of talent and tiers of risk and you look for leverage points in the draft so at what point does would the best player on the board for us be more likely to be a safer pick a higher floor pick that maybe doesn't quite have the same ceiling and then at what point does it make sense to switch back to going for a higher risk higher reward guy. And that's really dependent on the composition of the draft class.

Where are those strengths? When I line up all my players with a price tag assigned to them, what do I see in these tiers? Where are my picks, first of all? Who's likely to be on the board when I'm picking? And what are the five or ten guys I'm picking for that I'm likely to be picking from that I'm interested in. And once you do that, you can sort of identify, well, you know, it looks like the guys that we really like that are likely to be there early on are a little bit higher risk. So that means maybe for our second round and third round, we want to target someone who's got a higher floor and maybe

a little bit more safety so that we're, we have some balance to our draft portfolio. You know, what you don't want to do is have a situation where you have a draft class where the first five or six, you know, picks struggle to give you anything back. I mean, it's not that something that would destroy a farm system or anything that dramatic, but it, you know, you certainly want to have balance the same way you want to have balance in a stock portfolio. You want to make sure that you're taking into account both risk and safety to make sure that you're not putting yourself in a situation where you have sort of systemic failure. So the mantra that every baseball man will say in public is that they take the best player available, that they're not necessarily going to draft for need. They're going to take the best player available. And presumably, that would mean that if the draft is deep in pitching, and as this one is shallow in advanced

college bats, that they wouldn't necessarily reach for a college bat because of the scarcity. necessarily reach for a college bat because of the scarcity. Is that how it works? Or in a draft like this where college bats, advanced bats are rare, are we likely to see those guys go too high? Well, I think you're likely to see college bats go high for the reason that you just stated. I think when there's a little bit more scarcity, people want to lock in that college bat when they can. And so the way that my board kind of shakes down there, the best range for college bats that I see right here is sort of in the back half of the first round through the supplemental round. I think that that's sort of a sweet spot for college bats. college bats and then again once you get down towards sort of like the third round fourth round range i think you end up getting into another a sweet spot as far as good value getting good value for your college bats now you know maybe that means that those guys get popped a little

bit earlier let's say you're someone like the chicago cubs and you're looking to leverage that extra pool allotment that you have i I think they have the sixth largest pool overall. You know that that's going to mean, since there's depth on the high school arm side, that the overslot guys that are going to be available later on are most likely going to be high school arms. So maybe you want to save a little money, take a bat that maybe is sixth or seventh on your board, maybe like a Michael Conforto or a

Pentecost, the Kennesaw State catcher, lock in some savings and then figure, I've got my college bat. I'm confident that this guy is going to be a major leaguer. He's going to give us some value. He's going to fill a hole for us. Maybe he's not a perennial all-star candidate, but he's going to be a nice addition to our organization. And now I've got some money to go out there and take some risk on some high school power arms. So I could see something like that happening, certainly.

So we'll get into specific players and teams in just a moment. But could you, you know, for the benefit of people who maybe have not internalized quite how the current system works. Can you explain the decisions that a team at the top has to make as far as how the bonus pool works and how the teams with the big bonus pools have to decide how they want to allocate that money, whether they want to blow it all on the first round pick or try to spread it around? Can you talk a bit about some of the strategic decisions that teams face? Sure. So the way the system works now is picks one through what we have 317 or something like that picks in the first 10 rounds, including supplemental rounds.

What Major League Baseball does is they line up each of those picks, one first 10 rounds, including supplemental rounds. What Major League Baseball does is they line up each of those picks, one through 317, and then they assign a slot value for each of those picks. So the first pick overall is worth, I think, $7.9 million. The second pick is $6.8 million, $5.7 million for the third, and so on, all the way down to about $100,000 at the very end. to about $100,000 at the very end. A team is able to use up to that allotted slot amount for each of their signings. And then to the extent that they have savings, let's say you have $7.9 million for your first overall pick and you get him to sign for $5 million, that $2.9 million that you have in excess can be divvied up and spread amongst any of your other signings.

So you can play with your draft money by getting savings in one spot and taking that overage and transferring it to another signee at a different point in the draft. If you don't sign someone for a slot, you lose the ability completely to use that slot money. So, you know, in the second round, if you fail to sign your second rounder and you had $900,000 to spend on him, you lose that money that can't be reallocated somewhere else. So the highest leverage is up top where you have, you know, it drops from about $7.9 million for the first overall pick down to $3.5 million for the sixth overall pick. And then at that point, it goes down incrementally at about $200,000. And then at a certain point later on, it's going down about $100,000, then $50,000 and so on. So the picks up top are highly leveraged as far as how much money you have. So you'll see teams in the top five rounds sort of weighing the benefits of,

you know, do I sign a guy that's going to require close to full slot, or do I sign someone who I like maybe very slightly less, but is willing to sign for a million dollars cheaper, and now I have a million dollars to play around with later on. The other strategic thing to quickly touch on is what you've seen a lot of teams do over the last two years is round six to 10, where maybe you're drafting kind of fringy prospects in any event. Rather than spending $275,000 on a fringy college guy, they're cutting deals with college seniors that have no leverage, paying them $5,000 and taking that $200,000 and using that either later on or for a guy that they

drafted earlier in the draft that's going to require more than the slot allotment to sign them. So there's usually around $500,000, $600,000,, 700,000, depending on at what point in the draft you're picking, that you can bank between that sixth and 10th round and use elsewhere if you go strictly with senior signs there. So how do you see that playing out for the teams at the top this year, the Astros and the Marlins? We've seen the Astros have number one picks before a couple times now, and we've seen them take different approaches where the first time they they went with the Carlos Correa approach of of going with a guy who wasn't necessarily at the top of most people's boards based on talent but but they were able to save some money there and then spread it around later in the draft and then last year we saw them go the the Marco Pell route, sort of the consensus number one or certainly top two picks and just going with the best guy available.

So what do you expect them to do this year? Well, this year, to my mind, there isn't an $8 million guy in the draft. So I think they should be pretty comfortable that if they're picking through from one of the three elite guys in elite guys in the draft which for me is is brady aiken he's a high school lefty carlos rodon he's a college lefty and uh in jackson the san diego prep catcher alex jackson um you know between speaking with all three of those guys, they should be able to find someone who's going to sign for some sort of savings, you know, whether that's $1 million, $1.5 million, whatever it is, I would anticipate them to have, you know, that signing bonus play a huge role in their decision because they're going to want to have some of that extra money to play with. And the reason it's important for the Astros, and it's the same for the Marlins, is they have supplemental first-round picks and then, again, an early second-round pick. And as we discussed, it's a deeper draft that's going to see some elite talent fall. You want to be in a position when you're picking in, you know, again, at 37 or 42 or 43,

depending on if you're the astros of the arlands to you know potentially have another two or three million dollars that you can spend on an elite guy that drops so i i would expect both florida and houston to look to uh save a little bit of money i don't think they're not in a position where they need to cut such a large uh underslot deal that they need to go off their board. They should be able to find an elite talent, one of the top three draft talents that's willing to sign for savings. And I think that's how we'll see it play out. How mockable is this year's draft?

Is this a draft that should have some predictability to it? Or given the lack of certainty even at the top, is it like every mock draft is going to be blown up within five minutes i i i think that it's uh personally i think it's a fool's errand to try and mock this draft um it's it's it's light on elite talent up top but very deep on sort of second tier talent so especially picks like between like four and 17 you could make a case for you know 15 or 16 guys that that makes sense for a team and it would be defensible picks there so i think there's a a good idea who the top you know three or four guys are in the class but after that it that, it gets broad really quickly. It gets wide open.

So I guess if teams are forthcoming and tell you this is our thinking, if these guys are on the board, we're picking between these two guys, it's possible to get a sense for how things are going to go. But I'd be surprised if really anything that anyone's mocking is close to accurate as far as how the first round plays out. So can we go over a few of those top guys, the guys that you think are in the top tier? I'm curious because as someone who sort of, you know, at least up until right before the draft kind of follows it from afar and hears the occasional rumbling. from afar and here's the occasional rumbling. And all I was hearing was Carlos Rodon for much of this winter and early this spring, that he was clearly the top guy. And some years there's a Harper or a Strasburg and it's very clear where he's going. Other years, there's some development

as it gets closer to the draft and one guy overtakes another. And that seems to have happened to some extent with Brady Aitken this year. So what swung the balance of power between those two guys? How did Aitken overtake Rodan if he has? I think it's twofold. One, Rodan had a really rocky start to this season. He was never sort of this elite velocity guy. He had a good fastball, you know, a plus fastball, you know, sometimes plus plus fastball depending on the day. But,

you know, mostly he was a low 90s guy that could run it up to 94, 95. And his big pitch was a slider and it was a plus plus pitch last year. The final game of the summer with the USA collegiate national team, he threw against Cuba and it was an 80 pitch that night. I mean, he looked like a major leaguer that came down to help out the Collegiate National Team for an evening. And that's what everyone was left with. And it was hard to walk away from that game and not think that this guy is sort of a Strasburg-level talent. He came back in the spring and the velocity was more 87 to 90 touching 92. And the slider was, you know, a plus pitch that he wasn't commanding

very well. So the stuff took a step back. Um, his command took a step back and, you know, at first it was, well, it's, you know, cold, it's cold weather, it's a slow start to the season, let's not read too much into it. By start number five, start number six, things weren't drastically improving. People started to worry. At the same time, California baseball starts early, high school baseball starts early, and Brady Aiken came out and started the season

with a three-mile-an-hour bump on his fastball. His curveball jumped to half a grade and his changeup jumped a grade. The mechanics are smooth and easy. He's got a pro body with projection to come. Basically, everything that you hope to see out of a high school prospect when you're looking at him, like, oh, this is over the next next year or two we think he can check these boxes and take these steps forward i mean it basically all happened for aiken in the offseason and there's still projection left there's still physical projection left there's still projection left in the stuff so you know this spring he showed us you know low 90s fastball with great command throwing it to both sides of the plate, elevating it when he needs to. Plus curveball, you know, a changeup that flashes plus.

Easy mechanics, you know, not a lot of red flags as far as, you know, biomechanics are concerned. And, you know, and he's a lefty. You know, it's hyperbolic to say you think of Clayton Kershaw, but it's the same type of sort of front-end starter kit. You look at it and you say, I could see this developing into an elite major league pitcher, and he's advanced for a high school arm right now. So that was the bump forward for Aitken. Rodan saw some regression, and he righted the ship a little bit.

And it's quite possible that he gets drafted, shut down, and then comes back to throw in the Arizona Fall League and looks like he did last summer. It's kind of hard to tell without a crystal ball. But that's sort of the reason for the flip-flop up top there. And it wasn't just a flip-flop where Aitken climbed from number three to number one. I mean, he is a guy who was a potential first rounder. You know, most people thought maybe mid first round, but took kind of a big developmental leap over the off season. And we, we talked about the importance of evaluating risk. And I think people who have

studied draft picks and the rates at which they pan out. Historically, high school pitchers are the least safe bet in the draft. Is Aitken considered fairly safe, at least for a high school pitcher, though? Yeah, I think for a high school pitcher, he's considered safe, but you're absolutely right. I mean, there's a reason why high school pitchers tend to not go first overall, and that's exactly it. It's a risky proposition. Even a fast-moving high school pitchers tend to not go first overall. And that's exactly it. It's a risky proposition. Even a fast-moving high school arm, unless your name is Jose Fernandez, is likely to spend, you know, at least two and a half, three years in the minors and, you know, logs several hundred pitches or innings pitched. And that's just a lot of opportunity for little things to go wrong.

And it's not necessarily, you know, a big mechanical flaw that you can spot. Sometimes the pitcher gets a little worn down through the season. He doesn't tell the coach, and all of a sudden he ends up injuring himself because he didn't want to tell anybody that he was tiring or that his arm was sore or whatever it is. I mean, there are a lot of things that a team can't monitor. And the longer that player's working through the minor, the more opportunity there is for something to go wrong.

Do you think there's any tendency for teams to overreact or read too much into small samples in the spring when they're trying to separate between one guy and another who might look fairly similar? And, you know, one guy has a bad start while someone important is there watching, and another guy shows a little more velocity in the start when someone's there watching, and you kind of use that to separate the two? Or is that how a team should approach this process? Oh, no, you're absolutely right, and I'll take it a step further.

I mean, there are guys who will go out and have... Here's a great example. There's a high school outfielder, Jaron Kendall, who had not even a strong showcase at the Area Code games. He had a strong game and a half at the Area Code games out of the four games he played and looked terrible in Jupiter for the big scouting event in October. It's a big 84-team wood bat tournament for high schoolers. He looked very bad there. I saw him at winter workouts. He looked very bad there.

Scouts were not impressed. Scouts kind of scratching their head. I wouldn't give this guy top five round money. He plays ball in Wisconsin. Obviously, that high school season doesn't even start until May. So he's had a handful of games here and he's still getting, you know, second round mentions simply because at the area code games where there was a stands where the, you know, the stands were full of scouting directors,

you know, GMs cross checkers. He had a game and a half where he looked like an elite talent and that was, has literally been enough to carry him into, know the top two round conversation you know if you have a strong enough performance in front of the right eyes um you know you can basically cement yourself uh in an early round in some form you know it might be that you have to sign you know agree to sign early or it might be that you know you have to find the right or it might be that you have to find the right pick and the right team and the right opportunity has to come around, but you're going to be on the board and you're going to be in the discussion

if you have the right outing, the right day in front of the right people. And so on the mock draft that we have up at BP right now from our friends at Perfect Game, it goes Aitken and Radon, and then it goes Tyler Kolek, Nick Gordon, Aaron Nola, Alex Jackson. Is there any of these guys who really stands out as being the clear number three after Aitken and Rodon, or is there a point after three or four where the talent drops off? Stiefle, how would you rank the non-Aitken-Rodin top talents there? I think you go Aitken-Rodin up top, and then probably Alex Jackson would be, if you were to poll the industry and get a look at their boards,

my guess would be that Jackson is probably the third most popular name in the top three there. of the top three there. I think Nola and Nick Gordon also get probably fairly consistent, you know, top half of the top 10, top five or six picks or so placement there. I would, I think Sean Newcomb, the lefty out of Hartford, gets more love in the draft rooms than he does necessarily in the, in the national media. He wasn't a very, he's not a very easy guy for the media to see and for the media to get comments on. So I think he flew a little bit under the radar as a small school guy.

And then I would say there are some high school arms like Tukey Toussaint and Grant Holmes that were sort of overshadowed by Aitken and Kolick this spring, but certainly have the stuff and the potential to go as high as the top five picks. And I wouldn't be surprised if they're prominently placed on a number of teams' boards as well. And is there anyone in the top ten sort of range or the top of the first round who you're considerably higher on than the consensus and anyone that you're considerably lower on than, than the consensus?

Um, I would say, uh, Tyler Kolick, I'm probably lower on than the reported consensus. Although I think what we're going to see come out in the media over the next you know well obviously over the next 24 hours we'll see what happens but uh i think colic is lower on team's boards than than most believe i think a lot of people have have a thought that colic is sort of a shoe-in for the top you know one of the top three spots or certainly in the top five and i don't think that's the case. I think this is a premium velocity arm. It's a big high school kid that regularly throws, you know, hits triple digits. He hit as high as 103 or 102, depending on who you're talking to, this spring.

But most of the time he's a one-pitch pitcher. There's not a lot of track record. He didn't throw on the showcase circuit. You know, he didn't do travel ball. He plays in a small Texas high school league that has pretty terrible competition, relatively speaking. So I think the velocity and the body has been enough to keep him sort of on team short lists. Like, oh, we got to make sure we keep checking in on this guy, bring him in for a workout, make sure

we have the right people interviewing him, talking to him, getting a sense for him and a feel for him as a player. You know, I think he's on everyone's short list. But I think what we're going to find is there's enough safety and there's enough, a greater, a great enough number of interesting profiles that have a little bit more track record and a little more, a little less risk tied to it that, you know, we could see him drop down to, you know, the seven, you know, to Philly at seven, to Colorado at eight, you know, there's a chance he drops out of the top 10 altogether. And I personally have him, let's see,

I have him as the number 11 guy, as far as who I, you know, how much money I would give out. I have him outside of the top 10 right now. So I'd say I'm probably lower on him than most would expect. I don't know that it's that much lower than the industry ends up, but that would probably be the most obvious selection for someone I'm lower on. As far as someone I'm higher on, maybe Michael Chavis. He's in Georgia, high school, third baseman.

I think he's potentially the best hit tool in the draft. He's a little undersized, know 5 10 5 11 but makes just squares up the ball with regularity really has good plate coverage he's a good defender strong arm i think he's undersold a little bit in this class because so much attention is being paid to the arms but he's i think uh someone that that is worthy of top 10 consideration. I'm sure he's on some teams' boards in the top 10 range, probably not consensus. But I think, you know, if you were to sort of pull all the different media outlets that do draft coverage,

he's probably more in the 20 to 25 range than the top 10 range. So I'm probably higher on him. Same thing with Sean Reed Foley. He's a Florida in the 20 to 25 range than the top 10 range. So I'm probably higher on him. Same thing with Sean Reed Foley. He's a Florida high school righty. I think he's generally in the top 20 range. I have him closer to the top 10. And I'm curious, does the spot where players go on mock drafts like these and the public industry consensus,

does that affect their opinions of themselves and possibly their own demands in the draft? You know, is it hard to get a good deal on a guy who's going number three on all mock drafts? Does that inflate his sense of self-worth? Or do these guys get a good sense of how teams are truly valuing them just through conversations with them or with their advisors? Yeah, that's an excellent question and an excellent point. I think it certainly can inflate their self-sense of value. I think what you'll find with most top draft prospects is that they don't really need much of a nudge to have an inflated sense of their value.

And that's not a bad thing. I mean, this is really your this may be for most of these kids. They're only real big bite at the apple. Right. I mean, the numbers show us that the majority of the kids that are selected, even the majority of the kids in the top 50 picks, aren't going to go on to long and fruitful major league careers. So they should be angling to get as much as they can from this bonus process. But I'm sure if you talk to Alex Jack, I said that there isn't an $8 million kid in this draft. I'm sure if you talk to Brady Aiken, he disagrees. Carlos Rodon, I'm sure, you talk to brady aiken he disagrees carlos rodan i'm sure

disagrees alex jackson disagrees um and that and that's fine i mean i think as as long as there's an open uh dialogue between the team and the players i think these things generally end up uh well for everybody uh a team says you know this is this is where we have you and in my experience this is how it works it's not it's not to the scout's advantage to play games right he's he's going to tell a player this is where we value you this is where we'd like to pick you this is the type of money we're thinking about and you know sometimes you'll get just a straight look i want to play baseball i'm going to sign as long as i go somewhere in the top 15 or whatever sometimes you get that and that's great you know if you can at least get from a player,

you know, I'm not looking to be unreasonable. I just want to have, you know, an earnest discussion after the draft takes place, see, you know, be able to explain our, you know, where I'm coming from, from a bonus standpoint, listen to where you're coming from. And I'm sure we'll be able to reach a mutual agreement that's great and as and you know finally if a player says look i've got other options i i really feel like i'm you know it's going to take top five money for me to to start playing pro ball you know put those cards on the table right off the bat and you're not going to have an issue so i think communication is key you know technically obviously you're not supposed to have an issue. So I think communication is key.

Technically, obviously, you're not supposed to have a pre-draft deal, but the more information that a player can share with each other to make sure they're on the same page, the easier it makes things through the month of June when they're negotiating. And last question for me. The problem that a lot of people have or some people have in really getting interested in the draft is that it does take a while for a lot of these guys to get to the majors or longer than it does in some other sports. And they figure they'll have time to get acquainted with these players at some point while they're on the way up. But Jim Callis wrote an article today about how at least some guys seem to be moving more quickly, getting promoted to

the majors with less minor league time. Is there anyone who stands out to you, you know, maybe one of the more interesting talents who could move very quickly and, you know, either make a contribution down the stretch this year or be up to start the season next year, say? Sure. So I think that the obvious choice there is, you know, you think of someone like Paco Rodriguez, right, the Florida draftee that the Dodgers signed and put in the bullpen the same year last year. Or it was last year or the year before.

I'm sorry, I don't remember which. But you have someone like the Louisville closer, Nick Birdie. He's basically ready to play Major League ball right now. He's got an upper 90s fastball. He's got a plus-plus slider. The command's a little erratic, but it's always going to be a little bit erratic. The stuff is so good, you could slot him into a Major League bullpen right now, and he could do damage.

Whether or not that happens this spring is probably more dependent upon how deep Louisville goes into the postseason. So they have Super Regionals next weekend. If they win there, they go to Omaha, and that's potentially another two weeks' worth of games. Then he stops throwing for a while and negotiates after being drafted, and a team may not want to put that stress on his arm if he's been throwing you know deep into june and then shut down for a little while you know that may

impact whether or not he can actually uh show up and and contribute at the major level i'd say birdie's the most likely and then uh up at the top of the draft aaron nola is an advanced command guy he's got uh you know three above average pitches, fastball, slider, changeup. He's a good feel for sequencing, good presence on the mound. He's comfortable. He's sort of battle-tested in the SEC. He's a three-year starter, weekend starter. So he can move very, very quickly,

certainly be along the same lines as someone like Michael Waka. He's not going to necessarily jump right to the majors, but he could probably be ready with a minimal number of minor league innings. So I'm going to eliminate Handsome Monica and Max Pentecost because even an idiot like me knows them. Who's the best? Who's your favorite name in this draft? Well, Handsome Monica was a great one.

There's Maverick Buffo. Oh, there it is. He's not going to be drafted in a signable round, but that's one of my favorites. I'm trying to think who else we have. I think Tukey Toussaint is a fantastic name. That's a name I can see in a major league rotation. is a fantastic name.

That's a name I can see in a major league rotation. Let's see. There's got to be someone else who jumps out. Those were the big ones. For me, it was Buffo and Monica back from when I first looked at the showcase rosters last June for Perfect Game Nationals. Those were the two that jumped out for me. Maverick is the first name, and Buffo is the last name. Maverick Buffo.

Oh, there's also Fenway Parks. Oh, my gosh. You're kidding me. So he's also not likely to go in a drafting round. Yeah, Fenway Parks as well. That's tough to beat. All right. Well, my contribution to the rampant baseless pre-draft speculation,

a scout just texted me that he is hearing Kyle Schwarber at four if Aitken and Rodan are already gone. So there, that's my contribution to the rumor mill. Somebody told me who the Astros aren't going to draft. However, it's not a person who would know, and the Astros aren't going to draft seven billion out of the seven billion and one human beings alive so it's not very useful information

all right well if you thought that Nick was thorough in audio form then you should see him in written form go to baseball prospectus at the top of the page you will see the 2014 draft index by Nick Valeris. It contains links to everything Nick has produced for the site over the past months. And as mentioned, you can hear him today on MLB Network Radio's coverage of the draft, which starts at 7. I guess the coverage on MLB Network starts at 6 this evening, and the draft itself starts at 7

and then the later rounds start on Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon. But you can follow along with Nick on Twitter, at Nick J. Falaris, F-A-L-E-R-I-S. You can also find him chatting at BP, even if you're not a subscriber. And his chat starts at 2 p.m. Eastern, but will probably continue throughout the day. And we will likely talk to him again tomorrow to talk about how the first round went,

if he is still conscious and able to put sentences together at that point. So thank you very much, Nick. Yeah, thanks a lot, guys. It was fun. All right. Please support our sponsor, Baseball Reference. Go to baseballreference.com, subscribe to the Play Index using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. And we will be back tomorrow. I said Strasburg weird, so I want to... Strasburg. That's weird, too. Was that weird? Strasburg. was that weird Strasburg

was that weird you need to say the whole I mean it sounds very weird when you're out of context I don't know I said Strasburg I think I mean you've already you've said Strasburg four times now tell me one more time

what did we just do what just then what did what did we just do what just then what did what were we doing we were recording you saying strasburg we were doing what strasburg you're getting worse harper and strasburg harper and strasburg nope i did it again you also mispronounced your name at the beginning yes I did Bedlenburg

okay so long bye