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2024 Day One Draft Reaction – Seaver King!?

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Here’s my quick take on Nats Day 1 picks (1st, 1st-comp, and 2nd rounders)

First: Important Draft Links

  • MLB Draft Tracker
  • List of all Slot values for 2024
  • The Nats Draft Tracker master XLS, which I’m building out for 2024 as we go. With the trade we just made, our bonus pool is 13,895,100, but with the 5% buffer we can go up to 14,589,855 on our first 10 picks and 11th-20th rounders who get more than $150k.

Also, Here’s all the main pundit Draft Ranks with Scouting Reports; here’s links to the leading pundits out there with their Draft Boards (not Mocks) which usually have click-through scouting reports.

I’ll use some of these links to show where each guy we pick landed on the various boards to indicate whether it was a reach or a steal.

1st Round, 10th Overall: Nats take Seaver King, a College Junior SS from Wake Forest.

Ranks by major shops: BA=17, ESPN=16, MLBpipeline=17, Law=17, Fangraphs=11. SportingNews=11. Others generally in the 17-19 range.

So, the Nats at #10 have Bryce Rainer AND Braden Montgomery on the board dropping to them after both being mocked as high as the top 5 all month, and they reach down past even where Yesevage was projecting to go to pick Seaver King, a D2 transfer to Wake who has been creeping up draft boards ever since he slashed .424/.479/.542 with wood on the Cape last year.

I’ll point out that Seaver King did not appear in a SINGLE MOCK draft in the top 10 that I can recall, nor was he ever associated with a Nats pick at #10. This is coming out of LF for sure. To me, this smells like an under-slot deal (slot value for 1-10 is $5.9M) so that the team, who now owns the #39 and #44, might be able to save $1.5M or so (the difference between 10th overall and 17th overall, which is probably where he was expecting to go) and throw it at one of their next two picks to make it look like a mid-1st rounder.

Back to King: he played CF, SS, 3B, and 2B in that order this year, has positional flexibility, can absolutely hit both with metal and with wood (Slash line at Wake Forest this year: .308/.377/.577), has some speed and some power. I bet the Nats like him b/c he can play a bunch of different positions.

What do I think? I would rather have taken Montgomery. Maybe they were spooked by the injury. I wasn’t really on Tibbs as much as Moore (who went a couple picks earlier), and Yesevage would have been a reach (he went 20th overall). So. Lets see who they pick in the next two rounds.

1st round Comp round, #39 overall: Caleb Lomavita, a College Junior C from Cal-Berkeley.

Ranks by major shops: BA=18, ESPN=24, MLBpipeline=33, Law=46, Fangraphs=43. SportingNews=35

Interesting range of ranks from the shops, especially BA at #18 and Law at 46 as extremes.

So, three picks before ours, MLB’s best available included Brody Becht and Tommy White, both of whom got mid-1st round buzz throughout the spring. In fact, the very first mocks we saw all had White going to Nats at #10 under the guise of “Mike Rizzo loves the famous guys.” Well, White had a crummy spring, which knocked him down to being available at #39, and Becht got popped one pick beforehand, so the Nats went with the Catcher Lomavita. We don’t have a ton of depth at the position and there’s definitely concerns about Kiebert Ruiz right now despite the contract we gave him (he’s slashing .224/.260/.333 this year). We say it over and over; you don’t draft for need, but here’s the Nationals Catching depth chart right now:

  • MLB: Ruiz & Adams, neither of whom can hit
  • AAA: Millas, Lindsley (a 10k senior sign), Gonzalez (an NDFA who spends most of his time on the Dev list).
  • AA: Pineda (already outrighted), Vega (boucning around like an org guy), Stubbs (2024 MLFA)
  • High-A: Romero (hitting .168 this year), Suggs (an NDFA hitting .202), Diaz (2024 BA: .116).
  • Low-A: Colomenares (.197), Farmer (22 NDFA hitting .186), Rombach (just promoted from FCL)
  • Rookie: three 18yr olds from the DR
  • DSL: three 17yr olds we signed in January

So, yeah, we need catching depth. Badly. The scouting reports aren’t great, he’s undersized and has some mechanical issues, but he’s definitely a college catcher and will stay there. Maybe we put him at Low-A to start, move Rombach up since nobody at Wilmington can hit, and see what happens.

2nd round #44 overall: Luke Dickerson, Prep SS from Morris Knolls HS (NJ).

Ranks by major shops: BA=56, ESPN=77, MLBpipeline=49, Law=59, Fangraphs 100+. SportingNews=36

It’s possible some bonus dollars will go to buy Dickerson out of his UVA commitment, but they probably don’t need THAT much. The slot value is $2.1M. The pundits said he was getting 1st round buzz, and he was certainly a helium prospect this year. 6′ shortstop who is offense over defense, may project more like a 2B or a CF, but has serious athleticism. Not only is he a top baseball prospect, but he also helped his HS team win the state Ice Hockey championship this year. Interesting sport combo.

An interesting pick; not sure who was exactly available at this point who might have made more sense. A slew of college arms went right after him. One thing that seems to stand out is his positional flexibility; he’s an athlete enough to move around the dirt, or play the OF with his speed.

Day 1: A solid college SS, a college C, and a prep SS. We’re a long way from drafting pitcher after pitcher.