Last post on the Draft, which i’ve spent far too much time on this week.
Now that we’re 21 picks in, and the data has been fully updated in the Draft Tracker, Here’s some breakdowns and thoughts on the 21 players we picked.
- 19 College, 2 HS picks
As usual we loaded up on College players. The two HS picks were a 2nd rounder and a speculative pick on a 15th rounder, which again is pretty on-brand for our typical draft.
- Of the 19 college: 16 were Soph/Jrs with eligibility, just 3 were “Senior Signs” or Grad students.
Compare this to last year, when we drafted eight college seniors. Now, perhaps this is a remnant of the Covid year working its way through the system (meaning, many of last year’s seniors were actually 3rd year eligible due to the lost 2020 season). However, we’ve drafted a ton of guys who still could go back to school if they don’t like the number. Top 10 rounds i’m not too worried, but a few of these mid-teen guys may pass (see below) for various reasons.
- My guesses on over/under slot from top 10: 6 Under, 4 slot, 1 over.
The top 10 rounds are what really counts for over/under slot, and here’s pick by pick what I think happens:
- 1st King. Slot $5.9M: I think he signs for less, like $1.5M less, since he projected mid-teens.
- 1-S: Lomavita. Slot $2.3m: signs for slot, maybe a smidge less.
- 2nd Dickerson. Slot $2.1m: I think he goes overslot, like maybe $400-$500k over.
- 3rd Bazzell. Slot $980k: I think he goes for slot, maybe a smidge more.
- 4th Kent. Slot $676k: signs for slot or close to it.
- 5th Diaz. Slot $490k: Underslot, by perhaps $200k
- 6th Garcia. Slot $372k: underslot, by perhaps $100k
- 7th Cranz. Slot $290k: slightly underslot by maybe $75k
- 8th Peterson. Slot $230k: Sighs for slot
- 9th Ross. Slot $198k: senior sign for $10k, saving $188k or so
- 10th Johnson. Slot $185k. small college sign for $10k, saving $175k or so.
Honestly, I only see one obvious over-slot pick in the top 10 in Dickerson, and he’s already at $2.1M slot, so just giving him another few hundred thousand puts him into 1st round money, which should be what he needs to forgo college. Working the numbers above, I see savings of about $2.2M, giving $500k of it to Dickerson, leaving about $1.7M in overages for rounds 11-20. Which we’ll get to in a bit when talking sign-ability below.
- 11 Pitchers, 10 position players overall
- But, 7 position, 4 pitchers in top 10, and our first 4 picks were position players.
Good balance in the draft overall, but the top of this draft was entirely about hitters. Which is interesting, since we have not really focused on big-time arms at the top of the draft now for a few years running. To wit:
- 2024 draft: 5 of the first 6 picks were position players.
- 2023 draft: 6 of the first 7 picks were position players
- 2022 draft: 5 of the first 6 picks were position players.
- 2021 draft: 4 of the first 5 picks were position players.
Compare to
- 2019 (4 of top 6 arms)
- 2018 (6 of top 7 arms)
- 2017 (9 of top 10 picks arms)
Is this a pivot in draft strategy for the franchise? It seems like it. For years Rizzo drafted a gazillion arms and used them as trade currency to acquire position players. Now it seems like the strategy is reversed, with the bulk of our prospect depth coming in bats. We have more top OF prospects than we know what to do with, and we face a pending OF log-jam (Wood, Young in bigs now, with Crews, Hassell, Lile coming soon, and guys like Green, Vaquero, Cox maybe in the distant future, and that’s before remembering we also have Thomas, Call, Garrett on the 40-man). Not to mention we have an All-Star SS, a 1st rounder at 3B in AAA, now another decent 3B prospect in AA, and we just drafted three SS/3B projected guys in the first 3 rounds of the 2024 draft.
As for Arms, we grabbed a slew of them in the teens, which has served the team well in previous drafts. We’ve picked up guys who have flown through the minors despite being drafted in the high teens, an amazing feat considering how difficult is has been for our 2nd rounders to amount to anything historically (a rant for another time).
- Lots of positional flexibility in the guys we drafted
This seems to be a trend with the Nats, and the league in general. If you look at the guys we signed last off-season, they all had multi-position capabilities. Look at the position players we just picked up and you see a lot of the same:
- King: played 4 positions for Wake this year (CF, SS, 3B, 2B)
- Lomavita: Catcher only
- Dickerson: Prep SS, but projects to be 2B, CF capable
- Bazzell: played both C and 3B. If he can play 3B, he can play at least 1B and maybe 2B
- Diaz: SS and 3B this year
- Peterson: CF but can play all 3 OF positions
- Ross played 1B, LF, RH this year.
- Jones: HS C but projects to 1B/corner OF slugger
- Banks: CF in college but can play all 3 OF positions.
- Shelton: college SS but played 3B and can cover anywhere on the dirt
So that’s good.
- Signability: Of the 11th-20th rounders: 6 look easily sign-able, 2 look like they’ll be tougher signs, 2 would need a lot more money
I’m going to assume that we sign all top 10 round picks, because that’s just what happens now. Nearly 99% of the picks in the top 10 rounds have signed since the slot bonus system went in place.
Here’s a quick summary of 11-20 and sign-ability:
- 11th Beeker: Signable, maybe a little above $150k
- 12th Meckley, signable for $150k
- 13th Olson, signable for $150k or less even
- 14th Tejeda, may be tougher to sign, in that he’s a RS soph with 2 years of eligibilty.
- 15th Jones, may be tough to sign as a HS kid with a big name college commitment, but he’s also not a top 100 prep recruit. Maybe he signs if he gets a 7-figure bonus.
- 16th Hughes: senior draftee, signable at $150k or less even.
- 17th Bruni: signable
- 18th Banks: signable
- 19th Minckler: tough sign in that he just got an offer to go to ASU
- 20th Shelton; intriguing over-slot discussion, see below.
Do we have enough money to get both Jones and Shelton? Maybe. If my above accounting is right, we might have about $1.7M in spare bonus money. BUT, that’s before we add in the 5% buffer, worth another $700k or so. So, that’s about $2.4M total. Could we get Shelton for $1.5M and Jones for $1M? That’d be roughly mid 2nd round money for Shelton and top of 3rd round money for Jones. Maybe, Maybe. That’d make for a heck of a successful draft if they could pull it off.
- Regional breakdown of players:
This team for years has been super heavy in the southwest regions (Texas, Oklahoma). This year i see a bit of a departure.
- West Coast: 2: one from AZ, one from CA (Lomavita, Kent)
- Southeast: 6: 3 from FL, 1 from GA, 1 from SC, 1 from NC (Garcia, Tejada, Shelton, Olson, Meckley, King)
- Southwest: 4: 1 from TX, 1 from OK, 1 from LA, 1 from MS (Bazzell, Cranz, Banks, Ross)
- Northeast: 3: 1 from NJ, 1 from NY, 1 from MD (Dickerson, Johnson, Minckler)
- Midwest: 6: 2 from OH, 2 from IN, 1 from IL, 1 from IA (Diaz, Peterson, Beeker, Jones, Hughes, Bruni)
So that’s interesting. that’s basically 9 players from “cold weather” states in the northeast and midwest. Just a couple from their typical heavy hunting grounds of TX and OK.
- Conference breakdown of college players
Here’s a conference breakdown of the schools the 19 college draftees came from:
- Pac12: 2 (Arizona and Cal)
- ACC: 2 (Florida State, Wake Forest)
- SEC: 2 (Florida, Ole Miss)
- Big12 2 (Ok state, Texas Tech)
- Big10: 2 (Iowa, Ohio State)
- MEAC: 1 (Ball State)
- SBC: 1 (Coastal Carolina)
- Atlantic Sun: 1 (FGCU)
- MVC: 1 (Indiana State)
- Southern 1 (Mercer)
- MAAC 1 (Niagara)
- AAC 1 (Tulane)
- Big East 1 (Xavier)
- America East 1 (UMBC)
That’s a lot of players from a lot of pretty random baseball conferences. Remember; the entire CWS was from the ACC and the SEC.