Figured people might care about this. According to Gammons via Twitter, "usually everyonere knows 1rst 12 picks. Today we know Harper, Taillon, Machado in that order. 4 to 44 is indistinguishable". Should be crazy. Harper, the douchebag with a giant hitch in his swing will be the first pick, and we'll see how much Boras can squeeze out of Washington for a second straight year.
dumb question here (forgive my ignorance).... Some of the Jays' picks from the 2009 draft didn't sign (the 37, 68, and 99th picks)....does that have any ramifications on their draft this year? or are they shit out of luck?
For 1-2 round picks you get to pick at the same spot plus one. For third round picks you get a sandwich pick between rounds 3 and 4. That's it. The 37th would be a second round pick (I think) so they should get to pick at 38 for that. I think 68 should be round 3 (depending on how many compensation picks there were last year) so they should get a sandwich pick for that. 99th is probably nothing, but I haven't looked into it.
He could easily be a douchebag (saw the video of him getting ejected from the JuCo World Series), but the guy hit .442 and 29 homers in a short season against college competition even though he should be a junior/senior in high school. Plus, lots of 17 year olds are assholes, and more specifically even a higher percentage of the ones getting drafted probably are. Unless his dominance up to this point has been purely PED fueled, the Nats are pretty lucky to get him. They seem to have picked two great years to be the worst team in baseball.
From Baseball Prospectus: That's scary. He may have all the talent in the world, but those can be the kinds of things that cause prospects to flame out. He's never been challenged on the field, but he will be, even in the minors, at some point soon. If he has these makeup issues who knows how he will handle it? He's going to need some time in the minors to fix his swing as well. He has this HUGE leg kick/hitch which will make it hard to hit professional quality pitching, which he also has never really faced consistently.
article from '09: http://slidingintohome.blogspot.com/2009/06/bryce-harper-want-to-wear-pinstripes.html get it done cashman
meh, i don't know what to think about the pick, as i know nothing about him. all i know is that chris sale was still available..
So pumped, going to DC next year so now I get to watch Harper and Strasburg on the nationals, nice Im really bummed about the Red Sox taking Ranaudo, another LSU athlete lost to boston
Matt Harvey I first heard about Bryce Harper when he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated last year. He came across as a spoiled brat jerk in the article. Drew Pomeranz has a horrible hairstyle. Made me wonder if he's of any relation to the Manning family.
I really know nothing about any of the guys who were picked last night. I'm just laughing about the furor that resulted from the Yankees picking a shortstop at the bottom of the round. People were flipping about about the pick. Supposedly the kid can hit from both sides fairly well, and has a very good arm. What I think people are probably thinking is "Oh noes! What about JETER!?!?!" Well, considering this kid won't even sniff the majors for another 3-5 years, probably nothing about Jeter. Assuming this kid goes through the system and stays at short, by the time he's MLB-ready, Jeter will doubtfully be able to play shortstop at even an acceptable competence. I think people have become draft obsessed. This isn't the NFL or NBA where your picks are expected to pan out within 3 years. 3 years after picking a baseball prospect the kid is still somewhere in your system.
Character is always a concern, but let's remember that he is the first baseball prospect to ever receive this kind of exposure at so young an age. I think if S.I were do write ups on Josh Beckett and people were constantly monitoring him in high school (the guy wore a jacket that said "Phenom" stitched across the back in high school) or A-Rod in high school, both of them would have come across as pompous assholes. And really, both of them still are and negative personality traits haven't stopped either of them from having successful big league careers. For a guy who is already having his every move monitored at the age of 17 (how do you think this would work out with other elite high school seniors?), if the best anyone can come up with as evidence of character flaws is some anonymous, extremely vague quote from another executive, I just don't think there's any more to be worried about with than the average player that age. And I guess his swing does have a hitch, but those numbers are still insane. There's always those can't miss guys who flame out quickly, but I feel like this guy has an excellent chance of being a beast of a major league hitter within 10 years. It's a little depressing that it's basically a foregone conclusion I will end up hating him for 90% of his career after he signs with the Yankees, but that's besides the point. What would worry me more than anything else is that the guy has just been juicing like hell this whole time and thus the 514 ft Tropicana Field bomb was really just meaningless.
LOL...yeah we are never going to see the mlb draft on espn or some major cable network. Bud Selig is boring as his drafts are as well
It has nothing to do with any of that. It has to do with the fact that college baseball isn't very popular, and a lot of the picks are high school kids. It's very hard to sell a draft when the vast majority of the picks are unknown to a vast majority of the public.
