[Westheim]

2021 AMATEUR DRAFT

The draft takes place in the middle of the week of June 14-20, 2021. The update with the preceding games will follow after this post with the week as a whole.

The Raccoons had earmarked 65 players in the draft pool for selection considerations, including 13 players on our hotlist, all of which were college players:

SP Ramiro Benavides (12/13/10) – BNN #8
SP Joel O’Brien (12/12/7) – BNN #10
SP Jeff Dykstra (12/13/9) – BNN #1

CL Justin Crosby (15/15/12)
CL Marcus Owens (16/13/10)
CL Joe Moore (16/14/12)

3B David Flournoy (11/10/14)
3B Pat Green (12/11/14) – BNN #5
1B Kevin McGrath (10/13/12)

OF/SP Tony Coca (12/13/8)
LF Eddie Pence (10/7/13)
OF Joe Vanatti (12/7/12) – BNN #2
RF/LF Rick Morris (9/11/10)

We have already talked a bit about this guy and that and why I like Tony Coca, and we could talk some more about the 19 reasons why we won’t get him, but let’s get to the Draft already. The Raccoons had the #20 pick in every round, plus a supplemental round pick, and had to make some hay with a draft class, finally.

Customarily, the Wolves had the #1 pick in the draft and selected SS Chris McGee with the premium selection.

Who?

After that uninspired beginning, the damn Elks picked Tony Coca with the #2 pick. They shall be damned! Several GMs in the draft room hushed me when I slapped my shoe on my desk while cussing and while the Condors selected SP Steve Gowan at #3. The top 5 would be completed by SP Ramiro Benavides to the Miners and OF Joe Vanatti to L.A.;

Many of the players taken in the top 10 were not on our shortlist, let alone the hotlist, and for a bit I wondered whether I had held the Riddler’s scouting reports the wrong way round, although I was quite sure that the rhyming end had to be on the right. When Joel O’Brien, Pat Green, David Flournoy, and Jeff Dykstra were taken in succession from #10 through #13, confidence was restored. Even my preferred closer prospect was soon off the board, with the Capitals taking Justin Crosby at #17. By the time the Coons first got to pick, Joe Moore looked like the best solution. While Marcus Owens had higher potential in some areas, the Riddler considered Moore’s pitches – in his words – a completed tower of light. Whatever that meant. We took Moore; Owens went to the Capitals as well at #22. Rick Morris ended up the last player on the hotlist that remained when our second pick – in the supplemental round – came around, so with that chapter one was closed.

The second chapter was all about picking well from the shortlist before the lottery picks would arrive. I had set aside an outfielder named Nick West as first lottery pick for us – the boy combined the names of two Raccoons Hall of Famers (okay, one HoFer and one hopefully in there soon) and could only become a star! – but the Knights already selected him in the second round. My plans foiled again, I settled on a high school middle infielder in the second round, then a 20-year old college third baseman in the third round. That his name was Matt shouldn’t indicate that he will be Matt Nunley’s successor. But hey, Nunley was taken a round lower and was probably not looking like much back then, either.

By the sixth round, the shortlist was mostly exhausted, and the Coons had only taken two pitchers so far. I tasked the Riddler to give me the guy with the fieriest flameballs, and he came back from his notes with a college relief pitcher that couldn’t hit a barn from the inside. When I asked him whether he was as drunk as me, he just replied that nobody thought that Charles Lindbergh could cycle across America, either, until he did it. In a weird way, this was plausible, even to me. I didn’t even know why. That’s how we signed the sixth-rounder.

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2021 PORTLAND RACCOONS DRAFT CLASS

Round 1 (#20) – CL Joe Moore, 23, from Denver, CO – right-hander that throws 97mph head with good precision, and mixes it with a devastating curveball with late break. Not quite major-league ready, but almost!
Supp. Round (#35) – RF/LF Rick Morris, 20, from Carlsbad, CA – left-handed hitter with strong power potential but not much in terms of agility and defense
Round 2 (#64) – 2B/SS Chris Golka, 19, from Sharon, PA – slap hitter with no power whatsoever, but considerable infield range and speed; his hands need to get a bit more steady before he can be considered a major league-worthy fielder
Round 3 (#88) – 3B Matt Anton, 20, from Thousand Oaks, CA – strong defensive third baseman with some power potential, and also a skilled eye; his throwing arm does not look like it’s first-rate, so maybe a move to second base is in the cards for him; he does have considerable speed though.
Round 4 (#112) – SP Hank Gibson, 23, from New Orleans, LA – squirrely left-hander and corner nibbler with a 93mph fastball and complementary splitter and changeup; could use a bit more precision on that throwing arm…
Round 5 (#136) – 1B/OF Jared Knight, 21, from Hamilton, NJ – powerless left-hander that tries to occupy a power position (his range is not really something you want to see in centerfield); strikeouts and walks are also present in an undesirable ratio
Round 6 (#160) – CL Nick Derks, 20, from Ocala, FL – right-hander with a 91mph fastball and a nasty slider that occasionally slides right into the batter, over the umpire, or right to shortstop
Round 7 (#184) – C Brandon Tally, 21, from Leonia, NJ – extremely bright catcher that works wonderfully with pitchers and his environment, except that he can’t throw and can’t hit
Round 8 (#208) – SS/2B Joe McGary, 18, from Little Falls, NY – no power, some potential to get him on base with something close to regularity, good speed; unfortunately clumsy; never hand him the trophy, because he’ll sure break it
Round 9 (#232) – LF/RF Corey Caraway, 18, from Omaha, NE – he can hit a ball all across Nebraska, if said ball sits on an immobile stick and he can zero in on it for a few hours
Round 10 (#256) – CL Kyle Oglesby, 20, from Planada, CA – right-hander with fastball at 92, splitter; really nothing special, and don’t stand so close to him, that ball can really go anywh- (ducks)
Round 11 (#280) – SP Tommy Burris, 20, from Chicago, IL – this year’s Nick Brown Memorial Pick tries to be a finesse pitcher with a curve and changeup that are vaguely recognizable as such, while the fastball dies before it gets much faster than 85…
Round 12 (#304) – 2B/SS Brian Higgins, 19, from Babylon, NY – Brian still sticks to what he declared to be his dream job in first grade: major league shortstop; never mind that he can not field or hit for his life…
Round 13 (#328) – SP Gary Gunter, 19, from Terrebonne, Canada – throws whatever comes to his mind, and there is not much shape or order to it…

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Every draft also made some cleansing in the minors necessary, and we thinned our three minor league affiliates (which all sat roughly at .500, just like the parent team) of a number of players, while assigning our new bounty. First off, all draftees were sent to Aumsville, except for Joe Moore, who would report to AAA St. Petersburg right away.

Among the players released was sadly a former Nick Brown Memorial Pick, 2018’s Joe Nelson, who had obviously topped out at Ham Lake and couldn’t get anybody struck out or removed otherwise. We also waived and designated for assignment 25-year old C Owen Walker, who had picked up some 30 at-bats with the Raccoons in 2019 before fading to Ham Lake and there into a second-fiddle role. Walker was still on a minimum contract this year and maybe someone could be enticed to spare us the extra $100k in expenses.

Also released (not counting the odd international discovery that the cat dragged in and that never was mentioned in the first place, or late-winter trash heap signings):

From Ham Lake: 2B/3B Nick Moist (2015, 9th Round), 3B Brian Voyles (2017, 10th Round), MR Marty Woodard (2018, 6th Round)
From Aumsville: MR Jim Garrison (2019, 12th Round), INF/RF Brad Gillaspy (2020, 8th Round), 3B Ben Hodder (2020, 10th Round), INF/LF Adam Jakubowski (2020, 4th Round)

Including DL dwellers, we have 93 players in the minors now.