[Westheim]

2040 DRAFT POOL ANALYSIS

(lies rolled into a ball) The draft pool came out and I had a glance at it, because why not… Isn’t that right, Honeypaws? (still rolled into a ball)

First, I liked the pitching side of the draft pool much better than the batting side. There was quite a few pitchers in there that I would totally like to add to the farm (and by the way, we had the #13 in every round, which we had fortunately not signed away). And especially a closer prospect – there were quite a few available in that regard, too.

There were a total of 111 players on the shortlist, and of course also few on the hotlist of a dozen boys or so (*denotes HS players, of which there weren’t many on the hotlist this year):

SP Paul Paris (15/12/12) – BNN #3
SP Arthur Pickett (11/14/14) – BNN #8
SP Tom Spencer (10/12/10) *
SP Brian Jackson (11/13/11)
SP Adam Capone (10/13/14) – BNN #1

CL Rich Kappel (19/16/11)
CL Jonathan Osmond (17/13/11)
CL Dale Mrazek (16/14/12)
CL Steven Johnston (18/12/9)

SS Jon Parker (9/8/12)

OF Dan Mathes (11/9/9) – BNN #9
RF Matt Diskin (12/9/8) *
LF/RF Pat Stipp (12/10/11)
OF Jonathan Gross (11/8/10)
LF/RF Billy Slingluff (12/15/11) – BNN #2

Gross is probably the batter I’d like the most, because he was also a top-notch defender and could win a stack of Gold Gloves in center. On the other hand, while Billy Slingluff had a weird name and not much glove to go around, he had the best power potential our cheapskate scout guy would grant to anybody in the draft.

In addition to the five starting pitchers above there were probably also another five or so with good stuff … but only on two-and-a-half pitches. There were a few finesse guys in that group.

So getting a pitcher was probably not an issue with the #13 pick. Maybe Arthur Pickett, a 21-year-old right-hander from Sheffield, SY. You know, SY as in … South Yorkshire. He had been a youth spin bowler in cricket, but had been kicked out of three different clubs for foul language and spitting on the pitch, and had honed his baseball pitchcraft in a couple of years at Pepperdine. He was certainly *a character*. But he would probably be gone after the first dozen picks.