[Westheim]

2049 DRAFT POOL ANALYSIS

It was your great-grandpa’s draft pool, with which I mean there were about as many catchers as pitchers on there that were worth picking up, and the number of catchers wasn’t that outrageous to begin with. We had a 113-strong shortlist, but of those only 33 were pitchers, including two two-way players, and we’d lose a few words about one of them in a second. But first let’s take a gander at the hotlist of the best young talent available in a couple of weeks, lovingly curated by Pat Degenhardt. I’m kidding, he’s not much of a people person, he just enjoys the thick paycheck he gets for doing things the way I want them.

Players shown with projected stuff/movement/control slash contact/power/eye and their BNN rank if in the top 10; * denotes high school players:

SP Josh Wilson (12/14/12)
SP Josh Mayo (11/10/10) *
SP Bill Lawrence (10/13/15) – BNN #3
SP Ben Karst (12/16/11) * - BNN #8

2B/SS Adam DeRosia (13/14/14) *
1B Travis Parker (7/18/13) *
1B/RF/LF Willie Jenkins (8/18/16)

OF/1B Phil Steinbacher (12/10/12) – BNN #10
OF Brandon Fellows (10/14/13) – BNN #9

Not much else to see here; and this does not even include Mr. Two-Way. With the Raccoons not getting a pick before #34, it might be a safe assumption that we won’t get any of these.

But we might get Jeff Kelly. He’s an 18-year-old Minnesotan, batting and throwing right-handed, and moonlighting as a catcher, third baseman, and pitcher, which projects exactly the sort of player profile the Raccoons are looking for now that everything’s going into the toilet. He had catcher’s speed, but was solid for both contact and power and rated 11/9/7 potential overall in the hitting regard. He obviously had a strong arm, but was also just nimble enough to hold down that hot corner competently. Weirdly, he had a hard time working with pitchers – or with catchers when pitching himself. On the mound he had a 88mph cutter that was what last-round picks were made out of, but a sweet curve that actually made the whole package worthwhile. He wasn’t worth it in any one aspect – but the whole prospect of a real Swiss army knife kinda player had me intrigued.

And those two first basemen with the outrageous power potential and certain contact-making challenges? These were Degenhardt’s ratings, but OSA was more or less agreeing with him, with the caveat of giving them both an additional point in contact and one or two less in power and/or eye.

Deeper down there were some other interesting fringe cases, f.e. a right-handed starting pitcher with a solid-enough profile going by the name of Nick Lillard. I don’t know where he’s supposed to go if not Portland…! Everybody in the Rose City still remembers Dorian Lillard, chief enforcer and skull collector of the Portland Chainsaws blood hockey team!