[Westheim]

2070 AMATEUR DRAFT

I still wasn’t done fawning over the pitching-rich draft pool when I arrived in New York on Sunday morning. Oscar Semchez did his best to dampen my expectations about drafting an entire rotation of All Stars, but I don’t think he was that successful with that.

So Sunday morning was spent trying to convince the other GM’s that out of the goodness of their own heart and as an act of charity – the Raccoons clearly needed the help – they should leave all of our hot list to us, but I don’t think they were that convinced to let us have more than one or two from that list, and two only if we were lucky (we were guaranteed one with the #13 pick). So there again was the annual hotlist (*high school players):

SP Nick Dry (14/13/13) – BNN #4
SP Jamie Dutton (13/14/11) – BNN #10
SP Ryan Neville (12/15/10) * – BNN #7
SP Eric Feeback (11/15/15) *
SP Dan Miceli (11/13/12)
SP Jalen McCorkle (13/12/13)
SP Ruben Cabrera (12/13/11) – BNN #9
SP Cameron Cofield (12/13/14) – BNN #3

CL David Griffin (17/13/9)
CL Dan McPartland (17/14/8) *

C/1B Marty Weaver (11/12/7) * – BNN #5

INF Chris Sandidge (13/12/13) * – BNN #6
3B/LF/1B Jason Hill (10/10/12)
1B Matt King (13/2/11) *

OF Brian Johnson (11/10/11)
OF Danny Stokes (12/9/14) *

As a reminder, the Raccoons came with their own #13 pick in the first round, two supplemental round picks, and two second-round picks, including the worst compensation pick of the year for the loss of Joel Starr.

The Buffaloes had the first pick in the draft and went for a starting pitcher… that wasn’t even on the hotlist. Andy Knight was the #1 pick of the year, and as I told you, there had been half a dozen more pitching guys that would have made the hotlist in a less-loaded year for arms, so this wasn’t even a huge upset. Teams then went where it hurt, and L.A. drafted Jamie Dutton at #2 and Denver took Nick Dry at #3. Sacramento followed with outfielder Billy Reading and the Rebs with SP Ken Pesola, also not on the hotlist for the same reasons as Knight, to complete the top 5. The Bayhawks then took Chris Sandidge at #6, the Condors followed that with Marty Weaver, but the top 10 were then completed with non-hotlist players, and only one of them was even a pitcher.

The Knights took away Romanian-American Dan Miceli at #11 – he had been the guy we were probably expecting to land at our top pick – but the remainder of the hotlist remained available. The only hotlist position player that might have tempted me over a pitcher with the #13 pick had been Sandidge, but he was gone. The five remaining starting pitchers on the list (Neville, Feeback, McCorkle, Cabrera, Cofield) were all right-handed, so there was nothing to differentiate them there. Cofield had the least diverse arsenal among them with two-and-a-half pitches, so we passed on him and had to pick one of the other four, and it was a *really* hard pick, because OSA was no real help in getting a second opinion either. They were also delighted about all of them. It was a REALLY tough choice in the end between the boy scout Neville and the unanimous (between OSA and Semchez) best stuff option in McCorkle, and we ended up choosing violence with the latter.

Right away, the Rebs then jumped on Cofield at #14, and the Titans took Cabrera with the #15 pick, and outfielder Danny Stokes went to Salem with the next pick after that. The Rebs had ANOTHER pick at #17 and chose closer David Griffin, and the Blue Sox got Neville at #18. The Titans got another one at #21, taking infielder Jason Hill, the Indians got Feeback at #23, and Cincy snatched outfielder Brian Johnson to end the first round proper. After a promising start, only 1B Matt King and the infielder/closer Dan McPartland remained on the hotlist.

Both of them remained and we were tempted to roll the dice on McPartland with their first supplemental-round pick, but Semchez advised that few teams were considering him a pitcher and he was probably safe to let him slide a few more spots and grab one of the remaining not-quite-hotlist starters while they were still around, so that’s how we ended up with the rarest of treasures – a pitcher from Rhode Island, Billy Ruben. McPartland indeed hung around for our second pick in the consolation round, so he was taken there. We then found still another pitcher to draft over Matt King, who, remember, didn’t have much power at all while wanting to play first base, so there was that. King was then finally *it* at #70, the Joel Starr pick, at which point you were asking yourself why he was still around, but he was our first actual position player pick of the draft.

Despite the wealth of pitchers that we shortlist, they were gone from the shortlist before the ninth round was over, with the exception of another one of those “infielder but what if?” candidates that we didn’t end up drafting.

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2070 PORTLAND RACCOONS DRAFT CLASS

Round 1 (#13) – SP Jalen McCorkle, 20, from Pasadena, TX – right-hander throws 96 with a great splitter and promising slider, plus a curve as fourth option. No obvious weaknesses in the command or fireworks departments, and we have it on good authority that he’s never failed to complete a homework assignment in 14 years of schooling.
Supp. Round (#32) – SP Billy Ruben, 18, from North Kingstown, RI – unassuming looking right-hander with a nifty changeup and forkball; definitely more of a corner nibbler, but he was getting groundballs galore with it.
Supp. Round (#44) – CL (INF) Dan McPartland, 18, from Southlake, TX – unimpressive infielder, but we’re convinced we can turn him into a great right-handed reliever with a 93mph heater and a wicked curveball.
Round 2 (#61) – SP Steve Lawson, 20, from Baltimore, MD – left-hander with three-and-a-half pitches, some of which were a bit too much on the plate, but he really had a knack for picking corners and getting grounders.
Round 2 (#70) – 1B Matt King, 18, from Mission, TX – odd skill set for a first baseman, as he is more of a contact and on-base kind of guy, with little in terms of power; some speed, but not enough to make a living from it.
Round 3 (#85) – 1B/C Bobby Walker, 19, from Raleigh, NC – can play both behind the dish and at first, and brings quite a bit of home run power, at the cost of prolific strikeout totals.
Round 4 (#109) – SP Jesse Ruggles, 18, from Rochester, MI – short and lean and thus lacking oomph on the frame, but he has a devious curveball; unsure how far he can make it with only that arsenal, but he’s a left-hander, and there’s always jobs for left-handers.
Round 5 (#133) – RF/LF David Wier, 19, from Forestville, OH – corner outfielder with limited range and speed, but some power potential; OSA hates him, which is why we didn’t pick him higher up.
Round 6 (#157) – SS/2B Joe Caldwell, 21, from New Bedford, MA – blueprint of the light-hitting shortstop, but there was Gold Glove potential and a stolen base title in the cards if he could ever figure out how to get on base
Round 7 (#181) – SP Dave Nunez, 18, from San Juan, Puerto Rico – right-hander with a good slider and 87mph lukewarm fastball; no real third pitch to talk about.
Round 8 (#205) – SS Skylar DiMaio, 18, from New York, NY – another slick-fielding, singles-poking, no-power shortstop, but this one didn’t really have the legs for stealing bases; switch-hitter, though.
Round 9 (#229) – CL Scott Stepp, 20, from Pensacola, FL – right-hander with a good slider, but some interesting control issues
Round 10 (#253) – INF Wayne Cartwright, 18, from Pleasant Grove, UT – another glove-first infielder with a thundering throwing arm and at least a good amount of speed to try and make up for offensive shortcomings
Round 11 (#277) – SP Logan Kerschen, 18, from Angola, IN – default left-hander selected in the 11th round, as was good customs around here; the kid had two-and-a-half pitches and nothing that really made him stand out, even the fireworks off his 86mph “fastball” being kinda lame
Round 12 (#301) – RF/LF Phil Christensen, 18, from Candler-McAfee, GA – sluggish corner outfielder, which shouldn’t be confused with “slugging”, who dropped pretty far in the draft for having a good eye and at least some power
Round 13 (#325) – C Michael Kasper, 21, from the Bronx, NY – last guy on the shortlist, which … is that something?

All picks were assigned to Aumsville.

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Of course removals were inevitable, and here will be a few of the young players that had to leave the organization after this draft haul:

For pitchers, while AAA was littered with failures, none of them had to go right now (partly because we didn’t want to deplete the scraps we had left for a budget with dismissals of guys drawing a minimum contract right now…), and instead the lower minors were purged of pitchers John Knox (2068, 3rd round), who was a peculiarly quick release for somebody drafted so high up, but he had just turned 25 and he had ZERO clue where his pitches were going at this stage; also Steve Leopold (2065, 4th round), Chad Rayman (2067, 7th round and another position player conversion), Tom Roane (2064, 11th round), Russell Dares (2069, 13th round), and a few more that walked in through scouting invitations or were signed in the dark winter off other teams’ discards.

On the position player side we parted with 1B Jeff Hensley (2065, 2nd round), who had reached AAA, but had zero success there, LF/1B Zach Clemens (2066, 10th round), INF Scott Duck (2067, 10th round), 2B/SS Jamie Schwartz (2069, 12th round), INF Alex Mercedes (2066 IFA, $44k), LF/RF Josh Koths (2066, 13th round), and the odd other walk-on.