View Single Post
Old 05-28-2016, 05:05 PM   #1864
Westheim
Hall Of Famer
 
Westheim's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Germany
Posts: 11,806
2012 AMATEUR DRAFT

As always when your team won’t have a pick higher than #18, the draft generated about as much excitement as “Pizza for dinner? Why not, I haven’t had pizza since Monday.” –

We’d like to have a new pitching prospect to worry about, but if the competition would pick the field thin by #18 I really had no clue what we would select then. I wasn’t into a short-stamina starting pitcher at all, and all our 2-pitch experiments (like recent first rounder Dan Moon) really weren’t working out all that well.

The first two selections in the draft were pitchers, with the Gold Sox selecting SP Randy Prater, while the Condors took SP Troy McCaskill. The Wolves took RF/LF Nate Ellis with the #3 pick. The top 5 were completed by the Falcons taking OF Erik Pearcy (quite low on our list), and #5 was SP Josh Laraby to the Buffaloes. The #1 pick, Prater, was one of those cases with excellent stuff and really low stamina (Calderón had him with 5 stamina, which was less than what Antonio Donis had when he debuted and struggled) that we tried to stay away from if at all possible.

My secret favorite, SP John Blankenship, was picked at #11 by the Bayhawks. After that, Brian Leser moved up into the top pitcher role on our list, and when he was picked by the Knights at #16, we were pretty much down to Kyle Williams and Jeff Magnotta. Calderón liked the latter much better, and there was also a medical record on Williams, with some issues here and there, which made the decision between those two rather easy. Magnotta became a Coon, and Kyle Williams was picked up by the Gold Sox with the #25 pick.

As a testament to the lopsidedness of the draft class, the first round consisted entirely of starting pitchers and outfielders, with the exception of 1B Randy Muse, picked at #15 by the Wolves. The next infielder, 3B Luis Baca, was taken at #26, also by the Wolves, and no actual catcher was taken until #47, when the Capitals selected Paul March, one of two proper catchers on our shortlist. Greg Elliott, the clumsy guy with the catcher’s gear, was taken before that, but he didn’t really actually count…

The Hotlist was emptied long before the Raccoons were up to pick again; in fact, the Hotlist was empty by the time Calderón and I returned from dinner, between picks #53 (the Wolves taking SP Brett Dill, who had only two pitches and thus had not been on the Hotlist) and #54 (again the Wolves taking 1B Justin Anderson).

The shortlist (that was not really hot and not really short, either) was largely empty by the time we hit the sixth round. There was one of those 2-pitch pitchers left on there, but Calderón steered me to a left-hander with three pitchers that initially hadn’t been listed, but could perhaps theoretically become hammered into the shape of a major leaguer.

2012 PORTLAND RACCOONS DRAFT CLASS

Round 1 (#18) – SP Jeff Magnotta, 19, from Southbury, CT – right-hander with high control potential to spot his 91mph fastball where he needs it, accompanied by a treacherous changeup and a swooping splitter.
Round 2 (#68) – LF/RF Wes McPoland, 20, from Haverhill, MA – has power to all fields and all depths, but he really swings at everything whether it’s at his feet or not…
Round 3 (#92) – INF/RF Bobby Burke, 19, from North Brunswick Township, NJ – might read “INF” but he is really a third baseman, not quite agile enough to play up the middle; his arm is definitely true, but he also likes to hack at everything in his general direction.
Round 4 (#116) – SP Damani Knight, 20, from Wolcott, CT – right-hander with a 90mph heater and an assortment of curve, slider, and changeup, the latter clearly the most promising, but the fastball comes dead straight…
Round 5 (#140) – 2B Bryan Bingham, 18, from Roanoke, VA – think Yoshi Nomura, in the general blueprint; contact bat with a good eye, no nasty hacks, but also no power and no speed, but of course if we were about as enthusiastic about him as we had been about Yoshi, we would have taken him 122 picks earlier. But the general idea is Yoshi #2?
Round 6 (#164) – SP Matt Picard, 21, from Springfield, MO – southpaw with three pitches, throws only 89mph, and that’s a rather straight 89mph, too…
Round 7 (#188) – SP Blake Kelly, 18, from Queens, NY – has only two pitches, although those two pitches are a moving 92mph fastball and a well-sliding slider.
Round 8 (#212) – INF Ryan Schwaiger, 19, from Port Orchard, WA – hits like a shortstop, doesn’t quite field like one
Round 9 (#236) – LF/RF/1B Chris Thomson, 21, from Wausau, WI – hits a bit for contact, but not really for power, and also doesn’t field well, or run well, but … but he looked so sad and we took him anyway. It’s the Three-Legged-Puppy Effect.
Round 10 (#260) – SS/2B Dallas Lemley, 18, from Pine Island Center, FL – definitely not a shortstop! Lemley might have to find a home at second base, although it’s tough to find a home for someone with limited range, no arm to speak of, and no power; we mainly took him because of the slight promise in his contact abilities.
Round 11 (#284) – C Bryan Gibson, 18, from Fort Hood, TX – no catching abilities whatsoever, Gibson will be the second position player named Gibson we take in the draft and convert to a pitcher (the other of course being Josh Gibson); there is *some* promise in terms of a curveball…
Round 12 (#308) – SP Ryan Martinez, 19, from East Greenbush, NY – not much in terms of anything; he claims to throw five pitches, but I’m not so sure…

All draft picks were assigned to single-A Aumsville, while we also did some widespread purging in the minors with one or two prominent casualties, as we released in order of dubious prominence:

AA LF/RF Pete Schipper, 25 – sometimes 15 minutes of fame are really 15 minutes of fame, and his .783 OPS in 79 AB for the ’09 Coons were really the best hitting he ever did anywhere for any length of time, but he achieved more than most last-rounders…
AAA LF Jerry Saenz, 27 – he’s batting .207/.264/.293 in AAA and he’s bemoaning that he’s not on the big club. Good luck with that … elsewhere.
AA OF William Quinn, 23 – 2009 third-rounder, no hitting ability whatsoever!
AA SP Chad Royston, 24 – 2008 fifth-rounder, eaten up by injuries, completely broken…
AA 1B Jonathan Marsh, 22 – had a .622 OPS in Ham Lake in ’10, a .675 OPS in ’11, and now regressed to .588; add to that the fact that he’s defensive dynamite…
AA INF Marcos Montez, 23 – was at one point (few years back) in the discussion of the second baseman of the future, but he has never hit at any level in any season since being dragged out of the jungle by Vince Guerra in ’05.

Also gone and probably never mentioned before: AA MR Roberto Jimenez, a scouting discovery by Whitebread; AA MR Roberto Ramirez, a scouting discovery by Vince Guerra (so it’s been a few years!), who was in his fifth AA season; A MR Ford Pilger, our 2010 eighth-rounder; A MR’s Jordan Manzano and Henry Mendoza, more discoveries by Whitebread; A MR Ethan Reynolds, our 2010 eleventh-rounder; A C Manny Melendez, who must have gotten in through an open window…; A 2B Danny Plascencia, our 2010 last-rounder; A OF Ruben Calvo, who was dragged in by a cat, I swear!; A OF Dustin Rotter, a trash can signing from last winter; A OF/2B/3B Johnny Terrazas, another meal money thief brought home from vacation by Whitebread; furthermore another half dozen players were thrown out of the international complex because there was just no hope whatsoever, mainly 19-year olds, before they could clutter up the professional system even more;

… and after this purge of Stalinist proportions, we still have an overhang of about half a dozen players in Aumsville, which I can’t select between, mainly infielders. Maybe it’s because they are ALL bad, and worse yet, equally bad!

One player that had already packed his **** in Aumsville and then was recalled at the last minute as he was already in the line of applicants for a job at the production line at Frank’s Fish Stick Factory, is 2011 eleventh-rounder Rick Conley. He has allowed 10 runs in 12 innings since being drafted, his control is a hot mess, but something about his makeup says that not all is lost. It might just be that I have a soft spot for 11th-round southpaws, but … eh…

When I was out of ideas in round 6, the scouting director recommendation was actually Picard. The Star Trek nerd that I am, I couldn’t pass on him then… And that 2-pitch guy that was the last pitcher on the shortlist when we then took Picard? That’s Kelly in round 7. So no damage by my nerdism here. I hope.
__________________
Portland Raccoons, 83 years of excell-.... of baseball: Furballs here!
1983 * 1989 * 1991 * 1992 * 1993 * 1995 * 1996 * 2010 * 2017 * 2018 * 2019 * 2026 * 2028 * 2035 * 2037 * 2044 * 2045 * 2046 * 2047 * 2048 * 2051 * 2054 * 2055
1 OSANAI : 2 POWELL : 7 NOMURA | RAMOS : 8 REECE : 10 BROWN : 15 HALL : 27 FERNANDEZ : 28 CASAS : 31 CARMONA : 32 WEST : 39 TONER : 46 SAITO

Resident Mets Cynic - The Mets from 1962 onwards, here.
Westheim is offline   Reply With Quote