Innholdsfortegnelse for Monday, July 4 2017 i Baseball America

JULY 4, 2005 IN THIS ISSUE: Arizona takes Justin Upton No. 1 overall. ALSO: Justin Smoak and Reese Havens have to choose between college and pro ball. The Diamondbacks kicked off the 2005 draft with Justin Upton, then a high school shortstop in Virginia, which began the first round of one of the most loaded drafts in recent memory. The clock high on the gym wall ticks toward 1 p.m., when the first name of the 2005 draft will be announced. Since he was 14, most people have expected that to be Justin Upton’s. The culmination of three years of anticipation is palpable in the hallways of Great Bridge High, yet less than an hour before the audio from the draft conference call comes crackling through the speakers of the…

Baseball Writer, ESPN.com jerrycrasnick@baseballamerica.com The Giants’ clubhouse has been a bastion of stability during the team’s run of three World Series victories and six first- or secondplace finishes in the National League West since 2009. Catcher Buster Posey, the face of the franchise, has grown accustomed to looking around and seeing Brandon Crawford, Brandon Belt, Madison Bumgarner and Hunter Pence in the immediate vicinity. Each summer, Posey and the other Giants mainstays have taken comfort in the knowledge that management would do everything in its power at the trade deadline to upgrade the team’s chances of contending. It’s been a long time since “buy, sell or hold’’ was a topic of debate on chat boards and Bay Area sports talk radio. The harsh reality of pending change is reflected in…

NO. 1 LEWIS AMONG SIGNED DRAFT PICKS Several top draft picks had reached agreements as of press time, including No. 1 overall pick Royce Lewis. The shortstop received a reported $6,725,000 from the Twins. That’s the highest bonus received by a high school player since the bonuspool system began in 2012. Lewis’ bonus still came in below the $7,770,700 slot value assigned to the top pick. In addition to Lewis, three other top 10 picks had signed. Vanderbilt righthander Kyle Wright, taken No. 5 overall by the Braves, signed for a reported $7 million, compared to a slot value of $5,707,300. High school outfielder Austin Beck, the No. 6 overall pick, received a slot bonus of $5,303,000 from the Athletics. The Angels signed high school outfielder Jordon Adell, the 10th…

Infamously, not a single high school righthander has been selected No. 1 overall in 53 years of draft history. Not many have come off the board second, either. Five high school righthanders were drafted second overall during the first 13 drafts—and that list includes Cy Young Award challenger J.R. Richard and 162-game winner Bill Gullickson—but just four have been drafted that high in the past 40 drafts. Yet when the Twins drafted Hunter Greene No. 2 overall this year, he became the third prep righthander to go second overall in the past eight drafts. That used to be rare. Not a single high school righty was selected second overall in the 2000s. Only one was selected that high in the 1990s. Not one was selected that high in the 1980s.…

Dave Dombrowski isn’t afraid to trade prospects. He proved that over 14 years as general manager of the Tigers and has reaffirmed that reputation with the Red Sox since 2015. No matter how lofty the expectations, minor league prospects in Dombrowski’s farm system can expect to hear their names in trade rumors. When the Tigers needed an ace in 2014, Dombrowski pried lefthander David Price from the Rays for lefty Drew Smyly and teenaged shortstop prospect Willy Adames. Then last offseason, with the Boston rotation seeking a No. 1 starter, Dombrowski submitted the top bid for White Sox lefty Chris Sale. That package was fronted by the reigning Minor League Player of the Year, Yoan Moncada, as well as righty Michael Kopech, outfielder Luis Alexander Basabe and righty reliever Victor…

SHORTSTOPS Ronny Mauricio, Dominican Republic: Tall and skinny, Mauricio has a frame that screams projection with a good chance to stick at shortstop, even though he’s not much of a runner. Scouts highest on him like his smooth swing from both sides and chance to hit for power. The Mets are linked to Mauricio. Danny Diaz, Venezuela: At 6-foot-3, 200 pounds, Diaz should slide over to third base quickly, but he’s one of the best offensive threats in the class for his combination of hitting ability and power from the right side. The Red Sox are linked to Diaz. Ronny Rojas, Dominican Republic: Rojas is one of the best hitters in the class, performing well in games with a sound righthanded swing and the ability to hit line drives to…

Stanford reached into its backyard— and past—to replace Mark Marquess. The Cardinal hired Stanford alum Dave Esquer away from California to replace the retired Marquess, who served as a mentor to Esquer. Esquer, 52, began his college career as a walk-on for the Stanford and eventually became the starting shortstop for the 1987 national championship squad. He has coached at Cal the past 18 years, leading the Golden Bears to five NCAA regional appearances, most recently in 2015. In 2011, Esquer led the Bears to their first College World Series appearance since 1992. That postseason run was especially timely in light of the university’s decision to cut baseball because of budget concerns before reversing course in April 2011. Debt problems currently cast a significant cloud over Cal’s athletic programs. “I…

Columnist, MLB.com The draft came to its conclusion on June 14 with the selections in the final 30 rounds of what is now a 40-round process every spring. Some 1,215 were chosen by the 30 clubs, but the work of the amateur scouts isn’t over. Now comes the real challenge. Now they start checking out the college summer leagues, looking for players who will emerge as coveted selections next June. Along the way, they will come across a few chunks of coal with diamond potential, players who went undrafted but are eligible to sign. It was in the summer of 1971 that the Cubs came across a righthander who had been a 21st-round draft pick of the Washington Senators one year earlier out of high school but had opted to…

Twice before, in 2014 and 2015, the lefthander with the head-turning windup led his Whiteville High team to the North Carolina 1A state championship. That lefthander, MacKenzie Gore, won the MVP award on both occasions. After a 9-8 victory against Murphy High this spring, Whiteville again won the state championship. Yet again, Gore led the way and was on the verge of becoming the first three-time championship MVP in state history. Only he didn’t want it. Throughout the tournament, Gore, the only senior on the Whiteville team, had received all the attention. “There were articles before the eastern regionals and state championship,” Gore said, “and it wasn’t, ‘The team we were playing to take on Whiteville.’ It was, ‘The team we were playing to take on Gore.’ ” So before…

It’s impossible nowadays to imagine watching a Major League Baseball game on TV without the center-field camera. The camera lets fans truly see and understand the battle between the batter and the pitcher and catcher. It’s the view that is on screen more than any other throughout the game. And for nearly the first decade of TV broadcasts, it was absent. Newsreel cameramen set up their cameras behind home plate or up one of the two foul lines, and early TV broadcasts followed the same pattern. Even after broadcasters began putting a camera in center field looking at the plate, they used it very sparingly, almost apologetically, while sticking with a behind-the-plate view for the majority of the game. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that broadcasters figured out their broadcasts…

Teams are constantly on the lookout for projectable pitchers who, while they might not exhibit overpowering fastballs now, could develop into major league-caliber arms. In this piece, Baseball America attempts to identify the most projectable pitchers from this year’s draft. A scout told Connor Glassey for his “Scouts on Scouting” story from 2010 that projectability is partially an eye test. “We’re looking for tall, lean—I’m not going to say skinny kids, but nonmature kids—who three or four years down the road, they’re going to get in the weight room to where you can project that they are going to throw harder,” the scout said. Perhaps no better example of playing the projection game is Brewers lefthander Josh Hader. Drafted by the Orioles out of high school in the 19th round…

JUMPING RIGHT TO NO. 1 Which draftees will be their team’s No. 1 prospect? ROGER MUNTER, @ROG61 Probably fewer than you would expect. It’s actually much harder to become a team’s No. 1 prospect in one’s first pro year than it is to crack the Top 100 Prospects. In each of the past three drafts, 13 players from the draft class have ended up on the first Top 100 Prospects list for which they were eligible. But over those three years combined, just nine draftees ranked No. 1 in their farm system that first year. To be a team’s No. 1 prospect has as much to do with the current depth of the farm system as it does how well regarded the draftee is. The majority of players who entered…

Editor in Chief Baseball America johnmanuel@baseballamerica.com Major League Baseball, as recently as 1997, kept draft information secret. In fact, when MLB decided in 1998 to make the 50 rounds of the draft public for the first time (after Baseball America planned to make the list available for a fee), we celebrated with a headline announcing the decision: Baseball America Liberates Draft Information. That same year, 1998, was my first trip to Omaha for the College World Series. That was the last year of the “gorilla ball” era, when bats could be lighter and springier than they are now, and offense was out of control. Nothing illustrated that more than the 21-14 championshipgame victory by Southern California over Arizona State that year. It also was the last year of the 48-team…

With a .3-ounce sensor attached to the end of a bat, Blast Motion Baseball’s 360 “hitting solution” uses an algorithm to track swing data from youth baseball to the major leagues and displays the results. The most recent release of the Blast product— also the official bat sensor of Major League Baseball—has expanded its baseline metrics beyond swing speed, time to contact, swing direction and power to include vertical bat angle, body rotation scores and swing plane data, a new metric for the industry that Blast Baseball manager Justin Goltz says came from dissecting information from top-level players. “It stuck out after collecting data and understanding the swing more and more to see what data is important and what is not,” he said. “Top-level players maintain their swing plane 69…

The 2017 international class is deep in talent this year. In Venezuela, the best prospect is Daniel Flores. A 16-year-old switch-hitter, Flores is a strong, physical player (6-foot-1, 190 pounds) who draws superlative reviews for his outstanding defensive skills and at times has shown high-level offensive performance. It doesn’t take long watching Flores, who trains with Jose Salas and was expected to sign with the Red Sox, to realize what scouts love about him. “He’s the best defensive catcher I’ve ever seen at that age,” said one international director. He’s not alone. Scouts who loathe hyperbolic, sensationalized reports heap enormous praise on Flores’ skill behind the plate. “Defensively,” said a second scout, “the stuff he was doing behind the plate with his receiving, exchange, footwork, pop times—I’ve never seen that…

Columnist, MLB Network petergammons@baseballamerica.com We understand the importance of the draft. Bryce Harper, Kris Bryant, Mike Trout, Clayton Kershaw, Mookie Betts, Buster Posey and others were draft choices who altered their franchises. But Miguel Sano is changing the Twins, as Miguel Cabrera changed the Marlins. They were classic examples of great international scouting. Corey Kluber was obtained by the Indians in a three-team deal while he was at Double-A. The Cubs found Jake Arrieta and Kyle Hendricks under minor league rocks. The Rangers signed Yu Darvish out of Japan, while the Mariners signed Felix Hernandez as a teenager out of Venezuela. Those are examples that prove that it takes more than the draft to win. “Building a championship team,” Indians president Chris Antonetti said, “is based around scouts and everyone…