Article: 2023 MLB Draft Day 3 Thread

[Fear The Chorizo]

11 minutes ago, Mass Haas said:

 

Do MLB teams still incentivize high school draftees to pay for their college education after the fact if they do sign?  Not that it would appear to matter to Mr. Letson, as I kind of doubt he has a plan to earn a degree in 3 years, lol.

[Fear The Chorizo]

2 hours ago, duewizard said:

No way we sign these guys

Not all of them - but it wouldn't surprise me to see more than half of them sign...there are more prep arms that go off to college and wind up going undrafted 3 years later than those who dramatically improve their draft stock.  In these rounds all it takes is 1 unlikely signing turning into a quality prospect to make the risk worth the reward.

Guessing the Brewers opted to load up on these guys in hopes they get some of them signed rather than using picks on guys they could wind up signing as UFAs anyway

[HarryDoyle]

[brewcrewdue80]

2 hours ago, Madhawk23 said:

Curious to know what the strategy is here - taking all of these HS guys in the later rounds?  Does our FO think that they can sign a few of these guys?  Otherwise, I'm not sure why you would take so many HS guys in rounds 10-20.  Or, are we just OK if they end up sticking with their college commitments and we lose out on the picks?  

This should be your strategy. Draft guys who are likelier to make the Majors than guys who you can sign but ceiling out as AAA filler. Don't sign? No worries. Kept other teams from drafting and possibly signing.

Didn't they increase pay for players in the minors? Still getting 150k and what's paid to you now may sway one starting their pro path quicker to the bigs. 

This can be the new way risking more ML draft with volume coming from international signings. 

I also like the protection idea on Pratt not signing. They find one or multiples who take what Pratt didn't that was saved up for.

[JefferyLeonard]

Does anyone know why Cal Fisher from Deerfield wasn't selected in a 20 round draft? Many had him as the top player in the State and he was #150 on MLB.com's list of top 250 prospects. Just seems really odd to me. 

[duewizard]

9 minutes ago, JefferyLeonard said:

Does anyone know why Cal Fisher from Deerfield wasn't selected in a 20 round draft? Many had him as the top player in the State and he was #150 on MLB.com's list of top 250 prospects. Just seems really odd to me. 

Probably deemed unsignable after the first few rounds

[Ro Mueller]

On 15th rounder INF Josh Adamsczewski:

https://www.nwitimes.com/sports/high-school/baseball/player-of-the-year-nwi-preps-baseball-lake-central-josh-adamczewski-ihsaa/article_f2dea03e-16bc-11ee-b3bf-676850db016b.html

[ClosetBrewerFan]

Some of the late round HS picks may not take that much to sign.  As a reminder, Brewers can sign players beyond round 10 for $150k without impacting the bonus pool.  Pablo Garabitos signed out of high school in 2018 for the max without impacting the pool.

Even still, it will be mighty impressive if the front office can sign both Bitonti and Pratt. Its likely going to take over $1M to sign Bitonti and nearly $2M for Pratt (I'm using their pre-draft ranking and the slot value for them).  That means they will need to free up at least $1.9M to go overslot.  They can spend up to 5% of their draft pool without losing a draft pick (at a cost of 75% of the overage).  So this will be $550k of the $1.9M.  Therefore, its going to take some hard negotiations on those College pitchers to free up the money required.  Picks 4 and 7-10 may be getting the minimum bonus.

[Ro Mueller]

Video and info on 14th round RHP Hayden Robinson, who’s committed to Nicholls State: 

 

[Ro Mueller]

I assume this is 20th round LHP Justin Chambers (a Washington State commit) building up strength after TJ surgery, but I’m just guessing all of this based on two Twitter posts: 

 

[JefferyLeonard]

34 minutes ago, duewizard said:

Probably deemed unsignable after the first few rounds

Possibly but I was under the impression by talking to someone that knows his dad, that if the $$ was right they would have signed. I mean un signable guys are drafted all the time, if they go to college, well they go to college, but they still get drafted. 

[Ro Mueller]

On 13th round RHP Brett Wichrowski of Bryant University, one tweet claimed his fastball was 89-91 (topping at 93), while this one claims his fastball was 93-96: 

 

[Ro Mueller]

On 16th round RHP Josh Timmerman, who struggled in limited action this year at Ohio State, but did quite well in the Cape Cod League: https://brewsterwhitecaps.org/immaculate-dominant-or-elite-whatever-you-want-to-call-it-josh-timmerman-has-dazzled-for-the-whitecaps-and-his-journey-is-a-story-in-the-making/

[CheeseheadInQC]

4 hours ago, BrewCrew8675309 said:

So are we expecting every DSL and AFL position player to be in Carolina next year because we have not exactly loaded up on Cs, 2Bs and OFs in this draft.

The five position players on the ACL team team most likely to get promoted include two catchers, a second baseman, a shortstop and a third baseman. They'll have enough behind the plate and infield between those guys, the holdovers and the top two prep infielders. They should be fine there. Coming into the draft, I was actively rooting for no college middle infielders after the first couple of rounds simply because there were less opportunities for playing time there for non-top prospects.

The outfield on the other hand ... outside of Mercado, who probably already should be in full season ball by age and performance, most of the ACL outfielders are getting either minimal playing time or flat out struggling to consistently put the bat on the ball.

Yophery Rodriguez could skip the ACL, but it wouldn't shock me if an infielder like Jhonny Severino gets moved to the outfield along with a few holdovers just to get all the best prospects in the lineup.

The place where they needed depth for Carolina was the pitching staff. Carolina has more pitchers in line for promotion than hitters right now, and the ACL pitching staff doesn't have many standouts. The pitching heavy draft makes sense logistically, even if I doubt many of the Day 3 prep hurlers sign.

[Harold Hutchison]

I have to admit, I'm not a fan of drafting players the team can't sign.

Pratt is giving me visions of drafting Nomar and not closing the deal. Who could have been signed with that $$? Ditto with the prep arms in the latter sections, unless they're going all in for the quality.

[CheeseheadInQC]

1 hour ago, clancyphile said:

I have to admit, I'm not a fan of drafting players the team can't sign.

Pratt is giving me visions of drafting Nomar and not closing the deal. Who could have been signed with that $$? Ditto with the prep arms in the latter sections, unless they're going all in for the quality.

The Brewers haven't missed signing anyone in the first 10 rounds under the current system. I doubt it starts this year. I'd prefer they draft a few more signable players on day 3 than they did this year (presumably, who knows, maybe they sign more than I expect), but the fact is, under Manfred's the best thing for baseball is less baseball regime, the number of rookie league jobs that have been cut is more than the number of rounds cut at a time when the Brewers are graduating more players from the DSL than they ever have. Signing all 20 isn't that big of a deal.

[brewmann04]

I don't think you see a lot of day 3 players signing

[Jim Goulart]

Does the fact that the 20th round HS southpaw replied here indicate he's signing?

 

[Jim Goulart]

Yeah, the Brewers 17th round pick is basically telling Sooner Nation not to worry with this tweet tonight:

 

[BrewerFan]

11 hours ago, Mass Haas said:

 

"Considered relatively signable."

I don't even know what that means. Why does a kid drop to the 11th round if he's signable? Anyway...I like it. I like all prep arms later on(or early for that matter).

[BrewCrew8675309]

8 minutes ago, CheeseheadInQC said:

The five position players on the ACL team team most likely to get promoted include two catchers, a second baseman, a shortstop and a third baseman. They'll have enough behind the plate and infield between those guys, the holdovers and the top two prep infielders. They should be fine there. Coming into the draft, I was actively rooting for no college middle infielders after the first couple of rounds simply because there were less opportunities for playing time there for non-top prospects.

The outfield on the other hand ... outside of Mercado, who probably already should be in full season ball by age and performance, most of the ACL outfielders are getting either minimal playing time or flat out struggling to consistently put the bat on the ball.

Yophery Rodriguez could skip the ACL, but it wouldn't shock me if an infielder like Jhonny Severino gets moved to the outfield along with a few holdovers just to get all the best prospects in the lineup.

The place where they needed depth for Carolina was the pitching staff. Carolina has more pitchers in line for promotion than hitters right now, and the ACL pitching staff doesn't have many standouts. The pitching heavy draft makes sense logistically, even if I doubt many of the Day 3 prep hurlers sign.

Outside of Lara, no Mudcat OF should be making travel plans. This might be the way. Briceno and 19-20 year old holdovers in LCastillo, Perez, and HMendez will probably be manning the OF with Avina and Fernandez.

[madbad2000]

3 hours ago, BrewerFan said:

"Considered relatively signable."

I don't even know what that means. Why does a kid drop to the 11th round if he's signable? Anyway...I like it. I like all prep arms later on(or early for that matter).

While there is no hard and fast rule for language usage in these situations, I would probably consider something like Relatively Signable to mean that the player places a dollar value on their talent and the team just needs to hit it.  Their preference is to sign, under this one condition.  There are players out there that place a higher value on their talent/college situation, such as mid-first round or first round value.  That makes them relatively unsignable since it's harder to meet those demands with cobbling together a big enough signing bonus package after playing the underslot manipulations.

Quote

Why does a kid drop to the 11th round if he's signable?

I think the thing to remember is how fluid these situations are behind the scenes.  Scouts do a lot of work to find out what the numbers and situations are for these kids.  And it's easy to see situations where HS Player A puts a number out there, say $2M, to forgo their scholarship to College A.  But Player A may have a minimum where their bottom line may be $1M or $500k, etc. because they really want to start Pro Ball.  We don't know what that number is and perhaps some of these HS kids change their mind once the draft starts and they get hyped for pro ball and will take whatever decent is offered.  It makes what these scouts do even more impressive.  It's not just travelling around to whatever small school/college/D1 program to watch and evaluate talent, but to have to build relationships with players, coaches, and agents to get an idea of the signability/desires.  What a tough gig and I can only imagine how busy these people are during draft prep and the days of the actual selections.

[Jim Goulart]

10 hours ago, Mass Haas said:

Does the fact that the 20th round HS southpaw replied here indicate he's signing?

 

Since deleted, by the way…

[Fear The Chorizo]

So, of all these HS draftees picked in rounds 11-20 (not just for the Brewers, but for many teams), if they don't sign now they'll all next be draft eligible three, 4, or 5 years from now depending on how their collegiate careers go.  Each of those draft years will also be filled up with a fresh group of high school talent along with other college players that may have developed into draftable players who weren't picked while they were in high school.  There are no guarantees with injury, development, and timing for most of these guys planning to wait for the next time they're draft eligible.

Particularly for high school pitchers that aren't considered top 200 talent in a draft year, it actually makes alot more sense to sign a professional contract now than roll the dice on improving their draft stock years down the road when the draft itself has been pared down to 20 rounds.

[abqbrewer]

I' m wondering if the emphasis on HS pitchers late (not hitters) has anything to do with the team thinking they can impress them with the "pitching lab". I mean, if I was 18 and my motivation was to reach the Big Leagues, I would find it impressive to train there as opposed to a college facility. I know college facilities are also very modern and what not, but the Brewers recent success with under-the-radar guys would be very appealing.