colbyjack

Once again, if you look a little farther you will find some conversations on Clement (& Gordon): p082.ezboard.com/fbrewers...=705.topic ...so we can go back to the best player available strategy. Go back? When did Jack Zduriencik stray from that philosophy?

I think Gordon stays at 3B from what I've seen of him. I know Kat, who has seen him play over the course of an entire game (or two) thinks he can stick at 3B as well. His arm is very strong, and he has good quickness for a man his size. CarolinaTommy is another poster that has seen him play at 3B without expressing much, if any, concern about his defense. I'm not really sure why this is coming up now, unless this is the effect of him playing 1B for Team USA, which had more to do with Ryan Zimmerman's presence on the team (who could be a Gold Glover at the hot corner). And I think his bat could play anywhere.

darn...looks like we are going to have to settle for another HS righthander Unless you're being sarcastic, why? There are going to be plenty of good players available that aren't high school pitchers. what pick do we have??? 5??? Yup. I mention the 5th pick in my response just above, plus you can always check out the draft order which is part of the draft coverage on this site, or even view the draft order thread pinned towards the top of this thread.

The 4th and final installment of the draft retrospect series is up on the homepage. Battlebot posted a thread on the MLB forum, but there are far more important and interesting things to talk about these days in Brewerland. Here's the link to the story in case you don't visit the homepage regularly: www.brewerfan.net/ViewArt...icleId=196 As always, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

There's always a chance any player could fall further than expected. The draft is 6 months away, and the college (and high school) season hasn't even started yet. Gordon could slump, get injured, or even worse; be advised by Scott Boras. If he stays healthy, has a good spring and isn't represented by Boras I have a hard time believing he would fall to #5. But if he does, and there aren't any other major concerns, the only reason we shouldn't take him is if Justin Upton also falls for some reason.

There was a Rule 5 discussion that tossed out some available names a week or two ago here: p082.ezboard.com/fbrewers...2640.topic As SoCal said, get a Cubs lefty. Hagerty is another good call, I know Jack Z. really liked him for the '02 draft, although IIRC he missed most to all of last season due to TJ surgery. Andy Sisco is one of the best lefty prospects in all of baseball in regards to size &stuff, but his control is a big concern. Jon Connolly is more of a finesse lefty with a good changeup. The Cardinals' LHP prospect Tyler Johnson is one of my faves. Not the greatest fastball, but he has a really good curve. His control is an issue. Royce Ring might be one of the best players available. Not the greatest upside, but he could be a solid lefty specialist for years to come. He has good velocity, natural movement, and a decent breaking ball. EDIT: Hagerty missed all of 2003, not this past year. Here's a little blurb on him from BA this past summer: This year, though, the best news for the Cubs' pitching depth has come from other sources. Start with lefthander Luke Hagerty, who missed all of last season after Tommy John surgery. He has returned to action in the Rookie-level Arizona League. He was 0-1, 2.63 in 14 innings, but more importantly, his stuff was starting to return, with the velocity returning to his low-to-mid 90s fastball. The Cubs promoted Hagerty to Class A Daytona on Friday. "We're going to get him back under the lights soon," farm director Oneri Fleita said prior to the promotion. "He's throwing well, just getting his innings, and his mechanics are fine. Soon we'll get him up to (short-season) Boise or Lansing. We're just trying to be cautious with him."

Type A and B free agents get draft pick compensation regardless if those players have been free agents before.

An interesting Q&A from AskBA today: With November being the first month high school baseball recruits can sign a letter of intent, it got me to wondering. Of the top 100 high school players from last year, how many are going to college and how many signed a pro contract? To answer this question, I looked at the latest version of the Top 100 High School Prospects list we put out, which came in our Early Draft Preview issue. Because major league teams are reluctant to let top prep talent get away, I expected that the majority of the Top 100 would have turned pro. I was wrong. Just 44 players signed out of the draft. Half of that total came from the first 30 players on the Top 100, while only 22 of the bottom 70 players entered pro ball. Most of the players who didn't turn pro had strong college commitments and/or disappointing senior seasons, including the four players among the top 20 who didn't sign: outfielder Michael Taylor (No. 5, now at Stanford) and righthanders Andy Gale (No. 9, North Carolina), Kenn Kasparek (No. 13, Texas) and Erik Davis (No. 15, Angels). Taylor went undrafted. Of the 56 players who opted against signing, 52 are attending four-year colleges. Three righthanders are at junior colleges and remain under control to the team who drafted them: Manatee (Fla.) CC's Brian Johnson (No. 39, drafted by the Brewers in the 30th round), JC of Southern Idaho's Troy Grundy (No. 59, Dodgers, 41st round) and Pensacola (Fla.) JC's Will Jostock (No. 62, Royals, 39th round). The other unsigned player, outfielder Corey Brown, originally had a scholarship to play at Virginia. But the Cavaliers rescinded it after Brown pleaded guilty to felony battery in an incident in which he had sex with an underage girl. I can't find any record of where Brown ended up, and my guess is that he's at a junior college somewhere. I bolded DFE Brian Johnson to point out a player to watch in the DFE process, but after reading the question I too thought the answer would have been that most of the top rated players had signed. It would be interesting to see how this list compares to other years, and how their early projected top 100 compared to their top 100 HS prospects just before the draft, and what percentage of those players ended up signing. This does reinforce the notion of signing a player that falls since we will not have a 2nd round pick. There should be plenty to choose from assuming this trend continues.

Yes, Miller will cost the Brewers a 2nd round pick. Several people, including myself, discussed the different variables in towards the later pages of this thread on the MLB forum: p082.ezboard.com/fbrewers...7304.topic The idea of signing a tougher sign later in the draft is basically what we're hoping for.

Part 3 is up on the homepage, focusing on 2002. Battlebot has posted a thread on the MLB forum here: p082.ezboard.com/fbrewers...7306.topic

Sorry MB, I didn't mean to put you on the spot, but you do a much more thorough & eloquent job with your transaction reports than I ever could. For some reason I thought Woolard was already on there. That's a bummer, I hope the Brewers make an adjustment to fit him in, as I too would hate to lose him. I think I would move Pratt or Turnbow, despite recently adding both of them, to make a spot for a guy that clearly has earned his keep this past season. For anyone that has seen him pitch, does Housman have a hard time pitching out of the stretch?

With Omar Vizquel signing with the Giants, I thought it would be a good time to start a running tab of the FA signings and how it effects next year's draft order. I'll only list the signings for now. And just so you know for easy reference, the draft order is and has been listed as part of Brewerfan.net's draft coverage: www.brewerfan.net/ViewDra...?draftId=3 2005 draft order: 01 Arizona Diamondbacks 02 Kansas City Royals 03 Seattle Mariners 04 Washington Nationals 05 Milwaukee Brewers 06 Toronto Blue Jays 07 Colorado Rockies 08 Tampa Bay Devil Rays 09 New York Mets 10 Detroit Tigers 11 Pittsburgh Pirates 12 Cincinnati Reds 13 Baltimore Orioles 14 Cleveland Indians 15 Chicago White Sox 16 Florida Marlins 17 Philadelphia Phillies 18 San Diego Padres 19 Texas Rangers 20 Chicago Cubs 21 Oakland Athletics 22 San Francisco Giants 23 Anaheim Angels 24 Houston Astros 25 Minnesota Twins 26 Los Angeles Dodgers 27 Atlanta Braves 28 Boston Red Sox 29 New York Yankees 30 St. Louis Cardinals I'm going to scrap the info I had previously. Jim Callis always keeps a nice running tab of compensation picks as part of his AskBA feature, so I'm simply going to copy & paste what he has (it's free content). Changes to the draft order so far: First Round 17. Yankees (from Phillies for Type B Jon Lieber) 22. Marlins (from Giants for Type A Armando Benitez) 23. Red Sox (from Angels for Type A Orlando Cabrera) 26. Red Sox (from Dodgers for Type A Derek Lowe) 28. Cardinals (from Red Sox for Type A Edgar Renteria) 29. Marlins (from Yankees for Type A Carl Pavano) Supplemental First Round 31. Diamondbacks (for Type A Richie Sexson) 32. Rockies (for Type A Vinny Castilla) 33. Indians (for Type A Omar Vizquel) 34. Marlins (for Benitez) 35. Padres (for Type A David Wells) 36. Athletics (for Type A Damian Miller) 37. Angels (for Type A Troy Percival) 38. Astros (for Type A Carlos Beltran) 39. Twins (for Type A Corey Koskie) 40. Dodgers (for Type A Adrian Beltre) 41. Braves (for Type A Jaret Wright) 42. Red Sox (for Type A Pedro Martinez) 43. Cardinals (for Renteria) 44. Marlins (for Pavano) 45. Red Sox (for Cabrera) 46. Cardinals (for Type A Mike Matheny) 47. Red Sox (for Lowe) 48. Orioles (for failure to sign Wade Townsend) 49. Angels (for failure to sign Jered Weaver*) 50. Diamondbacks (for failure to sign Stephen Drew*) (*First-round pick still eligible to sign with club.) Second Round 53. Dodgers (from Mariners for Beltre) 54. Rockies (from Nationals for Castilla) 55. Athletics (from Brewers for Miller) 56. Twins (from Blue Jays for Koskie) 59. Red Sox (from Mets for Martinez) 60. Angels (from Tigers for Percival) 65. Yankees (from White Sox for Type B Orlando Hernandez) 72. Cardinals (from Giants for Matheny) 78. Padres (from Red Sox for Wells) 79. Braves (from Yankees for Wright) Supplemental Second Round 81. Marlins (for Type C Mike Redmond, signed with Twins) 82. Twins (for Type C Henry Blanco, signed with Cubs) Third Round 85. Diamondbacks (from Mariners for Sexson) 86. Twins (from Nationals for Type B Cristian Guzman) 91. Astros (from Mets for Beltran) 104. Indians (from Giants for Vizquel) 110. Cubs (from Red Sox for Type B Matt Clement) Remaining free agents requiring compensation if they switch teams: Type A: None (removed Roger Clemens 1/20/05, the last remaining Type A FA, as he appears to either be staying in Houston or retiring given the news of his arbitration desires) Type B: Brent Mayne (LA) EDIT: Changed order per AskBA 12/24/04. There are going to be a lot of sandwich picks, even if Weaver, Drew, Niemann and Humber end up signing. What used to be our 2nd round pick would fall until the 55th-60th or so overall selection. The Brewers are going to have to wait a long time after their first-round pick before they make their next selection. The Marlins, Cardinals and D-Backs so far look like the teams that have helped themselves out the most with extra draft picks. The D-Backs in particular are going to have a tough time signing the the first pick in the sandwich round, and an additional, early 2nd round pick. Since Stephen Drew remains unsigned, it could make things interesting come June. Given all of the free agents they've signed, I'm curious how there draft budget will be. They may go the way of the '02 Pirates or even last year's Padres and try to find a guy that will sign for relatively cheap with the #1 overall pick. ***The Boston Red Sox also look to be in a great position in next year's draft. While they lost their first-rounder, 2nd rounder and 3rd rounder, but they gained two other first round picks, 3 sandwich picks and an additional 3rd rounder. In my mind, this is proof why the free agent draft compensation system needs to be changed. Something similar to the NFL process would be nice, where free agents signed and lost would be balanced out.

Romanczuk probably rates at this point as a 2nd rounder, but is one of many players that could be poised to be taken much higher with a good season. He likely will be especially attractive to a team like the A's or Blue Jays that always show interest in polished college arms, particularly lefties. I think he would be rated higher if it weren't for somewhat of a down sophomore season. He actually pitched better as a freshman. For a guy labelled as a control pitcher, he walks too many batters, and last year he gave up a lot of hits, including home runs. He doesn't have the most blazing of fastballs either, otherwise he probably would have gone higher coming out of high school. He is a very cerebral pitcher, which is a huge plus in my book. He could be one of those pitchers like Barry Zito that actually pitches better in professional ball. Playing in an extremely tough conference against batters using aluminum bats could jump up his stats, although it's hard to believe that entirely since MLB hitters with wood bats are far better than the colleciton of hitters in the Pac-10. He has pitched well for Team USA the past 2 summers I believe, for what that's worth. Right now I'd probably say he's a solid candidate to go early in the 2nd or in the sandwich round. Again, with a solid spring he could find himself in the middle of the first round. CarolinaTommy might have seen him pitch at some time, so maybe he'll pop in & chime in with his thoughts.

For those of you that may not visit every forum or possibly even the homepage, I just wanted to point out that the second part of my 4-part series looking back at Jack Zduriencik's drafts has been posted on the homepage. The discussion for this story has been posted by Brewerfan.net's battlebot on the Major League forum: p082.ezboard.com/fbrewers...7237.topic I hope you enjoy the story.

We kind of talked about the grading system on the thread provided above. I think if you get a Hall of Famer in any draft, that automatically makes it an A+, or a grade that can't be explained by letter value. An A to me consittutes one really good player, like Ben Sheets, or 2-3 solid everyday players that prove to be productive over a longer period of time. I think the '99 draft would garner an "A" for Sheets. A "B" would be getting one or two solid, everyday players, which is what the 2000 draft likely will max out to be. A "B" could also be obtained by 1 solid starter and a couple of Major Leaguers that provide depth, such as some combination of a couple of bench players, a 5th starter, a relief pitcher, etc. The '95 draft with Geoff Jenkins would probably get a solid B to B+. Mike Kinkade and Travis Smith also were '95 draftees. A "C" would likely be either one everyday regular or just getting depth as listed in the "B" category. I would probably give the '94 draft a "C+" since Steve Woodard & Ron Belliard, while showing flashes of brilliance, didn't stick around long enough. Belliard's emergence may make it a B, since you can't blame the scouting department for the GM's inability to realize he had a solid player. Robinson Cancel did fill in as a backup catcher in the late 90s. A "D" would probably just be 1 or maybe two players that provide depth. The '98 draft would likely be a D or D- with Billy Hall, but in a few years '98 likely will grab an "F" since Neugie & Gold fell so hard. The '96 draft might be another D candidate since Kevin Barker & Allen Levrault made it but had very brief careers. And like you said, an "F" is nothing. The '97 draft would probably be given an F since Matt Childers is all that's left and he may not even be in the organization when spring training rolls around, while Bucky Jacobsen left for nothing.

Feel free to check out the discussion about this article which was posted on the Major League forum when the article was released: p082.ezboard.com/fbrewers...7194.topic

Welcome aboard Awild, I am currently working on part 2 of my draft retrospect, and hope to get it to Brian by the end of the weekend, if not earlier. McCormack was released in October of 2003 after those three lackluster seasons with the Arizona Brewers.

A first look at BA's top 100 high school prospects along with their college commitments: www.baseballamerica.com/t...100hs.html ***I forgot to mention that Rickie's little brother, Jemille, checks in at #48.

As DHonks pointed out on the MLB forum, Kremblas has been fired from his managerial post, which could very well be the reason Krynzel has disappeared from the box scores. From the Journal Sentinel: Change of plans Kremblas was managing in the Mexican League at Navojoa, but Melvin said he was fired after a 6-13 start. That changes the Brewers' plan to send shortstop prospect J.J. Hardy to play for Navojoa after missing most of the 2004 season at Indianapolis because of shoulder surgery. "We probably won't send him down there now, if we don't have somebody from our staff to watch him," said Melvin. "We have some staff in the Dominican Republic (winter league) so we might look there."

Big congrats to Coop. Al was right, he's from that area so I'm sure he'll enjoy returning closer to home. I remember a few years ago he did most to all of his work for the Brewers closer to home before taking a more active role with the organization. I'm sad to see him go, but it's a nice move up for him. I'm not happy that he's within the division, but I guess that means we get to see him more often. As lend alluded to, I think it's an easy bet that Kremblas gets the well-deserved bump up.

Alirio Ledezma, a Venezuelan righty, has participated in a few state-side showcases over the last year or so. He's a physically mature righty with a strong lower half. His throws regularly in the 87-90 range with a pretty good over the top slow curve. Not the most projectable of pitchers physically, but not everyone throws 90 mph as a 17 year old.

Just in case anyone else is still interested, I received my shirt & license plate frame today & am quite pleased with the product. As I believe hawing mentioned, the print color on the shirt isn't as bright or saturated as a screenprinted shirt could be, but it's still pretty good. It's a high quality iron-on basically, so it will be intresting to see how it holds up after multiple washings. People haven't seemed to voice too many concerns about that, so that's encouraging. The license plate frame is very slick. Looking at it on the store I thought it could be some cheap-o plastic painted to look like metal. Not so! Anyway, I am pleased. Go order some goodies and spread the good word http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif .

I think most people got the same thing from Moneyball, the idea of maximizing your resources relative to budget. However, when it comes to the draft, that really leads to the HS vs. college, stats vs. potential debate. Although some teams are starting to do the exact opposite of teams like the A's, valuing prep players that have fallen since more & more teams are focusing on college players. I do know where you're coming from. This past year I suggested taking prep 3B Blake DeWitt with the #5 overall pick. No one considered him to be worthy of the #5 pick, but from everything I saw and heard about him proved to be that he was the best hitter available in the draft. Not only that, but he also projected to play 3B as a pro (he played SS in HS), a position of need in the system. He could have agreed to a pre-draft deal making somewhere in the range of $1.5-2 million dollars, which would have been several hundreds of thousands of dollars more than he would have made going late in the first round like everyone projected him to. It also would have been several hundreds of thousands of dollars less than what the Brewers signed Mark Rogers for. That money could have been spent elsewhere, possibly to sway someone like Drew Bowman or Sean Morgan away from college, or maybe to sign the next a talented player out of the Dominican Republic. Basically, to me DeWitt was a vastly underrated commodity, and while doing some homework they could have made a very astute pick that would have benefitted the team in more ways than one. The Royals handled their first pick the same way, taking Billy Butler for $1.4 million, a couple of hundred thousand dollars less than slot value in an attempt to save money so they could sign all of their high picks. The selection of Mark Rogers really isn't the best way to maximize your resources. Although if he does succeed as a big leaguer like Kerry Wood or Josh Beckett, it will be hard to argue with the results. But I'm growing less & less of a fan of the boom or bust drafting style. I don't know about you Tommy, but one player that I like a lot for next year is Tyler Greene. He's good defensively, has good to great speed, scouts like his athleticism and he has hit with wood with Team USA and on the Cape. That to me is about as sure of a bet as you can get, similar to Jeremy Sowers, and if you have to hand out a $2.5 million dollar signing bonus, why not hand it out to the player that logically seems to have the best chance success? While he's a good hitter, I could see him falling a little bit because he doesn't have a legitimate impact bat that a lot of teams look for within the top 10 picks or so. I think that the Athletics' pick of Ryan Webb, a high schooler from the Tampa, FLA area, I believe, could be an example of this type of economical thought. And that's exactly what I was getting at. What did the A's see in Webb that made them feel he was an underrated commodity? Since they don't make a habit out of taking prep pitchers, what made Webb stand out? Given the A's track record of developing pitchers, this is one of those picks that you just seems to have a good chance of surprising a lot of people.

I did see T1's list when it was posted earlier today, thanks for the head's up. That is an impressive Virginia crop of players, which means you'll have to keep us all posted on their accomplishments next spring http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif .

I'm not so sure that traditional scouting is failing, or waning, or fading, or whatever. I still think a lot can be gained by subjective observsations. The Braves and Twins are two teams that have built successful ballclubs largely by embracing more traditional forms of scouting. Hopefully the Brewers can also make that claim in a couple of years. ***EDIT: I should have added the Dodgers in that group as well. Every year they seem to have a prep pitcher break-out (Jackson, Miller, Billingsley, Tiffany) that proves they know what they're doing when drafting young arms. That said, I think there should be a blend of the two forms of scouting. Statistical evidence has to be taken into consideration, and teams should at least take trends into consideration (trends like prep right-handed pitchers are more likely to flame out than ever enjoy any prolonged success at the big league level) when making decisions that are often tied into hefty 6 and 7-figure signing bonuses. But as soon as you rely entirely on stats you once again make yourself too one-dimensional, and I think even the teams that embrace the over-used "Moneyball" philosophy term would agree with that. Last night I was looking over some of BA's recent draft report cards and I was wondering what the A's saw in 5th-round prep pitcher Ryan Webb that would cause them to draft a prep pitcher so high? Obviously they saw something that they really liked about him to believe he can succeed as a pro to take such a high pick on a prep righty given their usual aversion to such players.