2021 Draft Thread

[Just Regular]

Who knows how each individual does, but in terms of this draft for barometer of when does front office see something better coalescing, I think on balance Trey Mancini and John Means are probably moderately encouraged by this class.

Now everybody go sleep about 12 straight hours and maybe when you wake up before you really get into trade conversations, remember to promote Adley Rutschman.

Especially Norby the more I read about him, it seems like a plug and play tool kit.   Just get him those 8-10 weeks looking at A ball pitchers now, and please spare us the theater of "working on his 2B defense" for like most of 2023.

[cnmilton]

The Orioles 2021 draft reminds me a lot of the mid 2010s Ray Farmer analytics led Cleveland Browns drafts.... lots of draft picks which had a lot of industry professionals scratching their heads. Hopefully Mike Elias is much more successful than Ray Farmer

[SteveA]

Average age of an Oriole draftee this year:  21 years, 269 days

[LTO's]

38 minutes ago, webbrick2010 said:

One prep player in 18 rounds is that normal, do other teams completely ignore HS players

Aren't the majority of the MVP's elite players guys that were either from US high school or international?

Tonights All Star Game Starters

Ohtani    : International,  Vlad Jr    : HS,  Boegarts  HS(Int-18yo),  Judge : College(21 yo),  Devers  (INT - 16yo),  Semien : College, Perez  : Int-16yo, Hernandez  : Int-18yo,  Mullins  : College (20yo)

Seems like the O's strategy is to not draft players that have a chance to be elite All Star types

To me that doesn't make sense

Vlad Jr was a high value international signing. He was not signed out of a US HS. So to illustrate your point that elite players are mostly HS draft picks you use a roster that has literally 0 HS draft picks. If you look at the AL/NL together you get 7 college draft picks, 5 HS draft picks and 7 international signings. Looking at the 2021 WAR leaders there are only 2 players in the top 20 that were drafted out of HS (Zack Wheeler and Joey Gallo). The majority are college guys and the rest are international signings. It's sort of laughable to suggest that an org that is almost totally model driven would not know the risk/reward of drafting HS players vs. college players. 

[Sydnor]

Doesn’t sound like they’re using all of their allotment.

 

[Hazmat]

1 minute ago, Sydnor said:

Doesn’t sound like they’re using all of their allotment.

 

51% = high percentage?

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Sydnor said:

Doesn’t sound like they’re using all of their allotment.

 

They didn't last draft either.  I was told that you can't expect them to just spend money they don't have to for the sake of spending it.

I'm sure if it happens this year it will just be because the players signed for less than they were expecting.

[Frobby]

Just now, Can_of_corn said:

They didn't last draft either.  I was told that you can't expect them to just spend money they don't have to for the sake of spending it.

I'm sure if it happens this year it will just be because the players signed for less than they were expecting.

Last year the amount they didn’t spend was essentially rounding error.   This year sounds like it could be much more significant.    Two different situations IMO.    

[Sydnor]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

They didn't last draft either.  I was told that you can't expect them to just spend money they don't have to for the sake of spending it.

I'm sure if it happens this year it will just be because the players signed for less than they were expecting.

I know. I noted that you mentioned that several pages ago, and that I thought it was an astute observation. Twice does point to a trend though, right?

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Frobby said:

Last year the amount they didn’t spend was essentially rounding error.   This year sounds like it could be much more significant.    Two different situations IMO.    

Rounding error?

It was about the same amount of money they saved getting rid of their pitching coach from last season. 

Evidently they think it's a worthwhile amount to worry about.

Of course with how strong the pitching has been you can't really fault them for that decision. 

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, Sydnor said:

I know. I noted that you mentioned that several pages ago, and that I thought it was an astute observation. Twice does point to a trend though, right?

I find them cutting corners in certain areas very concerning.  For instance the coaches last season, or not keeping Thorne.

[LTO's]

4 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Rounding error?

It was about the same amount of money they saved getting rid of their pitching coach from last season. 

Evidently they think it's a worthwhile amount to worry about.

Of course with how strong the pitching has been you can't really fault them for that decision. 

What exactly did the previous pitching coach do to deserve to be retained? If I'm not mistaken, didn't the Orioles give up by far the most home runs in MLB history under his watch? The MASN cuts and them trying to get the players to defer arbitration are way more concerning than either of what you have mentioned. 

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, LTO's said:

What exactly did the previous pitching coach do to deserve to be retained? If I'm not mistaken, didn't the Orioles give up by far the most home runs in MLB history under his watch? The MASN cuts and them trying to get the players to defer arbitration are way more concerning than either of what you have mentioned. 

I'll agree that the other issues you mentioned are indeed more concerning.  Thanks for the additional examples.

[LookinUp]

1 hour ago, Black_and_Orange said:

It's kind of ironic that there was a whole crowd that came out against the orioles saying they were cheap because they went "underslot" with Cowser instead of drafting Lawler or Watson. Then you had the group of people stand up for the orioles and explain to this crowd that underslotting doesn't mean they're cheap but that they'll re-distribute that money else where in the draft. Now the Orioles spit in the face of the group trying to defend them by actually not spending their full allocation lol basically proving the first crowd right.

 

1 hour ago, glenn__davis said:

I'm not a blind defender of Elias by any stretch, but one thing I'm certain of...he's not an idiot.  He understands this business and knows what he wants to do.

We'll have to let the signings all play out.  My hunch is that a few of those guys he took in picks 2-10 are going to cost more than people expected and thus there really wasn't the alleged savings from the 1st 2 days.

Or, he was told he could only spend a certain amount of money.  Which would be oh so disheartening, so let's hope it's not that.

If the O's significantly underspend their draft pool, everyone will be mad. I still wouldn't blame Elias because I'd just assume it's coming from the Angelos family for whatever reason.

If the O's don't significantly underspend their draft pool, this is essentially a draft where they think they're smarter than others and we just have to hope it's true.

I'll see what they spend before taking out the pitch forks, but would be lying if I said I wasn't concerned that Elias was given less money to work with from an ownership group that's cutting every single penny possible.

[spiritof66]

I never really understood the "best player available approach" in a baseball draft. (It makes sense to me in football or basketball, if you put quarterbacks in a separate category.) For a long time I thought BPA might be a code for something else, or some sort of double-speak. But I've understood for a while that people really mean it, and that the concept dominates some GMs' draft decisions. 

The best player available approach would make sense if the goal were to amass the most baseball talent, or future WAR, or player value, or whatever you want to call it. But I thought a general manager's job was to build the best/winningest baseball team he can. If you were starting out with no players of any value, sure, take the guy out there who promises to be the best baseball player some day, and put him in the place on the field where he's most likely to shine and contribute. But when you've already got a warehouse of talent, the search should be for the guy who projects as helping the team in light of that talent that's on hand or expected to arrive by the time the prospective draftee is ready to contribute.

I don't understand how any other approach makes sense. If you have a real good shortstop but are weak in talented catchers, you might draft Manny Machado before the best catcher who's out there. But you shouldn't do that because you've concluded Manny is the best draftable player available, even if he might be. You do that because Manny Machado is the draftable guy you think will help your team the most, and you have a plan for where on the field he'll fit in when he's ready to hit the bigs. If that's your conclusion, you draft Manny even if there's a slugging left fielder and a high school fireballer out there who looks like the best player available in some abstract sense.

One thing that's popped up in some of these draft comments is the nature of Camden Yards, which is tough on young pitchers and generous to sluggers from both sides of the plate. That's a factor that probably gets pretty complicated, but it certainly ought to be considered in drafting: how much will this guy help us win games when half those games will played at Camden Yards and many more in other hotter-friendly parks? To the best of my knowledge, I've never heard an Orioles official say a word about drafting players who are or aren't likely to thrive in Oriole Park. I just hope they've thought it through.

The best laid plans oft go agley, and you might end up with four shortstops who are capable of playing in MLB and no catchers. That's what trades are for, and you can try to re-align your talent that way. But in my humble opinion, planning to stockpile redundant talent through the draft so you can trade some of it it off later would be stupid: the trade element just introduces one more variable that can go wrong, and if you trade when you have a serious need at a certain position you're setting up yourself and your team for abuse. You trade when you have to, or when General Manager Opportunity calls with a proposal, not as part of a plan for drafting to build a winning team.

For what it's worth, while I'm as befuddled as anyone at Elias's emphasis on older college players, optimist that I am , I take it as a sign that he feels pressure -- from himself, from ownership, from somewhere -- to start winning major league games sooner rather than later. I find it hard to explain as mere coincidence, or otherwise, though I haven't read every comment from the last couple days and may have missed something as a result..