Waldrep and the O's draft

[DocJJ]

A lot of mocks have the O's taking Waldrep.  His windup and delivery and knuckle curve remind me of Mussina.  Similar height and weight too.  

 

The attrition rate of drafted pitchers in the first round exceeds 60%.  They leave baseball due to injuries before ever reaching the Major League level.  I know we need pitching, but I agree with Elias's process of favoring hitters...  Can always trade for pitching at some point...

[TheWall]

I'll be excited if we take a pitcher, but I'm at the point where I'm giving Elias and Sig 100% benefit of the doubt with whoever they take. I was annoyed when they went Cowser over Lawlar and I'm pretty happy with how that turned out. I was cool with Holliday, but would have gone Jones and I'm incredibly pleased with how that looks so far. 

Hoping we grab more arms in the draft than we have the past few years, but it doesn't necessarily need to be in R1. 

[Just Regular]

The Callis video @wildcard posted earlier today gave some scouting thumbnails - it was new to me he's a 97 and a split.

Callis also characterized him a little bit as "the end of a tier" of college pitchers that may or may not make the middle of the first round.

We'll get Day 1 selections in four nights.

[Otter]

22 hours ago, DocJJ said:

A lot of mocks have the O's taking Waldrep.  His windup and delivery and knuckle curve remind me of Mussina.  Similar height and weight too.  

 

The attrition rate of drafted pitchers in the first round exceeds 60%.  They leave baseball due to injuries before ever reaching the Major League level.  I know we need pitching, but I agree with Elias's process of favoring hitters...  Can always trade for pitching at some point...

I'm definitely wary of drafting any pitcher in the first round, but I think Elias needs to start drafting more pitchers in 2nd-5th rounds.  And it's not as easy as you make it sound to just "trade for pitching at some point."  If it was that easy, Elias would have already done that to balance out the farm system better.

[Billy F-Face3]

Jonathan Mayo from MLB.com has us selecting Tommy Troy, Shortstop out of Stanford, in his latest mock draft.

Quote

17. Orioles: Tommy Troy, SS, Stanford (No. 17)
This has often been a landing spot for Florida right-hander Hurston Waldrep, the next best college arm on the board, and that could still happen. But the Orioles have a history of going college hitter in the first, albeit at the top of the round (Adley Rutschman, Heston Kjerstad, Colton Cowser). They could also look at Schanuel and Shaw from the college group and if they wanted to look at a high school bat like they did last year, Eldridge or Mitchell could be in play.

https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-pipeline-2023-mock-draft-july-6?t=mlb-draft-coverage