2024 MLB Draft Chat

[Rbiggs2525]

1 hour ago, Moose Milligan said:

What are your guys thoughts on what we drafted?  Apologies if I missed some of your thoughts, haven't had the time to read the whole thread.

Live reaction everyone was upset by the lack of pitchers. My quick synopsis. Elias stuck to his guns by drafting all shortstop, catcher or center fielders as position players. I’m excited to see how they are able to do in terms of signing the high school kids. I think the draft will be defined by the success of Honeycutt and any of the high school position players. If I ranked the players I’m excited for it would be Honeycutt, George, Layton, O’Farral, Tess, Anderson, Overn. Looks like speed and defense were highly emphasized. Wonder if that has to do with the pitch timer rules.

[bpilktree67]

Mariners are first to announce their 1st round signing of Jurrangelo Cijante. 

[RZNJ]

It’s a fun draft.  You have the upside of Honeycutt and the 4 HS players.   Nate George and DJ Layton, in particular, should be fun to follow.   If they had just taken Brody Brecht when he was still there at #32 I think it would have been a real fan pleaser.   

I think Honeycutt at #22 and Brecht at #32 would have gotten rave reviews from everyone.   Now Griff O’Ferrall can prove they made the right decision, hopefully.

[CaptainRedbeard]

1 hour ago, RZNJ said:

It’s a fun draft.  You have the upside of Honeycutt and the 4 HS players.   Nate George and DJ Layton, in particular, should be fun to follow.   If they had just taken Brody Brecht when he was still there at #32 I think it would have been a real fan pleaser.   

I think Honeycutt at #22 and Brecht at #32 would have gotten rave reviews from everyone.   Now Griff O’Ferrall can prove they made the right decision, hopefully.

This is a good synopsis. And I’ll add, for all the hand wringing about Brecht (and I was one of them), the Orioles were not alone in passing in on him. There’s a lot of organizations with very good pitching development programs with picks at the end of the first / early second that also passed in him in the same range.

And the team that took him, the Rockies, is widely considered the most incompetent organization in MLB and entirely desperate for pitching. A lot of great development teams thought they couldn’t fix him, or just not at the draft capital price where the Orioles also passed on him, and the one that did is probably the least suited to attempt it. 

[panick]

4 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

The Braves signed their seventh and eighth round picks for a total of $20,000.

Slot bonuses for the 2 round are a combined value of $450,000.

Punting the picks to sign some overslot guys I assume.

So many ways you can accomplish signing over slot guys and it doesn’t take a huge draft pool to do it.

In a pre-Elias draft, the O's once drafted three pitchers with top ten picks and paid them a total of $25,000 just to go away. Since the drafts weren't really that good back then, I doubt the money saved for over-slots paid off.

[Sports Guy]

Caminiti vs Honeycutt and Brecht vs OFarrell will be interesting to watch.

[bpilktree67]

4 hours ago, Flash- bd said:

Yeah, also interested to hear some thoughts on the draft from people!

Baseball is the hardest draft to evaluate for a lot of reasons and every team has different strategy whether it be positions they go after or high school vs college aspect.  We have hit on a few high school guys but also drafted mostly college guys rest of the draft.  As outsiders we also don’t know all the ins and outs with how much a player might be asking for to sign or how much they to to drop the commitment to a college.  The money game is a huge difference in baseball where other sports the draft position determines the salary and not lot of negotiating.  The MLB draft you need a degree in finance too as a GM so you can keep track of that aspect of how much you can pay this pick or that pick, when to try and save money and when to go over slot.  You have to also watch other teams and see who looks to be stashing some money for an over slot guy you might like.  It’s a lot of cat and mouse and you really don’t know until the last pick made and the amount people sign for how draft went.  I think ours went pretty well as a whole couple picks I didn’t like but they were probably money reasons to get later round over slot guys.  If we sign all but one or two guys I will be happy with it even if I preferred more pitchers as there good mix of college guys and high school guys with upside.  

[glenn__davis]

It's interesting to me that they keep going after these "just fix the hit tool" kind of guys.  The results for Fabian, Bradfield and Beavers aren't exactly screaming that the Orioles know how to fix such players even though they think can.  Book obviously not closed on any of those guys yet.  

Cowser was a top 5 pick so a little different animal, but when he was drafted the word was that the hit tool was pretty good but questionable power.  Seems like he ended up selling out for power but now the hit tool is a struggle.

Adley, Gunnar and Westburg obviously are successes though I don't think much development was needed with Adley.  Kjerstad looks to be trending well.

Obviously they're not going to hit on all but the college hitters from the last few classes haven't been resounding successes thus far.

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, glenn__davis said:

It's interesting to me that they keep going after these "just fix the hit tool" kind of guys.  The results for Fabian, Bradfield and Beavers aren't exactly screaming that the Orioles know how to fix such players even though they think can.  Book obviously not closed on any of those guys yet.  

Cowser was a top 5 pick so a little different animal, but when he was drafted the word was that the hit tool was pretty good but questionable power.  Seems like he ended up selling out for power but now the hit tool is a struggle.

Adley, Gunnar and Westburg obviously are successes though I don't think much development was needed with Adley.  Kjerstad looks to be trending well.

Obviously they're not going to hit on all but the college hitters from the last few classes haven't been resounding successes thus far.

The issue might be that all guys aren't fixable.

[glenn__davis]

1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

The issue might be that all guys aren't fixable.

Sure, and they know that I'm sure, it's just interesting to me that they keep going back to this well.  Add Horvath to my list above as well.  Even Max Wagner though he was a different profile.

They have this "type" that they like and it worked with the higher ranked guys but so far not a lot of results with the lower ranked guys.  Which shouldn't be much of a surprise obviously.  Westburg really is the only "lower profile" that has come through so far.  I know Gunnar was later but a large part of that was due to signability.

I guess ultimately, I'd just like to see a few of these guys start to hit a bit.

[ChosenOne21]

I recall Westburg being one of those "fix the hit tool" guys

[Hazmat]

26 minutes ago, ChosenOne21 said:

I recall Westburg being one of those "fix the hit tool" guys

Stowers as well, right?

[jabba72]

I have no complaints about the draft except for passing on Brecht at #32. Our scouts (or someone) liked O'Ferrall, it is what it is. Alssup at #127, I like that he throws 100. Would like to see more draft picks spent on guys like that. The Yankees drafted in the 5th Round a guy that throws 103, but without any command whatsoever. 

[Sports Guy]

Brecht got about 250k over slot.

[sportsfan8703]

4 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Brecht got about 250k over slot.

Good info. Obviously they went into the calculus of drafting him.