2024 1st Round Pick (#22): Vance Honeycutt - OF - (Jr) North Carolina (NC)

[Can_of_corn]

16 minutes ago, interloper said:

I do wonder if some of the strategy is, "at least get a guy who tantalizes with enough big tools to be included in a trade". I mean that's kind of what people are saying about EBJ and Beavers and Horvath. Guys with tools who aren't quite putting it all together, but who are logical guys to go in a trade because they do have some ML-quality tools. 

 

That is working under the assumption that your peers are incompetent.

[interloper]

3 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

That is working under the assumption that your peers are incompetent.

How so? If we trade guys like EBJ, Horvath, Beavers, Fabian this deadline, will those teams be incompetent? No, they'll have seen the loud tools and feel like they can work with them. With exception of EBJ, none of those guys are going to get you another Corbin Burnes, but they'll absolutely get you a reliever from a seller. 

A Honeycutt with a 35% k-rate but a lot of homers and steal and defense will be a huge prospect. Will he be good enough for this team? Not sure. But that's absolutely good enough to be a major trade piece. 

Edited July 15 by interloper

[Tony-OH]

From what I've read this was a poor draft class and the fact that the 4th overall pick was a power hitter with questionable 1b skills and the first overall pick was a second baseman kind of confirms this.

Honeycutt is certainly a high risk high reward guy with power and speed, good defense, but questionable contact skills. I can't lie, his K rate concerns me against sub par college pitching. 

Now would have I preferred a pitcher with some upside here, absolutely, but it's pretty clear the Orioles still don't want to invest their top draft capita into pitching.

[Sports Guy]

I’m not sure what pitcher I would have wanted them to take over Honeycutt but Caminiti is probably the guy that intrigues me the most.

Of course, he’s a HS pitcher and that’s a very boom or bust thing but so is Honeycutt.

I can see the argument either way there.

[HowAboutThat]

I’m curious about which tools are most inherent. I thought that a good eye was a good eye, one either had it or didn’t, and the ability to recognize and lay off pitches was one of the most important traits in developing a hitter. Yet somewhere I read that Honeycutt had more K’s than Hits, which seems appalling.

Isn’t that a massive bad omen?

[Hazmat]

1 hour ago, HowAboutThat said:

I’m curious about which tools are most inherent. I thought that a good eye was a good eye, one either had it or didn’t, and the ability to recognize and lay off pitches was one of the most important traits in developing a hitter. Yet somewhere I read that Honeycutt had more K’s than Hits, which seems appalling.

Isn’t that a massive bad omen?

First step is getting him an eye exam!

[Go_Os]

https://x.com/643charts/status/1697277342253494783/photo/1

[now]

1 hour ago, Go_Os said:

https://x.com/643charts/status/1697277342253494783/photo/1

Interesting! Defense up the middle: the (old) Oriole Way!

[Malike]

 

He does seem to pull the ball, a lot. There is one HR to CF and one to RF. Some real web gems too.

[Warehouse]

I pulled some additional comparisons.

Final NCAA year:

Metric	Honeycutt	Bradfield jr	Bo Jackson	Jud Fabian	Westburg
Avg	.314	.279	.246	.239	.317
OBP	.409	.410	.424	.414	.432
SLG	.702	.429	.652	.598	.517
OPS	1.112	.839	1.076	1.013	.949
ISO	.388	.150	.406	.359	.200
BABIP	.360	.307	.303	.222	.386
K%	27.8%	13.4%	32.6%	22.3%	20.3%
BB%	12.2%	15.1%	21.8%	20.0%	9.5%

 

Second to last NCAA year:

Metric	Honeycutt	Bradfield	BoJackson	J.Fabian	Westburg
Avg	.257	.317	.401	.253	.294
OBP	.418	.415	.500	.370	.402
SLG	.492	.498	.864	.570	.457
OPS	.910	.913	1.364	.940	.858
ISO	.236	.181	.463	.317	.162
BABIP	.282	.348	.472	.283	.369
K%	20.4%	13.7%	23.3%	28.9%	21.5%
BB%	19.6%	14.0%	14.8%	15.1%	12.2%

[Warehouse]

7 hours ago, Malike said:

 

He does seem to pull the ball, a lot. There is one HR to CF and one to RF. Some real web gems too.

A big question for me is how much his power is dependent on his pull-centric guess-hitting approach to generate higher bat speed and loft. That approach will be more challenging as he faces better pitchers and fewer hitters’ counts. However, an approach that allows him to adjust to offspeed may result in lower power production similar to his sophomore year.

[sportsfan8703]

On 7/14/2024 at 9:08 PM, Rbiggs2525 said:

I don’t think there’s a player in the draft with 4 60 plus tools. 

Bingo. Spot on post. It’s hard to turn down four, 60+ tools, when you pick at #22. 

We can read into all we want, and we all will, but I think it just came down to getting that level of value at 22. Top 5 or 10 level tools. We gotta trust our guys now. 

[sportsfan8703]

19 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

That is working under the assumption that your peers are incompetent.

What if Elias and Co. are the smartest guys in the room though? Even with that, they still don’t have to bat 1.000. 

[webbrick2010]

Seems like a wasted pick and wasted slot money

or...

he has a strong arm so maybe they convert him to pitching like Givens

[Sports Guy]

5 minutes ago, webbrick2010 said:

Seems like a wasted pick and wasted slot money

or...

he has a strong arm so maybe they convert him to pitching like Givens

Or they develop him as the CFer they think he can be.