Draft Daily Recap - Day 1

 Keeping in the vein of the daily draft blog, I will also post a daily summary.  So here goes:

Guardians -

The Guardians selected:

Chase DeLauter, OF James Madison University (selected 16th, rated 18th)

Justin Campbell, RHP, Oklahoma St. (selected 37th, rated 36th)

Parker Messick, LHP, Florida State (selected 54th, rated 54th)

If I had been running the Guardians draft I would have selected:

Daniel Susac, C, Arizona (16, actually drafted 19th, rated 12th)

Cayden Wallace, 3B/1B Arkansas (37, actually drafted 49th, rated 31st))

Jud Fabian, OF, (54, actually drafted 67th, rated 52nd)

Analysis:  Here is what I have learned over the years.  All teams say they draft the best available player in each round.  The problem with that statement is that, especially in the early rounds of the draft, there is generally not that much difference between players when it comes your turn to draft.  If the idea is that the player you draft WILL make the majors and be impactful and no other player at that point will make the majors and be impactful, then I get it.  I just don't think that is true, especially in the early rounds. 

Here is something that I hope will be shown to be false in the future.  It certainly is true now:  The Guardians have shown no ability to turn prospects at one position into prospects of equal value at another position.  Nor have they been able to turn prospect excess into quality, controllable major league talent at positions of need. 

If you can't do that you have to draft so your farm system is balanced, as long as you don't sacrifice quality.  The Guardians did not do that in this draft, selecting 2 college pitchers in the first three picks after drafting 19 pitchers in last year's draft.  Even their first round pick was not the best fit for need when a guy of equal or better talent at a position of need in our farm system was not drafted.

You can say what you want about the Guardians draft but it was not on point.  Their system has one or two catching prospects yet they passed on Susac to draft a college outfielder who was not that much better than a number of other available college outfielders.   They passed on a corner infielder with power (we have one in our system, Noel).  They passed on a right handed hitting colleg corner outfielder in the 2nd round to draft another college pitcher.  Not one who had dropped who was a good bargain at that spot but, rather, one of about equal talent to players they didn't draft at that spot.

The Guardians draft so far was not sexy and it was not on point.  It has no unusual upside and did not address organizational needs.   It simply brought us MORE college pitching (after about 18 college pitchers drafted last year) and another left-handed hitting outfielder when we already have Kwan, Jones, Palacios, Valera, Benson and Brennan.

The draft so far wasn't a disaster, defined as overdrafting guys by hundreds of spots to take a flyer on some guy who only the team thought was worth the overdraft (see Cody Bunkelman, for example).  But it wasn't what this organization needed and it failed to draft quality prospects to address the needs the organization has: catching, corner infielders with power, outfielders with power who hit righthanded who also have good OB skills and can play defense, even when those players were available.  

Look, drafting the best available player only is relevant when other, available players were significantly less talented than the player you drafted at that slot.  That was not the case here and that is really disappointing.

Overall View of First Two Rounds

This is, to me, a historic draft so far.  There have been 80 selections so far.  Of those, 68 were ranked in the top 80 prospects, 77 were in the top 123 ranked prospects and all 80 were in the top 207 of ranked prospects.  The top prospects left in the draft are, in order, ranked 11th and 60th.  No guys drafted so far were unranked.  That is unusual. Very unusual.

In summary, the rest of the draft is largely devoid of guys who have dropped who can be snatched up in later rounds.

What does this mean for the Guardians?  It likely means drafting more college pitching, who are signable, and drafting lower level prospects who, like Brennan, may be 2-3 tool guys.  And given the run on power-hitting players (see overdrafts of Ivan Melendez and Xavier Isaac) we likely will be left with good hitting, no power outfielders (see Kwan, Palacios, Brennan), defensive catchers and good fielding infielders (see Ernie Clement, Yordys Valdes, Christian Cairo) without power in addition to the above-mentioned college pitchers.  So, we are kind of screwed here.  We know that we are likely to not get an impact college bat, we have shown we can't really develop raw HS bats so we are left where we were left last year: drafting college pitchers.  The Guardians may thrash around and take guys like Korey Holland who are lottery tickets as they are very raw.  But their inability to develop guys like that will cause those to be wasted picks (which I think was a good part of the reason for drafting mostly pitchers last year).

I don't know how the rest of this draft will turn out but if I was the Guardians, I might start looking for trades to turn this farm system around.  And I might put in some money to sign quality international, veteran free agents this year, guys who are relatively young and can come in and help the ML team in short order.