People who don't want to hear anything negative will say that you can't judge a draft for 5 years. While there is a lot of validity in that, that validity is only important if you draft looks sub-optimal on the surface. You don't really ever hear or read people saying "Wow, what a good draft on paper for the Guardians but don't get too excited because you won't be able to tell for 5 years if those picks are going to turn out to be winners". The latter thing is what people SHOULD be saying about this draft, which looks good on paper but could easily crumble like a house of cards and, certainly, isn't going to provide as much talent to the majors in the next 3 years as it could have based on the competitive window for our major league team.
So, on that note, here is a detailed summary of my opinions on the Guardians' draft:
Background - The Guardians had the largest bonus pool in the history of the draft. They also, because of that, had the largest 4.999% overage amount in the history of the draft, with any spending above that level costing them. In actual money, this number is $19,250,500, give or take a few pennies. So they had a lot of money to spend.
If you follow the dynamics of the draft as closely as I do, historical trends jump out at you.
- Watching a draft unfold live and knowing the prospects, makes you immediately aware that picking prospects is an either/or proposition. By that I mean if there are 3-4 prospects you are trying to decide among at a particular slot, the guys you don't pick will GENERALLY not be available the next pick you make.
- There are, GENERALLY, only a finite number of super prospects (ones who immediately would become one of your farm system's top 5 or top 10 prospects). You will be lucky to get TWO of those guys in a draft. There is one exception to this rule and that is...
- Super prospect HS pitchers generally are available at any point in a draft, especially in the first 10 rounds. The reasons why are simple: these kids have tons of leverage and generally require well over slot bonuses to sign...AND...RH HS pitchers are one of the riskiest groups to draft.
- On a different note, every scouting department should go into the draft with a strategy. It should have lists of players fitting their strategy so it shouldn't matter if one or two are selected before you pick. A good scouting director should NEVER create a plan that could fall apart if 1-2 guys are picked before its your turn.
- Speaking of draft strategy, no Cleveland writer that I am aware of wrote about the draft in terms of our competitive window. Our key players will reach free agency in the following years:
- Jose Ramirez - after 2028
- Andres Gimenez - after 2029 (club option for 2030)
- Steven Kwan - FA after 2027
- Tanner Bibee - FA after 2028
- Gavin Williams - FA after 2029
- Sam Hentges - FA after 2028
- Josh Naylor - FA after 2025
- Emmanuel Clase - FA after 2028 if team options exercised
- Trevor Stephan - FA after 2028
- Triston McKenzie - FA after 2026
- Everyone else - FA after 2030 or beyond
It is pretty obvious from this listing that our competitive window could conceivably end after 2028. So, drafting players who will reach the majors by 2026 (college players) should have been a higher priority than drafting players who will reach the majors in 2028 or beyond (HS players). So, everything else being even close to equal, drafting college players should have been our priority to maximize the likelihood of success during the window. Now I know one could argue that you could just trade prospects away for ML pieces or prospects closer to the majors but a prospect's value doesn't really get high until they are close to the majors...and that is especially true for HS pitchers.
PLAYER- BY-PLAYER SUMMARY
OK, long-winded background but really important to the discussion below.
1-1 Travis Bazzana - Look, this pick, like any pick in any draft, could blow up in your face for any number of reasons. Still, this pick looks absolutely, positively, like the most appropriate pick for this organization that, literally, I have seen in following their draft for 40+ years. Saying it was a no-brainer doesn't do it justice. Could it fail? Yes. Could some of the guys we passed on become better major leaguers than Bazzana? Absolutely. But, on paper (there's that phrase you'll hear again and again), this was by far the easiest and best pick in this draft at 1-1 the Guardians could have made. Plus, he should easily get to the majors and impact the team during our competitive window. I give this pick an A+
36. Braylon Doughty - This was a solid pick as he was rated 36th and was drafted 36th. Still, was it the right pick? In my opinion, when someone is writing one of those articles in 5 years saying what a draft should have looked like, based on how the players developed, Doughty would still likely be in slot 36. He has some upside, but not huge upside from where he is now, at least from what I have read. Look at it this way: if Doughty reaches his expected potential, he would likely be 20% better than college pitchers like Luke Holman and Bryce Cunningham (both available at this slot) and it will take him 2-3 more years to get to the majors meaning Doughty will likely not impact our current competitive window. Plus, it is likely that Holman and Cunningham would have come in a lot cheaper than Doughty and likely been able to impact the ML team in some positive level during our competitive window. So I give this pick a B
48 - Jacob Cozart - In a vacuum, how can you complain about this pick? He was the 42nd ranked player in the draft and we got him at 48 and we don't have, really, any catching depth in the minors. He is a good defensive catcher with some power AND he is a college player, meaning he is safer than drafting a HS catcher with the same skill set. The problem is that this is a mediocre pick where we had the chance to go for a higher upside pick, especially a college pitcher. Yes, he is overwhelmingly likely to be a ML catcher, but not a star, just a .220 hitter with 15 HR a year and good defensive metrics if he succeeds. You need more than that in slot 48, especially in this draft where quality college starting pitchers, and multiple of them, were still on the board. In addition, Cozart's profile gives me vibes on 2 guys who have Guardians' ties. The first, Javi Herrera, was drafted in the 2nd round at the exact same slot (48) in the 2003 draft. He was a well-regarded college catcher for the Vols whose hitting in college was only mediocre but he showed power potential. He never made it to the majors and that was due, in large part, to the fact he never developed as a hitter. The second player that comes to mind is Austin Hedges. Austin was drafted in the 2nd round (82nd pick) of the 2011 draft. Hedges was a HS catcher with good power potential and good catching skills. Cozart could be a cheap piece makng the majors in the near future but, unless his hitting improves dramatically and he maintains his college power AND defensive prowess, he is unlikely to impact the ML team in its current competitive window. A college starting pitcher would have been MUCH better here. I give this pick a D+.
84. Joey Oakie - If they can sign him for a reasonable bonus, this is a classically good selection at this point in the draft, given his skill set and the fact that the Guardians should be flush with excess bonus pool money. Use of bonus money for Oakie is very appropriate since, as I said above, the 1st and 2nd round quality players in a draft who slide to lower rounds are almost always HS pitchers. The only downside to this pick is that Oakie is not likely to even get to the majors until 2028. I give this pick an A if his bonus doesn't preclude us from signing Sullivan or Mobley later.
113. - Rafe Schlesinger - He was drafted 113 and was the 147 ranked prospect. While that's not terrible, he has a lot of reliever risk associated with him. A look at the players drafted very soon after him is:
- Dakota Jordan (#34) -College OFer - High ceiling/low floor athlete - very expensive as a sophomore
- Greg Ziel (#89) - RHP Miami
- Tyson Neighbors (#85 - RHRP - Kansas State
Any one of these guys would have offered a much better prospect to Schlesinger. There is an axiom in the draft that teams like who they like. Schlesinger may turn out to be a better player but these other three guys, at least, were better prospects at draft time. All three of the alternatives would make the majors during our competitive window, just like Schlesinger - I give this pick a C-
146 - Aiden Major - Major was listed as the 245th best prospect. It is entirely possible that he was drafted here to save money to give to Oakie. If that is the case and they can sign Major for 7th round money ($300,000) then maybe this would be a steal. However, if he signs at slot this seems like a bad value for this draft slot. Tristan Smith and Connor Foley, both draft eligible sophomores, would have been $1 million signings here if we wanted a better quality college pitcher at this slot. I give this pick a C unless they can sign him for $300,000 or less, then it goes up to a B-.
175 - Caden Favors - Favors is a college senior and a cheap signing. If his signing is for senior level money (<$50,000) to save money for an overslot signing, it makes sense. I give this pick a B- if they can save $300,000 on this pick, a C if he signs for $175,000 and a D if he signs for $250,000.
205 - Cameron Sullivan - Sullivan is a HS pitcher and the 118th ranked prospect in the draft. This is a great value at this spot as long as the bonus is $1 millionor less. No matter what the bonus is, Sullivan will not be ready for the majors in our competitive window, lowering the grade I can give this pick. As a HS pitcher he does not fit into our window of competition. I give this pick a B+ if his bonus is $1 million or less and a B- if the bonus is $1.5 million or more.
235 - Donovan Zsak - He was not rated in MLB Pipeline's top 250 prospects. As a draft-eligible sophomore, you would guess that Zsak would command a higher than slot ($223,000) bonus. However, he isn't highly rated enough to command over $300,000 and any amount over that lowers his value. The worst scenario here is if he fails to sign at all which means that looking at losing $233,000+ from our bonus + overage pool, making it harder to make other overslot signings like Oakie, Sullivan and Mobley. As a sophomore college pitcher, he fits into our window of competition. I give this pick a B- if they can sign him for $175,000 and a C- if they have to pay him $300,000 or more.
265 - Sean Matson - He was not rated in the top 250. I don't like the Harvard pipeline idea as it hasn't really worked for the Guardians in the post (most recent example, Jay Driver). As a college junior pitcher he fits into our competition window. However, he would have to sign for $150,000 or less to be a bargain and help us with other over slot bonuses. I give this pick a C+ if he signs for less than $150,000 or a D+ if he signs for slot or over slot as his talent doesn't really support that.
295 - Chase Mobley - Mobley, a HS pitcher and the #80 prospect in the draft, was, by far, the biggest bargain of our draft if he signs. If he does not sign, his hit on our draft budg + overage is only $192,000. In theory that loss would not hurt our signing of Oakie and Sullivan. However, it might make it so we either can't use all of our bonus pool effectively as we didn't draft any late flyers worthy of large bonuses. If we do sign Mobley, it almost certainly eliminates any over slot bonuses in rounds 11-20. As a HS pitcher, he would not impact the ML team in our competitive window. I give this grade an A if we sign Mobley and it doesn't stop us from signing any of our other picks in the top 10 rounds. If we don't sign him I give this pick a D- as it would then qualify as a ridiculous gamble that wasn't well researched.
Picks in rounds 11-20 - I will do a piece later on relative to our success vs other teams in the majors in terms of picking quality players in these rounds. Historically, we have been good picking non-ranked players in these rounds and still coming up with value. I give these picks, combined, a B just on the basis of how good we have been in the past. I reserve the right to change that grade after my research on the subject.
OVERALL GRADE FOR THIS DRAFT
If we sign all the players in this draft I give it an overall grade of B+. This grade will be based on the quality gained from taking Bazzana (A+) but, also, the risk of taking so many HS RHP, no matter how highly they are rated and the lack of drafting high quality college arms. If we fail to sign ANY of our "underdraft" (i.e,, ranked better than their draft slot) HS pitchers, the overall grade goes down to a B as we will have wasted a chance to get a quality prospect AND probably drafted lesser quality prospects to make money for a signing that didn't happen. If we fail to sign 2 or more of underdraft HS pitchers, the overall grade for this draft goes down to a C+ (despite drafting Bazzana) because we will likely be left holding a lot of bonus money and have gotten much less talent than we should have with some of our other picks in order to save money to pay for over slot bonuses that, at that point, would not have happened AND we have nowhere to spend that money as our late picks won't require a large bonus. The only think we COULD possibly do is go back to guys who weren't drafted at all (NDFA) and try to entice them with our large amount of bonus money we have left over. Although I don't know that it has ever been done that way, I think draft rules would allow for that.
I would love to give this draft an A but so few of these draft picks will have as large an impact on our competitive window as it could have been had we used a different strategy where we drafted exclusively, in the first 10 rounds, quality college players without signing any college seniors or bargain college guys through round 10.
It will take a lot to go right for this draft to turn out as good as it looks on paper. It would take only a small amount to go wrong for it to be an inefficient draft and only a little more to go wrong for it to be a bad use of the largest bonus pool in draft history.
My perception is that our draft people did not really plan to sign this many HS stud pitchers. I just think they did not have the proper fail safes in place when a couple of the guys they wanted to draft were drafted before them.
In part 34 I will give you who I would have drafted, much of which is based on my pre-draft mock drafts. As you will see in that post, it was highly possible that we could have pulled off a good that had a better chance to impact the ML team in our competitive window and STILL came in under budget AND with some intriguing guys.
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