This is not a “story” as much as it just a rant. It is about the baseball draft. I have to mostly refrain myself from viewing comments on Twitter and Facebook and then also responding to the people who actually do make the comments.

First of all, the MLB draft is about the future......as in three or four years from now. The number of people who complained about the first round pick of the Twins because their major league pitching staff is not any good makes my head spin. I don’t think any of them realize that most of the best prospects in the Twins organization are pitchers. Minnesota has Jose Berrios, Kohl Stewart, Tyler Jay and Stephen Gonsalves, just to name a few.

The number of hitters toward the top of the prospects list is few and far between now that Byron Buxton and Max Kepler are up in the majors. Nick Gordon is near the top of the list, as is Jorge Polanco. But other than that......not much. In Seth’s midseason prospect rankings, there were only three non-pitchers in the top 10, and one of those (Kepler) was recently called up.

When drafting in the MLB draft, teams have a number of factors to consider. For instance, if a player who drops quite a bit in the first round or maybe even into the second round and beyond, signability becomes a major concern. Unlike other drafts, there is a certain amount you can’t go over without sacrificing cash and drafting a lesser player in the next few rounds. So most often, you can’t just draft the best player available, especially if that player is a top-tier player and a high schooler, in the second or third round because that player will probably not sign. This goes along with what agent the player has. A Scott Boras player may be tougher to sign than another player who has a different agent.

Teams will look at their board and see who they think is the best player available is. One of my biggest pet peeves, and this is about any draft and not just the MLB Draft, is when people complain when General Managers talk about how they drafted the player they feel is the best one available and they disagree. Those people see that a certain player is ranked higher by one of the draft experts than the player drafted by the team and they throw a fit.

People seem to think they know more than people who, ya know, are paid to scout for a living and don’t just look at two clips and go off what the MLB Draft “experts” think. I, honestly, have never seen any of these players play either live or on television, and I am sure 99 percent of Twins fans are the same way, so I leave it to the people who are paid to make these decisions and so should the fans who are complaining.

Okay, that should do it for my rant post. I feel a lot better now that I was able to get this off my chest.