Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch

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With the Twins having a severe need for pitching in the organization as well as six picks among the top 100, it is certain that more than one of those picks (and probably the second overall pick) will be used to draft a pitcher. To this respect, I am presenting profiles of the top 22 pitching prospects for the 2012 MLB draft.

I will be presenting these alphabetically, and at the end I will rank them. I will be doing about one a day and I will finish before the June 4th draft day. You can find all the profiles (in reverse alphabetical order) as they are presented here.

I will start with RJ Alvarez and end with Kyle Zimmer. Each profile with contain a bit of background information and statistics, a mini scouting report and videos and photos.

Profile 2: Mark Appel

Profile/Stats:

Mark Appel is a junior at Stanford University and a three-year player there. He is from Houston, TX and went to Monte Vista High School. He is listed at 6'6" and 200 lbs. He throws Right handed. He was drafted in the 15th round out of High School by the Detroit Tigers but he did not sign. Was a Two-year letterman in basketball and baseball. In his current season he started 11 games and is 7-1 (86 IP) with a 2.72 ERA, 20 BB and 85 strikeouts allowing a .226 opponent batting average. Last summer, playing with Team USA, in 9 IP as a reliever (4 games) and an one game starter he had a 5.00 ERA striking out 11 and walking 2; in the Cape Cod league he had a 1.35 ERA, 20 IP, striking out 25 and walking 3.

Mini Scouting Report:

His fastball averages around 94-95 mph with occasional busts at 97-99 and he has excellent command. It is a plus fastball. His change up is a circle change and sits around 82-83 mph and is a borderline plus pitch. He is throwing a tight slider in the low 80s, which is a work in process and is working on a cutter that sits on the low 90s and touches up to 93 and so far has a nice side to side movement. He is throwing from a three-quarters position and his height allows for a tight downward plane. Mark Appel has been mentioned as one of the top picks on this draft and there are a lot written about him and most baseball fans who are following the draft know who he is. Here is a great analysis from Hardball Times, which is worth reading. It analyzes his mechanics and discusses whether or not he should be a top pick.

Videos/Photos:

Because of the difficulty in embedding videos here, please go to the original post to see 4 videos of Mark Appel Pitching and interviews

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/stan/sports/m-basebl/auto_action/4986944.jpeg

thrylos, thanks for doing this. Appreciated.

I am not a scout, nor an expert on baseball. I'm just a fan. From what I read on the 'net, Appel projects as a 2 or so. That's assuming that you qualify a 1 as ACE, and most articles I read say there are 15 or so Aces on the planet at any one time. So, projecting as a 2 isn't a "bad" thing, not at all.

Mike, thanks. I just don't buy into these numerical projections, in general. And most of them will be wrong anyways For example after the 2001 season, Boof Bonser was projected as a #1 and was ranked on the top 30 overall prospects by Baseball America. We know better after the fact. So I don't buy those numbers

We can only project the future based on what we know today...so I'm not sure how else to assess someone other than logic and hypothesis and theory. Since we never see these guys play (unlike basketball or football), I can only really go off what access and comments we have to online scouts and commentors (like BA, Law, other ESPN scouts......). So, pick another way to assess or rank someone, but that's all we really have. Sure, BA and others will be wrong, a lot, but I'm not sure what else we have to go on.

from the free chat on espn yesterday:

Can Mark Appel be a dominant pitcher in the pros?

[h=6]Klaw (1:37 PM)

[/h]

Define 'dominant.' Is a #2 starter, top 40-45 starter in the majors, dominant? That's what he probably is.

Seems like people are down on him, but probably not enough to make him be drafted later than #10 in the draft

Saw him pitch last night against WSU. Good news: he had 10 K's in 8 innings and got the win (score was 3-2). Bad news: he threw 121 pitches and WSU's two best hitters (Ard and Jones) had no problem crushing the ball (they combined for two doubles and a home run).