2021 MLB Draft Day 2 Thread

[Mike Sixel]

5 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

Hopefully he's not saying it to Tyler Jay, Alex Wimmers and Matt Bashore while they're loading boxes at an Amzon fulfillment center.

My son works at one, you'd be surprised who all works at one......

[Dman]

Well at least they took the power hitter in the 4th round this year.  Looks like he will need to work on his eye at the plate as and possibly redo his stroke but he has hit pretty well in the past.  They must like the value he provides in the 4th round.

[nicksaviking]

8 minutes ago, roger said:

Perkins was BIG 10, and that turned out good.  

Yeah, but not as a starter; I made that distinction on purpose. There are a couple other guys who found decent work in the bullpen. Brian Duensing was another.

[nicksaviking]

8 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

My son works at one, you'd be surprised who all works at one......

Yeah sorry, meant no offense. The new one here advertises good wages and everyone's excited for it.

Just snarkily pointing out those guys didn't make it in professional baseball.

[Mike Sixel]

3 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

Yeah sorry, meant no offense. The new one here advertises good wages and everyone's excited for it.

Just snarkily pointing out those guys didn't make it in professional baseball.

None taken......but we all should think sometimes about this kind of thing. He thinks he wants an office job (the normal hours and more pay)....but he has leadership that loves him and his degree, and if his plan works, he'll make a very good salary in 2 years. 

[SteveLV]

More college lefties, please! ?

[nicksaviking]

SEC, now we're talking!

[Mike Sixel]

I'm surprised no catcher yet......

[FLTwinsGuy]

Interesting. Last we saw McLeod, he couldn't get out of the 1st inning in the CWS.. Had a rough tournament

[nicksaviking]

We got any more wiggle room for another HS athlete or arm here in the top ten rounds? I know it's likely going to be all college players  the rest of the way for the Twins, but I always like the HS wild cards.

[Rigby]

2 minutes ago, FLTwinsGuy said:

Interesting. Last we saw McLeod, he couldn't get out of the 1st inning in the CWS.. Had a rough tournament

Yeah, that was not pretty...

[TwinsAce]

1 hour ago, Mike Sixel said:

I'm surprised no catcher yet......

Got your catcher in round 8. ?

[Mike Sixel]

8 minutes ago, TwinsAce said:

Got your catcher in round 8. ?

And 9, apparently!

[adjacent]

Got your catcher in round 8

And in 9

[Brock Beauchamp]

Now I really want a catcher in round ten just to complete this series of posts.

[Mike Sixel]

Other than CF, they pretty much did the positions I asked for. Congrats to the first 10 picks, and good luck to them.

[MMMordabito]

Five pitchers, two catchers and only one guy who profiles as lumbering corner dude out of 11 picks.  Hopefully, some good substance for the pipeline.  Hoping for a lot more pitching tomorrow and then some lottery bats at the trade deadline.

[prouster]

4 hours ago, Seth Stohs said:

They wouldn't have drafted him if they didn't have an agreement with him. 

This is pretty much true of the first round. The further teams get into the pool rounds, the more risks they can take. I’d be shocked if they had a deal in place with Chandler at the moment. 

[Dman]

After grabbing the hardest thrower in the draft they went with 4 other pitchers who don't throw all that hard but appear to have good secondary pitches.  I take it they feel they can get those guys to throw the fastball harder and use the system to develop them.  They haven't taken this many pitchers this high since their first year so will be interesting to watch these guys progress through the system.

They took a lumbering 3rd baseman who might have to move to first or catcher (surprise) in the 4th with an unconventional swing who has had a lot of success hitting the ball to this point, but who might struggle with higher velocity and breaking pitches.  I guess again they hope to develop him by getting him shorter to the ball, but that is a hell of a lot of development needed for a 4th round pick.  I guess the Twins see him differently than others.  Another 3rd baseman in the 7th with a flaw the Twins don't tolerate in that he has low exit velocities and has weak contact issues so an odd pick for them unless of course they see something they think they can correct.

A primarily defensive catcher in the 8th and a more offensive prone catcher in the 9th that might not be able to hit breaking balls.  They both look like value picks according to the MLB site rankings, but both need a fair bit of polish.  

In the tenth they took a shortstop no one seems to know anything about or at least has no writeup.  

It is impossible to know if any of these guys will be any good but I sure hope there are some pitchers who are fast movers in this group.  They took pitcher's higher in the draft like I asked them too now those picks just need to work out.

Personally I like Cleveland's draft for pitching better than the Twins as 10 out of their 11 picks were spent on Pitching much of which could move quickly to the big leagues.  Detroit spent 8 out of 11 picks on Pitchers 2 in the first round. Chicago didn't use their first two picks on pitching but still spent 8 out of 10 picks on pitching and finally Kansas who was more balanced but also used their 1st two picks on pitchers spent 6 of 11 picks on pitching.  In the MLB central arms race the Twins only spent 5 of their 11 picks on pitching. 2 or 3 of which look to have potential to be fast movers the rest are wild cards IMO. 

I think you can see why Cleveland does so well with pitching depth they spend a lot of capital on it.  It looks like they, Chicago and Detroit want much more pitching depth that can quickly move to the MLB level ASAP thus the reason so many of their early picks on pitching especially college arms. 

Hopefully the Twins can keep up.  They have a tendency to pick mostly pitchers in rounds 11 through 20 so I am sure they will get more bites at the apple but I think they might have been better served by taking Cleveland's approach and taken as much potential fast moving quality pitching as possible.  After all it is the thing they need the most.

[roger]

See that the shortstop taken in the tenth round was a senior.  I don’t know if he has another year (COVID), but normally he is someone who would get a minimal bonus giving them some extra dollars to sign another pick.

[gunnarthor]

There are a few picks I liked - MacLeod will make the majors, I like that the Twins took Petty.  Young power arm that could start if it goes well works for me. I wonder how much the Twins saved, if they can convince one of the handful of power HS arms to sign rather than go to college, I'd be really impressed.

[Game7-91]

33 minutes ago, Dman said:

It is impossible to know if any of these guys will be any good but I sure hope there are some pitchers who are fast movers

Flaccid portends

 These omens whispering

Of outs on the black

[mikelink45]

I have to admit, I know nothing about these draft picks.  No Clue.  But I read the descriptions - "does not have the most range in the world", "While the ERA is not promising,", "as he put up a 5.23 ERA in 82 and 2/3 innings pitched and he struggled in the College World Series.", "won't flash any specific plus traits", "after a disappointing performance this spring for the Bruins he fell down draft boards", and "here were some concerns on how good his arm would be after coming back from Tommy John surgery,"  These are comments from the summaries. 

Wait and see, good luck guys.  Maybe one of you will walk across a MLB diamond, but have fun while you try. 

[Ruven]

5 hours ago, SteelDodo said:

Also, one interesting trend I just noticed: it seems like the Twins like the Twins really like using the second round pick to take someone WAY below slot value.

Each year since 2017, the Twins only paid their second round pick ~75-80% of their slot value.

Landon Leach signed for $1,400,000 (slot value was $1,846,100).

Jeffers signed for $800k (slot value was $1,140,600).

Canterino signed for $1,100,000 (slot value was $1,338,500), 

and Soularie signed for $900,000 (slot value was $1,185,500)

You might not be wrong - one reason to do that would be to draft a guy strongly committed to college in a later round with enough money banked to pay him enough to sign now. One example on both sides, the Yankees and Don Mattingly, 17th(?) round way back when; contra that, Twins drafted George Springer in the 38th(?) out of HS and he stayed with his college plans. OTOH times change and there are dollar caps on what teams can spend, there might not be enough in the kitty to sign some college-bound kids drafted very late with a meager few hundred $k saved early on  

Another possibility and the one I think is correct is, they know this pick is their only shot at “this guy” because he for sure won’t be around when their next pick comes along. Doesn’t look like they were wrong with Jeffers, and Canterino is now a top prospect; Soularie and Leach I don’t know from. This approach requires enough success in drafting players for fans to say, This management and scouting group knows what they’re doing. With this Twins FO that’s still an assessment in flux, though early returns (Larnach & Kirilloff, Jeffers, some others) is very promising. 

Which is to say, evaluating baseball talent, especially HS kids, is a major crap shoot. And it takes years to develop players. I’m hoping they’re hitting on many of their draft picks. Even those some have evaluated as unders on slot value. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, MMMordabito said:

Five pitchers, two catchers and only one guy who profiles as lumbering corner dude out of 11 picks.  Hopefully, some good substance for the pipeline.  Hoping for a lot more pitching tomorrow and then some lottery bats at the trade deadline.

I wonder if this is a shift in organizational philosophy or simply luck of the draw.

[Splash]

2 hours ago, mikelink45 said:

I have to admit, I know nothing about these draft picks.  No Clue.  But I read the descriptions - "does not have the most range in the world", "While the ERA is not promising,", "as he put up a 5.23 ERA in 82 and 2/3 innings pitched and he struggled in the College World Series.", "won't flash any specific plus traits", "after a disappointing performance this spring for the Bruins he fell down draft boards", and "here were some concerns on how good his arm would be after coming back from Tommy John surgery,"  These are comments from the summaries. 

Wait and see, good luck guys.  Maybe one of you will walk across a MLB diamond, but have fun while you try. 

You’re gonna be hard pressed to find a player after the first round without some flaw or concern.

[mikelink45]

16 minutes ago, Splash said:

You’re gonna be hard pressed to find a player after the first round without some flaw or concern.

I know that is true, but in these brief descriptions the quotes I put in really stand out.

[Game7-91]

10 hours ago, Dman said:

 

Adrian Del Castillo was mocked a couples times to the Twins by different outlets. We are very thin at the catcher position in the system. Definitely need to come away with a college catcher (or two) today.

Spot on! Great call?

[DocBauer]

My thoughts, with apologies I didn't have time between work and lawn work afterwards to read everyone's comments. I just want to toss my $.02 worth.

Even with the crapshoot that is the ML draft, your top 10 selections remain pretty important. And as an outsider looking in, I'm really pleased thus far.

As I stated in the 1st day thread, pleasantly surprised by Petty and just don't understand why/how a HS pitcher with 100MPH heat and some decent secondary offerings and projectability lasts that late. I'm trusting the Twins scouting department watching an athletic, defensive SS probably more intently than others. I'm trusting their hitting projections at this point over the scorecard I've seen concerning his hitting and power potential. 

But I was very pleased with day 2, again as an outsider who pretends to know anything.

I laughed and shook my head about comments regarding Big 10 pitchers, I get it. But there has been a real shift the past few years in the Big 10 when you look at Indiana, Michigan and Nebraska, etc. And I applaud 3 LH college arms added day 2. It's not only a need, but a trio of solid arms with results and projectability that have potential to add velocity and develop the rest of their repertoire, which is exactly the formula they've been following with Canterino, Sands, Winder and others. I wouldn't be surprised if Macleod, with professional coaching, doesn't turn out to be the best of the three.

Both catchers, if the reports are correct, have defensive chops. Cardenas has flashed offense before a disappointing 2021. And Winel comes from a smaller school who missed the abbreviated 2020 season due to arm surgery, That can be a big deal, But if his arm is good going forward, sure seems like he has some potential in both sides of the plate offense and defense. The organization has a handful of interesting catching options at A ball but needed to add to that, I think they would have jumped at Mack if he had slid a couple more spots over SS Miller. But they got a "slider" in Cardenas and another solid option in Winkel if his arm remains sound.

Just not sure what to think of the infielders. OK State has a good program and Ecarnacion-stroud seems to have the bat and the arm, but there are questions about hands and range. Not trying to be a blind optomist, but I've seen a number of guys including some great Twins 3B, that had similar questions before time and work turned them in to quality defenders. With a bat and arm, he's worth working with, For those who oppose the Twins early college bat choices they waited until the 4th round this year, lol. But a big bat and a good arm are WORTH taking a look at, right?

Rucker reminds me of Steer and an infield version of 2020 draftee Alerick Soularie, also from Tenessee. A decent bat and glove with offensive potential who may not play up enough to be a top prospect but who may have a ceiling we don't know yet that could surprise. Yake seems like a possible Dozier clone. And there is merit in that.

You don't draft from pure NEED in the ML draft like you do in the NBA or NFL, but you can still draft in regard to organizational need. So far, between 2019 and 2021, with a few others tossed in, the Twins have hit the infield pretty hard. They've added a pair of top 10 selections at catcher to follow Jeffers and Rortvedt. And then they added a trio of intriguing college LH arms, much needed, after taking a HIGH upside HS arm. The only selection that I'm scratching my head about is Adams from Sacramento State. The numbers just don't scream anything. I need to look closer, assuming I can find anything of value it must be build and length and something they see potentially. [Winder part 2]?

Not entirely sold on the college infielders, but really like everything they've done the first 2 days.

[Monkeypaws]

4 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I wonder if this is a shift in organizational philosophy or simply luck of the draw.

Here's what Seth Johnson had to say"

Quote

"The fact that we got three lefties is a really good outcome. We could've ended up with all right-handers as well. It's just kind of how it organically fell," Johnson said. "... There's no game plan to grab lefties or grab catchers or grab whatever. Really, we're just going after the guys we believe in the most when it's our turn to pick."

Sounds like luck of the draw.