Twins Daily 2022 Draft Coverage, February 15

We don’t know when or where yet. We also don’t know how significantly all of the draft rules will change as the new CBA is negotiated. Things like forfeiting draft picks for signing free agents seem to be on the chopping block. Will small market teams still get compensatory picks? Will there be a lottery (or something crazier like Jayson Stark’s idea, subscription required) to determine draft order? Will we ever get to a point where teams are able to trade draft picks (besides the “competitive balance” picks)?

All of these questions are going to be answered later, and we’ll have that coverage right here. 

In this first article leading into draft season, there will be a lot of links to other places, where you’re welcome to go and start forming your own opinions on players. (I'll get into specific players a bit next week.)

Baseball America (led by Carlos Collazo) pushed out their first mock draft (subscription required) late last week. The two-headed monster of Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo at MLB.com have started their season with their Top 100 Prospects and Callis put out an early Top 10 picks mock draft last month and the two of them going back-and-forth through 20 picks before the draft order was settled in September.  Neither ESPN (led by Kiley McDaniel) nor The Athletic (led by Keith Law) have dropped their first mocks. These sites and Fangraphs are widely considered the industry leaders in draft coverage.

But there are other mock drafts out there too: Prospects Live released a mock draft early last month. My MLB Draft updated theirs on January 18th. Just Baseball put out their first mock draft last week. You can find many others as well.

If you click through those mock drafts or look through prospect ratings, you’ll quickly see how they are top-heavy with hitters. But if you’ve clicked through mock drafts in previous years, you’ll also recall how opinions on players quickly evolve. 

In fact, Baseball America posted all of their mock drafts side-by-side after the 2021 draft. Their original #1 pick? Drafted tenth and didn’t sign. The college catcher that went first overall? They had him mocked at #21, but had a different college catcher mocked at #2 (who ended up going 67th.) 

All of that is just a long way to say: It’s super early… but that doesn’t make it less fun. And there will be plenty of Twins-focused coverage right here.

~~~~~
On a more personal note, I’m back!

For draft coverage anyway. 

If you’ve been around Twins Daily for a while, you may remember me from its early years and covering the draft. (I’m pretty sure it was 2012-2017, but things all tend to run together.) I had to stop, though, when I took a job coaching basketball that required me to shift my focus. I’ve since stopped doing that, too, to spend more time watching my kids grow up and love to play sports as much as their dad did.

I’ve always been enamored by drafts, in any sport. Did you know that WWE has an annual draft? I didn’t either… but when I learned they did, I started watching it. The NFL Draft is one of my favorite days of the year. Did I skip prom in high school to watch the NFL Draft? I might have.

The MLB Draft, though, is so different. Very few names are household names or as the scouts say, “famous.” In no other draft does a team select someone that they don’t, won’t, or can’t sign. In no other drafts are players forced to make such a tough decision (go pro or not) after being drafted? 

In the middle of my original run covering the draft for Twins Daily, there was a situation where a player was drafted and agreed to sign before a physical turned up some new information. The Twins - within their rights - wanted the player to sign for less. With this potentially freed up money, they turned their sites on two other players who weren’t going to sign but could be convinced with additional bonus money. 

In the end, none of them ended up signing with the Twins (though they all ended up hearing their name called again). But at the time, trying to provide breaking draft coverage - and ending up in the crosshairs of a baseball agency - was more taxing than I wanted it to be.

So it’s not going to be quite like that anymore. I’ll let Callis, Mayo, or whoever break the signing details. And I’ll keep readers updated here on those things. 

My plan is to post something weekly, probably on Tuesdays, covering the things that happened since the last update. Some posts figure to be longer than others. Some, especially those in February and March, might be much shorter (or possibly skipped if nothing noteworthy happened). And then we'll ramp it up as the draft gets closer. Heck, maybe even Aaron and John will let me back into the KFAN booth again to talk about the draft.

Anyway, I’m glad you’ve come along for the ride. I hope you enjoy it.

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