MLB draft(June 3-5)

[CSF77]

Catching is the hardest position to master. Nothing wrong with over stocking there also.

 

[beckdawg]

Draft will not affect that. At best the 2nd round kid might shoot up if he signs fast. Get him a few weeks at Azl then push him to SB if the bat is advanced enough. Boise tends to be a spot for the HS talent from the previous draft and late signing.

Think you're missing my point. If you draft college hitters(likely senior signs) you can often start them in A+ and quickly move them to A. That allows you to bump guys in A to A+ and guys in A+ to AA. It's not just about the guys they draft being in AA this year. It's about building depth at lower levels that allows you to prop up the weaker areas. Right now they don't have much hitting ready to move that quickly in mesa/DSL/eugene.

 

[CSF77]

UCLA player homered right after Cubs drafted him

The Official Site of Major League Baseball

www.mlb.com

 

[CSF77]

That was speaking of Chase Strumpf. He is still involved with the NCAA Tournament regional . I don't expect a quick situation while he has games to play.

 

[beckdawg]

i passed out for the 8th, 9th and 10th rounds so I missed the draft coverage on them. Davidjohn Herz has a UNC commit so he's probably like $400-500k in a $162.70k slot. I'll dig a bit more on him and the others to see what I can find. Tyler Schlaffer is a local high schooler so he might be easier than normal for a HS sign but i am guessing he's also going to be in the $300-400k range. Wyatt Hendrie is a juco catcher. Probably a cheaper sign.

 

[beckdawg]

So Herz looks pretty interesting. He's got good size(6-2) and apparently already has hit 93 and most importantly he's a lefty. BA had him 243. Schlaffer looks to have decent velocity as well already but not quite as much size at 6-1. Supposedly he sits 90-93.

BA has Hendrie 357.

 

[beckdawg]

So, not going to individually got through the 11-20 picks but there were a couple of interesting names. Adam Laskey was a top 100 guy out of high school but has struggled at duke. Johzan Oquendo and Porter Hodge are both high school arms which is kind of early for guys you aren't actually going to sign.

Additionally, I'm still shocked how much pitching they've drafted. They've taken 15 pitchers and 5 hitters. I gotta figure that 20-30 is going to be more hitters because I'm not sure what they are going to be doing with all these pitchers. I mean I know they have 2 teams in mesa to fill and a- but jeez that's a lot of pitching.

 

[beckdawg]

Cubs To Sign Sixth-Rounder Ethan Hearn

The Cubs have reached an agreement with their sixth-round pick, high school catcher Ethan Hearn, NBC Sports Chicago's David Kaplan …

www.mlbtraderumors.com

So looks like he's costing some where between $682.8k to $1.5 mil over. If I had to guess they'd probably toss him like $1.1-1.2 mil which would be about 850k-950k over. It's a similar price to what Davis/Roederer signed for.

 

[beckdawg]

19 of their 33 picks have been pitchers. 4 have been C. The rest shakes out to be 1 2B, 1 3B, 3 SS, 1 utility infielder, and 4 outfielders. That's kind of an odd assortment. Not saying it's bad but when you're having to fill 3 teams(2 rookie league and A-) that's not very many infielders. I'm not 100% on where their international depth is with regard to mesa call ups from the dsl last year. So maybe they have a bunch of infielders that way.

It's really not the way I saw this going. I expected more hitters which makes me think they must have pretty good ideas on the hitters they drafted being signable.

 

[CSF77]

Cubs To Sign Sixth-Rounder Ethan Hearn
June 5th, 2019 at 2:11pm CST • By Mark Polishuk
The Cubs have reached an agreement with their sixth-round pick, high school catcher Ethan Hearn, NBC Sports Chicago’s David Kaplan reports (Twitter link). Hearn had been committed to Mississippi State, though he will instead begin his pro career after receiving a substantially large signing bonus. Kaplan reports that Hearn “will receive second round money,” rather than the $247K recommended slot price attached to the 192nd overall selection. This likely means Hearn’s bonus is in the seven figures, as the second-round slot prices range from $929.8K to just over $1.771MM.
Hearn’s college commitment dropped him into the sixth round, though most draft pundits projected him in the low-second/high-third round area (Baseball America ranked him 66th among all draft prospects, and Hearn was ranked 67th by MLB.com, and 71st by Fangraphs). Generally considered the top high school catcher in this year’s draft class, Hearn is described by Baseball America’s scouting report as possessing “above-average raw power but a below-average hit tool” for now. He has a strong throwing arm and strong defensive potential behind the plate, though his overall defensive work may still need some seasoning, which isn’t unusual for such a young catcher.
By going significantly over slot to sign Hearn, the Cubs will eat into a big chunk of their $5,826,900 overall draft pool. It’s worth noting that Hearn is the only high schooler taken within Chicago’s first seven picks, so the Cubs have positioned themselves to create some savings elsewhere.

 

[CSF77]

So that was the real reason why they under slotted

 

[beckdawg]

Was reading something that struck my interest. The suggestion was that the cubs may have gone underslot at the top not just because of Ethan Hearn but for a different reason. Last year they became one of 7 teams to have 2 low level rookie teams. The implication of this is that you have an extra team to fill but because you have an extra team you can develop more players and in particular more raw players.

Up until recently the cubs have been fairly risk averse. They've almost exclusively drafted college pitching and while they've targeted a bit more high school hitting it's still pales in comparison to the number of college guys. The issue with that is unless you're drafting high in the draft it's really difficult to "win" on college players because they largely are what they are by that point. When people talk about the inability of the team to develop pitching I think they are drawing the wrong conclusion. The issue isn't so much development. It's the fact that their starting point was college guys who didn't have a ton of upside.

Needless to say I'm very intrigued by the thought of them focusing more on high schoolers. They've built a state of the art facility in mesa. And while typically speaking, high schoolers are more risky, one way of offsetting that risk is by volume. If they can sign 2-3 guys in the $400-500k range each draft rather than throwing down $1-1.5 mil on one high school guy I think that presents an interesting situation. You get guys into your system and develop them before they break out.

To that end, Manny Collier strikes me as really interesting. He's a 2 sport star in football and baseball who they took in the 23rd round and who appears likely to sign. In a similar way to Brennen Davis last year, he's likely more raw because of this. But that's also why they may be able to sign him. There's some other guys in this class who are like that as well. DJ Herz seems like he is under rated. He's supposedly already hit 95. Tyler Schlaffer, Porter Hodge and Johzan Oquendo all were drafted in spots that lead me to believe they will sign. So, that's at least 5 guys who are HS I expect to sign. Last year they had 2 additional high round picks and only signed 5 high schoolers. They drafted another 6 HSers in this draft though one already seems unlikely. So, they could be adding quite a bit of really young talent to mold.

 

[beckdawg]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1136819392006766592

Slot was $149,800 but you can go 5% over with no penalty to $157,290. So he's about $100k over which is pretty good for a HS sign.

 

[DanTown]

Was reading something that struck my interest. The suggestion was that the cubs may have gone underslot at the top not just because of Ethan Hearn but for a different reason. Last year they became one of 7 teams to have 2 low level rookie teams. The implication of this is that you have an extra team to fill but because you have an extra team you can develop more players and in particular more raw players.

Up until recently the cubs have been fairly risk averse. They've almost exclusively drafted college pitching and while they've targeted a bit more high school hitting it's still pales in comparison to the number of college guys. The issue with that is unless you're drafting high in the draft it's really difficult to "win" on college players because they largely are what they are by that point. When people talk about the inability of the team to develop pitching I think they are drawing the wrong conclusion. The issue isn't so much development. It's the fact that their starting point was college guys who didn't have a ton of upside.

Needless to say I'm very intrigued by the thought of them focusing more on high schoolers. They've built a state of the art facility in mesa. And while typically speaking, high schoolers are more risky, one way of offsetting that risk is by volume. If they can sign 2-3 guys in the $400-500k range each draft rather than throwing down $1-1.5 mil on one high school guy I think that presents an interesting situation. You get guys into your system and develop them before they break out.

To that end, Manny Collier strikes me as really interesting. He's a 2 sport star in football and baseball who they took in the 23rd round and who appears likely to sign. In a similar way to Brennen Davis last year, he's likely more raw because of this. But that's also why they may be able to sign him. There's some other guys in this class who are like that as well. DJ Herz seems like he is under rated. He's supposedly already hit 95. Tyler Schlaffer, Porter Hodge and Johzan Oquendo all were drafted in spots that lead me to believe they will sign. So, that's at least 5 guys who are HS I expect to sign. Last year they had 2 additional high round picks and only signed 5 high schoolers. They drafted another 6 HSers in this draft though one already seems unlikely. So, they could be adding quite a bit of really young talent to mold.

I think the Cubs have looked at the draft as what do they feel they need to get out of it. In the 2015-2017 era, I think they viewed the draft as trying to find as much low level/high volume pitching that can eat innings in the back of a rotation because you look at Lester, Hendricks, Arrieta/Quintana all under team control for a considerable amount of time and think to yourself "we should probably be concerned more with depth than trying to hit HR since we have so many guys firmly locked in". Now, with the rotation having a completely different look to it probably starting 2020, I think the Cubs firmly believe in their ability to create and adapt pitching (which is weird since the best homegrown arm are in AAA, but ok) and that they will have to find high value pitching.

In regards to hitters, the Cubs see they have Bryant, Baez, Almora, Contreras, Bote, Russell, Heyward all under control for several years and guys like Hoerner seem close and then a few more deeper level bats so how likely is it the bat they draft is going to be valuable to them? It's almost only going to be a trade and then that really means you have to hit on a late pick becoming a top flight prospect because it's so hard for guys drafted outside the top 50 or so of a draft to put together enough ML production to rise rankings.

 

[beckdawg]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1138241217160974337

So there's another $150k. Schlaffer was $100k over so between this $150k and the ~500k from Jensen the cubs are net +$550kish. Assuming Hearn is getting something like $1 mil they are about $200k short still. Then there's also still Herz to get paid. That said the other 4 picks out side of Strumpf seem likely under slot.

 

[beckdawg]

Bunch of signings happened today. No word on dollar amounts for the first 10 round guys or for any of them for that matter but looking likely the cubs are going to sign their first 30 picks which is pretty surprising actually in a typical year. Maybe not as much this year with them focusing a bit more on seniors in the 20's. But as things stand right now, the only 3 that are apparently iffy are Adam Laskey(jr duke), Hunter Bigge(jr harvard) and Johzan Oquendo who's a HS out of puerto rico but with him the cubs have made a habit of taking a guy in the teens the past few years from PR out of high school. The tend to be bit easier to sign given the relative wealth compared to mainland US.

Overall though there's only 2 guys they have drafted who appear to be outright no's already. There's another 6 guys who are either HS(5) or juco

 

[anotheridiot]

Cubs To Sign Sixth-Rounder Ethan Hearn
June 5th, 2019 at 2:11pm CST • By Mark Polishuk
The Cubs have reached an agreement with their sixth-round pick, high school catcher Ethan Hearn, NBC Sports Chicago’s David Kaplan reports (Twitter link). Hearn had been committed to Mississippi State, though he will instead begin his pro career after receiving a substantially large signing bonus. Kaplan reports that Hearn “will receive second round money,” rather than the $247K recommended slot price attached to the 192nd overall selection. This likely means Hearn’s bonus is in the seven figures, as the second-round slot prices range from $929.8K to just over $1.771MM.
Hearn’s college commitment dropped him into the sixth round, though most draft pundits projected him in the low-second/high-third round area (Baseball America ranked him 66th among all draft prospects, and Hearn was ranked 67th by MLB.com, and 71st by Fangraphs). Generally considered the top high school catcher in this year’s draft class, Hearn is described by Baseball America’s scouting report as possessing “above-average raw power but a below-average hit tool” for now. He has a strong throwing arm and strong defensive potential behind the plate, though his overall defensive work may still need some seasoning, which isn’t unusual for such a young catcher.
By going significantly over slot to sign Hearn, the Cubs will eat into a big chunk of their $5,826,900 overall draft pool. It’s worth noting that Hearn is the only high schooler taken within Chicago’s first seven picks, so the Cubs have positioned themselves to create some savings elsewhere.

Its like a light just went on. 6 million pool, 30 teams,

 

[beckdawg]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1139304112384647168

Slot was $162,700. So, that's ~$380k over bringing the previously mentioned +$550kish net savings thus far down to $170kish.

 

[beckdawg]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1140000017777926146

That's another +$93k. So they are something like $263k under their slot singings.

Edit: correction apparently the Herz signing was only $500k not $543.5. If my math is right the exact math is +$561,290 with 10th round pick Wyatt Hendrie and his $149,310(with 5% overage), 6th round pick Ethan Hearn($259,350), 3rd round pick Michael McAvene($593,880) and 2nd round pick Chase Strumpf($1,102,815) let to sign.

If my assumption that the cubs are shooting for $1 mil for Hearn is accurate then they are currently at $820,640 and would need to save another $180 between the other 3 remaining picks. Strumpf strikes me as a pure slot sign. McAvene is probably under. Hendrie might be a touch over.

 

[beckdawg]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1141125640722288640