Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: Draft Grades
How does your team’s draft grade out?
BOBBY SYLVESTER / FANTASYPROS.COM
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Braves (A+)
I’m not alone in my thinking here. The general consensus is that the Braves won the draft. They may well be pathetic this season, but watch out in three or four seasons. With the farm team they already have, plus the speculative signing of 16-year-old phenom shortstop, Kevin Maitan, and now a great draft class, highlighted by Ian Anderson, Joey Wentz and Kyle Muller, the Braves might just have the strongest future of any team in baseball not named the Cubs or Red Sox. At pick No. 3, they appeared to have reached for a high school pitching prospect out of New York, but it later became clear that the move was to save money in their budget so they could pay up to sign Wentz and Muller away from their college commitments.
Cardinals (A+)
There was plenty of debate as to whether the Cardinals made an ethical decision by drafting Delvin Perez with the No. 23 pick just days after he tested positive for PEDs. There was no debate, however, over whether he was a spectacular value at the pick. With or without the PEDs, Perez is clearly a top-ten, and perhaps top-five talent in this draft, and for an organization like the Cardinals, who haven’t picked in the top 10 in this millennium, they had to pull the trigger. Add in that Dakota Hudson fell from the top 10 in some mock drafts all the way to the Cardinals’ No. 34 pick and that Connor Jones, who MLB.com ranked No. 21 before the draft, fell all the way to 76, and the Cardinals clearly hit it out of the ballpark.
Red Sox (A-)
Boston managed to land Jason Groome, the No. 1 overall prospect in the draft, at No. 12 after teams passed over him for signability issues. Then, they added Bobby Dalbec in the fifth round, who has more raw power than anyone in the draft class. He has yet to put it together in games, but if he isn’t able to after a few years of development, the Red Sox could opt to turn Dalbec into a big league pitcher. If the Red Sox are able to sign Groome away from Chipola College, their draft grade will jump to an A+. If not, they get the No. 13 pick in next season’s loaded draft class as compensation, but I would drop their grade to a B-.
(Other NL East grades: Nationals (B), Phillies (C+), Mets (C), Marlins (C-))
[ Ed. note: If you go strictly by the pre-draft rankings of BaseballAmerica, you’d have to conclude that Atlanta did indeed score big.
Of the High School pitchers in this draft:
- Ian Anderson: ranked 5th highest (12th overall)
- Kyle Muller: ranked 8th highest (25th overall)
- Joey Wentz: ranked 9th highest (26th overall)
MLBPipeline.com had this trio ranked 13th, 16th, and 24th overall. So yes: three first-round talents in the first 40 picks. Not to ignore the rest, but from here everything else is sweet icing on the cake.
Sure – we wanted a bat… but Atlanta definitely was able to exploit circumstances to load up on the strength of this particular draft pool.
Two of the three are already signed – the third will do so after graduation. ]
Nice work.