Lane Meyer's Yankee Draft Blog on the influential Yankee fan website, NoMaas.org, has quickly become the place to go for anyone looking for information about the recent Major League Draft. Meyer has the latest interviews with the draftees, scouting reports and information on signings. It's the best blog of its kind on the web, so I asked Lane to take a few minutes to share his thoughts with me.
The MLB draft is the least covered out of the four major sports, why do you think that is?
The primary reason is the length of time from when draftees are picked until they start getting coverage by the mainstream press. The rate of attrition is much higher than the other sports because there are so many teams to field in the minor leagues. The odds of getting to the major leagues are staggeringly low. It's not like football were you can be a star the next year. So in baseball, normally you don't see the players emerge onto the national scene for about five years. There are so many picks to cover. There is much more depth in the major league draft.
Do you think the maturation process is changing for draftees, given the success of Tim Lincecum, Joba Chamberlain and some of the Red Sox pitchers?
I don't think the maturation process is being accelerated on a whole. But what you are seeing is that teams are realizing that in order to build a winner, you need to have a flexible roster, and young players that are salary-controlled for six years are a major factor in this. You have a focus then on youth and young players taking important roles, and the only way to acquire these cost-controlled talents is to draft them. Almost no one is going to trade a good, salary-controlled player in this day and age. You see a larger emphasis on bringing along young players. This lends to a feeling of more media focus on this-but I don't think the maturation process has changed. The media is just realizing this now and thus they are paying more attention to it.
You say that the draft is structured differently from the other four major sports - can you explain this a bit more?
The most important thing to understand about the major league baseball draft is that talent does not flow linearly. It's not like other sports where the best player gets drafted first and the second best goes next and so forth. The players in the draft have varying degrees of leverage. Because of this, they can prevent certain teams from picking them by demanding exorbitant amounts of money or by threatening to go to college. Many teams won't take a chance on a player like that, so the player may drop to the back rounds of the draft, or not even be selected at all.
What is it that you find so interesting about the baseball draft?
What's so interesting is that any team has the ability to draft well. If you spend as a franchise 8 million on the entire draft, you are in the top three in baseball. That's not a lot of money when you consider what a league-average middle reliever makes these days. So, any ball club can learn to draft well, even if they miss out on a pricey first round pick. The whole draft becomes a philosophic exercise in how to build a team. It's also interesting to follow the draft after it's over to see who gets signed and why.
For example, the Yanks took Chris Dwyer in the 36th round and he has a lot of talent, perhaps the 2nd best pitching talent they drafted. Now they may not sign him because of the money he's looking for, but the Yankees recent philosophy under Cashman is to apply the Yankees' payroll advantage to improving the farm. Because of this, there's an outside chance that they actually give Dwyer the money he wants.
Tell me a little about Chris Dwyer
Left-handed pitcher from Massachusetts. He did a year of post-graduate high school at a boarding school in Salisbury, CT, so he's 20 years old right now. He throws low 90s and has a great curveball. He has 1st or 2nd round talent, but he fell to the 36th round because he has a commitment to Clemson. The chances of his signing are less than 5%, but you never know. There are a few other guys like this that Yankee draft fans are waiting on (they're called signability cases). Guys like 48th rounder, Rob Scahill; 26th rounder, Blake Monar; 27th rounder, Garrison Lassiter; etc. All of them are highly talented, but come with high bonus demands.
What can you say about Gerrit Cole?
The Yanks have not drafted a pitcher who has had the top fastball in the draft since Brien Taylor, and for that reason alone the pick is exciting. Now, supposedly he has a borderline bad attitude, and he may have some mechanical issues to work through, but he is throwing 95, 96, 97 right now. You will be reading a ton of stories about Cole this summer, but he's not the type of pick I like to focus on. The NoMaas Yankee Draft Blog tracks the big talent guys that fall due to signability concerns for the most part. Cole's signing, despite the Boras Factor, isn't really that much of a question.
What is your opinion about drafting high school pitchers vs college pitchers?
We can go by the numbers and see that college pitchers are further along in their development and you have a better chance of knowing what you're getting. But that doesn't mean there isn't great talent available at the high school level. For me the bottom line is that Darren Openheimer and Brian Cashman are in control of the draft, and I trust them. They've shown a dedication to giving the Yanks a good player development system. If they think the high school pitcher is the best bet, I can't complain about it. The past 2 or 3 years, they've made some good picks and have shown the willingness to spend money not only on the players, but on scouting the country to find them in the first place.
The next pick was a college arm - Jeremy Bleich. What can you tell me about the Stanford lefty?
Bleich was very polarizing at first. When you figure there is a pool of about 1,500 draftable players, Bleich kind of came out of the blue. He had terrible numbers at Stanford this year. But I contacted John Manuel at Baseball America who said he had elbow troubles that hampered him, and at his best he was low 90s with command of three pitches. He profiles to be similar to Ian Kennedy, but from the left side, which makes him more valuable. I know Yankee fans were looking for a big name, and then Bleich comes up and people are saying, "who?" But you have to realize that this was a solid pick. He is a Scott Boras client, but they don't expect to have a big problem signing him.
The Yanks do realize they have the most money, but they are still targeted those who may be undervalued. They think Bleich was one of those guys.
When Cashman took over the reigns from George Steinbrenner after 2005, he knew he had to build though the draft and through the international free agent market. So he hired the best scouts, cross-checkers, and he let these guys cover the country like ants to find out about these kids. Why is this kid dropping in the draft? Why is that kid supposedly undervalued? They have supposedly reached or taken chances on guys like Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain recently - look how that turned out.
A lot of teams can do this, but they choose not to. They can do what the Yankees and Red Sox are doing, but for whatever reason they haven't until very recently.
Is there a team that you feel is doing exceptionally well in the draft in the past two years, and a team that is doing horribly?
Pittsburgh and Houston have been terrible. But when you consider the size of the market, the Mets are the most dreadful team when it comes to the major league draft. It's embarrassing what they do. For example, in the 3rd or 4th round last year, they took a kid named Stephen Clyne. He was a senior in college, which meant he had no leverage at all. If you are a junior, you can threaten to stay in college. If you are in high school you can threaten to go to college.
Clyne has a decent arm, but in the 3rd round you are looking for more upside. The Mets selected him in a high round simply because they knew he had no leverage, and gave him $100,000, which is not only not breaking the slot recommendation, but actually going BELOW it. The Mets are known for not taking risks, not breaking slot.
Now the Tampa Bay Rays, it's hard to pick against them for being the best at this. It's not just because they've been getting the first pick in the draft. Guys like Wade Davis, Jacob McGee, Desmond Jennings, and Jeremy Hellickson were all drafted in the 3rd round or later. The writing has been on the wall for the Rays to be vastly improved, and their start this season is unquestionably a product of developing their minor league system.
Now, the Yanks focus so much on pitching on the draft, is there a danger that they are not developing enough position players?
When you look at it, you see a lot of arms in the system, but they only real position prospect is Austin Jackson, and perhaps Jose Tabata. I don't think you can kill the Yanks for having a perceived dearth of position talent at this point. They are getting their arms from the major league draft, but utilizing the international market for a lot of position players. Many of these guys are 16 or 17, so it will take a while for them to develop. Remember, Cashman only started retooling the farm system beginning with the 2006 draft and International Free Agent market. Things will only getting better for the Yankees and their farm system.
Make sure to check the NoMaas Yankee Draft Blog often, even sign up for alerts to it if you want notification when it is updated. The signing deadline for all of these draftees is August 15th, and Lane Meyer will be tracking everything right up until that point.
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