The Sand Cat Draft

Wow, I think the Cats did a wonderful job in the draft. Well, the best that could be expected anyway. It could take up to three seasons to know for sure. I also thought it was a pretty weak draft from a college standpoint. When you only spend $10M in college scouting you are really limiting yourself in choices. It is that way because I am just not that into High School players that can take longer to develop. With the scouting budgets set the way it is, we watch more at the signs of development and their overall play more than anything else along with their current ratings which mean more than anything else.

We had Mark Ferguson pegged at being available as our first pick even though he was not the #1 pick on our board. So sad he went a couple picks earlier to Austin. A starting catcher was a big maybe but we saw a very good DH type potential player, something we have never been able to get our hands on in the draft.

Our first pick was Dick Milliard which was in out #2 slot on our board, it didn't really surprise us that he was there. Was it a good pick? I don't really know. The college scouting report said we would be happy with him in the pen in the future, he fit the criteria that we use there anyway. Advance scouting which I really don't rely on much shows something entirely different. Will just have to wait and see how the development goes.

We were not exactly set up to draft pitchers in the draft, that is why the cheap buying spree in the IFA Market. With nothing all that awe inspiring in the way of position players, we took our chances with pitchers in our many 1st and second round picks. Grabbing Kris Shea, Ken Fox, and Louis Hunter. We didn't put all that much emphasis on health like we normally do. Mainly because we really couldn't tell, a big drawback with the scouting budgets.

We drafted Rigo Olivo later in the 2nd round and was a surprise to us that he was still there. Drafted as a CF, he wants to play 2B. We have already decided that he look like a future COF, we liked his speed.

Topping off the second round was Ichiro Nakajima. At the moment we have no real plans for him other than 3B, so development will be a key point with him.

We were also surprised that we captured a couple top 25 picks on our board in the later rounds. As far as we can tell they will be good career minor league pitchers that should make it all the way to AA at least.

And it further confounded us that we were able to draft two players that was tagged just over our top 100 picks in the 17th and 18th rounds. That was cause for celebration.

All told with our 29 picks, we got 9 players in our top 25, 4 more in the top 50, and a total of 18 in the top 110. Furthermore we got 25 total picks that was on our board from the top 200. Most of them may not amount to much but not a bad haul if you ask me. May have been well worth the three hour War Room madness that Jamie described.

In other Cat news. With Will Weston and Tony Burnitz joining the DL at the same time, we were forced to call up Zeke McDonald and Johnny Guerrero to temporarily take their roster spots. We decided to give them as much playing time as possible while on the ML roster and have responded well IOE.