[ad_1]
The 2019 first-year Major League Baseball draft will begin Monday night at 7 pm AND. The project will pause once the first two rounds are over, then resume on Tuesday until the end of the 10th lap. The teams will finish the 40 round test on Wednesday. The Baltimore Orioles hold the first overall pick for the second time in their franchise history, and the new general manager Mike Elias and his company have hidden their intent.
The Orioles were expected to choose Oregon State receiver Adley Rutschman. Widely regarded as the best player in the repechage, Rutschman is a good hitter with a good glove that, according to scouts, offers the potential of four more tools. However, a Sunday article on MLB.com suggested to other industry members that the Orioles would choose another player – be it Cal's first baseman, Andrew Vaughn or the other player. Vanderbilt, JJ Bleday:
Now, about 24 hours before the announcement of the first choice, the Orioles will not be carried away by the backstop. High-level scouts from two different teams who later picked in the first round insisted that Baltimore did not plan to take Rutschman.
Whether or not this report is a false alarm – or perhaps a bargaining ploy at the eleventh hour – must be determined. We thought to explain why the Orioles would use choice # 1 on anyone except Rutschman.
1. Differences in evaluation
Baseball is an important industry. Try hard enough and you can almost always find someone whose opinion on a player conflicts with the norm. Sometimes this person leads a team.
There is no way of knowing what the Orioles think of Rutschman (or anyone else in the project) for the moment. But there is always room for disagreements about individual players – whether to judge the typing tool (the most important part of the evaluation process), or to have a more read Conservative underlying skills of a player. With a backstop, this could mean that the team's internal analyzes do not consider him a good framer. This is not the case with Rutschman, according to other teams' ratings, but the algorithms and priorities may differ, even in the era of big data baseball.
Similarly, it is possible that the Orioles have a higher opinion of Vaughn or Bleday than industry standards. It does not take much imagination to imagine a scenario in which the Orioles prefer Vaughn because they think it can play a bigger role than the first goal – which would alleviate some concerns about his size and its overall value.
Keep in mind that the Orioles do not have an official screening director. The department was instead headed by deputy director Brad Ciolek, heir to Dan Duquette's regime, while Elias apparently had a hands-on approach. Elias was once Director of Recruitment for the Houston Astros, who rely heavily on quantitative analysis to expand their lists of preferences. So it makes sense for him to do the same in Baltimore.
If for some reason, Elias's formulas do not consider Rutschman as the # 1 player, he will probably not be the # 1 choice.
2. It's money
Keeping with the theme of mathematics, it is possible that the Orioles choose to take someone else than Rutschman for financial purposes. Elias has more than $ 13 million to hand out as part of the game's second largest bonus pool. He also has four selections in the top 80, and could choose to take a portfolio approach as a way to revive to the Baltimore Farm System.
What we mean by that, is that Elias could take Vaughn or Bleday, knowing that it would take less money to sign than Rutschman, which probably corresponds to the value of $ 8.4 million slot allocated to first choice. The savings could then be used to engage a player who slips into the draft due to perceived signing issues. In other words, the Orioles are trying to attract two of the top 30 talents (or whatever) instead of two of the top 40 (or whatever).
This approach also carries risks – especially if the Orioles believe Rutschman is the best player in the repechage – but it's a strategy that the Astros have adopted during Elias's stay, and that scouts have suggested that He might consider following here. as well as.
3. Health problems
The most annoying explanation is that the Orioles are tired of Rutschman's medical exams.
Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel noted on FanGraphs that Rutschman had been injured in the leg last year and that he had shoulder problems that prevented him from playing at the quarterback position. high school. That does not seem to be a problem now, at a time when he was microscopic with that day in mind, but that's all.
We have referenced Elias' past with the Astros in the other subheadings, so let's go and do it here too. Do not forget that the Astros left Brady Aiken because of an ulnar collateral ligament abnormality. Since then, Aiken has suffered setbacks, physical and otherwise, which have reduced his chances of becoming a great starter.
That's not to say that Elias and his crew have been justified – it's just to say that he's probably comfortable making a controversial decision based on medical assessments.
[ad_2]
Source link