Archive for the “2011 MLB Draft” Category

2011 MLB Draft — Future Redbirds

I’ll start the chat a couple minutes before 6:00pm (I had in my head that the draft was earlier than it actually is — I’m still exhausted from a wedding this weekend so it’ll be closer to 6pm than 5pm.) Remember that the cover it live software requires me to moderate the comments. I’ll green light screen names that I recognize and trust to expedite things but please be patient if your comments look like they’re in moderation initially. (I’m trying to get ready to leave on vacation tomorrow so I may be multitasking this evening.)

I’ll have a post up around 4:30pm CST with a coveritlive link where we’ll be chatting during the first round of the draft tonight. Tomorrow we’ll do a similar thing for the subsequent round. Reality is that tomorrow is much busier for the Cardinals (and subsequently for me) with there being about 20 rounds rather than 1.

Jeff and I will have full posts for each player in the first 10 rounds with the excerpts from Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, ESPN and anything else we can dig up on them. We’ll do combined recaps of rounds 11-20, 21-30, 31-40 and 41-50 that should be up the day after those rounds take place.

Feel free to use this thread for any pre-draft discussions. One question I’ll leave you with: Who is the one player you hope the Cardinals DO NOT draft tonight with their first round pick?

Just because you can’t get enough of me and these quick looks at players who have been mock drafted to the Cardinals, here are two more.  Predicting who the Cardinals will pick at 22 is a wild goose chase, so the mock drafts help us figure out who the potential players available will be.  A college bat and a high school bat after the jump.

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With the MLB draft fast approaching, let’s take a look at two more prospects that have been recently mocked to the Cardinals at pick 22.  This week’s prospects are two high school arms.

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Draft Day is less than a week away. I know that we haven’t had much draft coverage here this year (something I need to remedy in the future) but we’ll have a cover it live chat for the evening telecast of the draft on Monday June 6th, 6pm CST.

We’ll also have a chat on Tuesday beginning around 11am CST to cover the second day of selections and, at least, a static thread on Wednesday for any picks made that day.

We’ll dig up as much info as we can find on the Cardinals draft picks much like we did last year. (View the 2010 draft coverage.)

If there’s anything that you want to see in the post draft coverage this year, now is your chance to ask but no guarantees.  I’ll be getting in touch with the other writers shortly to work out who will cover what but I leave for Las Vegas on the 7th so my time will be at least partially restricted due to travel.

Monday morning this week, the Cardinals held their personal workouts for draft-eligible players to get a closer look at each player before the MLB draft which is from June 6-8th.  Derrick Goold has the rundown of players invited to Busch and let’s take a closer look at each invitee after the jump.

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This has been mentioned in passing a few times but with the graduation of Eduardo Sanchez and Fernando Salas to mainstays in the Cardinals’ bullpen and the knee injury to Adam Reifer, suddenly a farm system that looked rich in right handed relief prospects seems lacking.  We’ll traverse the system looking for pitchers who could be the next prominent relief prospect.

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I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t know very much about the MLB draft, with the lack of coverage of high school baseball and the wide range of talent available, not to mention the Cardinals picking in the 15+ range every year – anything could happen on draft day.  However, being that it is 3 weeks away from draft day, I thought I’d take a look and see what the mock drafts (fairly worthless I know) had to say about the Cardinals selection and go from there.  There was an interesting consensus around 2 selections from 5 different sites, let’s take a look after the jump.

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It’s still incredibly early to be talking about this year’s draft but I’m more interested than I’ve been in the past couple years and Keith Law recently released his top 50 list for the draft.  As much as this draft is billed as having top talent, it doesn’t mesh well with the Cardinals overall needs and it looks very pitching heavy to me.

I can’t recall where I read the interview or even who it was really with but I have in my head a recent transcript of a conversation with a Rays executive. They made some comments about the need to develop up the middle talent and frontline starters via the minor league system given the difficulty and expense of acquiring those types of players in the free agency process. This struck me as incredibly poignant and something the Cardinals have had some success with (Adam Wainwright, Colby Rasmus, Yadier Molina).  It’s also the first thing I went looking for in the 2011 draft.

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I saw an interesting Keith Law tweet today:

Early view is that it’s the best since I joined the biz. RT @Studz2389: @keithlaw How deep do you consider this year’s draft?

I’m not fully versed on the 2011 class yet, that will take me a couple months yet, but I’m a little disappointed by Law’s tweet.  The Cardinals will have their typical draft pick in 2011 and that’s it. They’ll have no extra draft picks from free agent players.  The Rays in contrast will have a bevy of picks in the first round.

This isn’t a criticism of the Cardinals so much of a lamentation of the upcoming draft.  We’ll pick 22nd overall and while it’s impossible to know who will be available then 5 months in advance, there’s more college pitchers than I’d like to see in the top ranks of the draft.  The Cardinals need the opportunity to snag some additional position player talent and a single pick in the first round doesn’t really give them the latitude to take many risks.

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