2015 Cincinnati Reds Draft Preview: Part 1

The Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft will be from June 8th-10th this year, which gives us just under six weeks to ramp up the draft coverage. The Reds will pick 11th overall, then will have the 49th overall pick (their 2nd round pick). They also have the 71st pick following the 2nd round as a competitive balance pick.

The Reds haven’t had a pick as high as 11th in quite a while. We’ve got to back to 2009 when the team selected Mike Leake 8th overall. The 11th pick has a slot value of $3,141,600. The 49th pick brings a slot value of $1,227,800. The 71st pick, the competitive balance pick after the 2nd round, brings a value of $865,900. Cincinnati will have money to work with this season, more than they’ve had in past seasons.

Draft Ranking References

Baseball America’s Draft Coverage

MLB Pipeline Top 100 Draft Prospects

Kiley McDaniels Top 100+ Draft Prospects at Fangraphs

The Reds history

Going back throughout the history of the draft doesn’t do us much good because different people were at the helm over that time, but the Reds have had one man running the draft for them since 2006. So let’s go back to that point and look at what the organization has done since Chris Buckley took over as the Director of Amateur Scouting.

Whenever the Cincinnati Reds have had a pick before the teens under Chris Buckley they have chosen a 4-year college player. They haven’t repeated a position that early though, grabbing an outfielder, a catcher, first baseman and a right handed pitcher. Perhaps that’s just how the draft worked out in those years, but four times seems to be a trend rather than just how things played out.

Prospects to keep an eye on

While we will get into the scouting reports on players every Tuesday from here on out, today we are just going to take a quick look at the Top 20 draft prospects right now. I’ve taken the rankings from the three sources listed above and assigned AP style points to the players to come up with a Top 20 from the group.

Next week the series will return by looking at scouting reports on several of these players and each Tuesday we will work through more of the list, perhaps adding players to the list depending on if anyone jumps up the draft boards or is linked to the Cincinnati Reds.