Well, last night sure was fun, wasn’t it? Starting at pick #2, every single mock draft had already failed. The Cincinnati Reds seemed to land one of the guys that they wanted when they selected outfielder Austin Hendrick. He’s been on their radar for quite a while, and was mocked to Cincinnati more than a few times over the last two months. If you want to catch up on everything Austin Hendrick, including quotes from Dick Williams, Nick Krall, and scouting director Brad Meador – this is the link for you.
Day two is now upon us, and unlike past drafts, it’s the final day. With the draft only being five rounds, there’s no need to spread things out beyond two days. Honestly, they could have done the entire thing yesterday, but since it’s “made for TV”, they have to drag things out.
The draft will begin at 5pm ET this afternoon and will be available on MLB.com, MLB Network, and ESPN2. The Reds will have five picks today, drafting 48th overall (2nd round), 65th (2nd round, Competitive Balance), 84th overall (3rd round), 113th (4th round), and 143rd (5th round).
Draft Day Resources
MLB Pipeline has their Top 200 Draft prospects list available here, and it’s free to read and has scouting reports for the players.
Fangraphs has up their Top 255 Draft prospects list available here, and it has at least some scouting information on most guys.
Baseball America’s top prospect list for the draft runs 500 players deep. It’s going to require a subscription for you to check out, though. That said, they are the gold standard in the industry for a reason.
Who are the top prospects remaining?
Jared Kelley (scouting report here), who rated as the #10 prospect on my Top 30, the #11 prospect by Baseball America, the #12 prospect by MLB Pipeline, and the #17 prospect on the Fangraphs list is still out there. The right-handed pitcher was arguably the top high school pitcher in the country
Chris McMahon (scouting report here), another right-handed pitcher, is still available. He rated as the #22 prospect on my Top 30, #29 on the MLB Pipeline list, #30 on the Baseball America list, and #47 on the Fangraphs list. The Miami Hurricanes starter was dominant early on in 2020 before the shutdown of the college baseball season.
Cole Wilcox (scouting report here) – also a right-handed pitcher – was rated as my #24 prospect in the Top 30, #16 by Fangraphs, #23 by MLB Pipeline, and #24 by Baseball America and he’s still sitting out there for the taking. The Georgia righty has walked 2 batters with 32 strikeouts in 23.0 innings this year before the season shut down.
MLB Pipeline has up their list, which features 17 players remaining in the Top 50 on their list that are still available.
What’s coming later today
With each pick tonight, I will be posting a full report on each player. Unlike guys taken in the first round, it’ll probably take me a little more time to get a post up – probably about 10 minutes after the pick is announced for general information – but all five draft picks will be getting their own article with as much information as can be had.
Looking forward to your reports on the Reds’ remaining picks. You do really good work.
Wilcox is going back to college
Has Wilcox said this or just a prediction based on his fall in the draft?
Kelley was the the guy I wanted the Reds to take with their 1st round pick but I am fine with the guy they took. It would be great if they could get Kelley in round 2 but I can’t believe he will last that long.
Dillon Dingler and Casey Martin will be hard bats for the Reds to pass on if they are there. I have to believe Tommy Mace and Chris McMahon are high on their wish list as well.
Would love to see them take Landon Knack with their comp pick as a senior sign.
Kelley may be out of their price range at this point.
I’m interested to see any pitcher they draft knowing that the new regime will have had a hand in their selection
Doug,
What are your thoughts on Seth Lonsway? I’m Extremely high on him. Best curveball in this draft and an get up to 96 on the gun. Celina, OH product. Reds drafted him already a couple years back in 19tg round but opted for Ohio State instead
Day 1 was quite successful.
Day 2 was dreadful. One word describes this day, reach. Every player selected except the last one was ranked over 40 spots below where the Reds selected them. R-E-A-C-H. Same , pretty much as last year. Round 1 success and not much else to celebrate after that. Nobody, and I mean nobody nationally is hailing the Reds 2020 draft class.
And in two years it won’t matter at all. The best player alive wasn’t even his own teams first pick in the year he was drafted. Albert Pujols was the 16th player THE CARDINALS drafted in 1999. Drafting baseball players is insanely difficult to get right. By the time you reach the middle of the first round the likely outcome is a bench player or solid reliever. By the time you reach the second round the likely outcome is a cup of coffee. And that is happening with the absolute best people in the world making the decisions.
In a year like today when there was almost no baseball played the rankings are even more of a “throw some darts at a dart board” than ever. Take the Fangraphs list as an example. With Christian Roa they wrote “He held that velo this year and was seen a lot early on because teams picking up top were in to see Asa Lacy”. The MLB Pipeline rankings then wrote this: “Roa initiailly sat 92-94 MPH with his fastball this spring, peaking at 96 with some armside run before his heatler lost a couple of ticks of velocity and straightened out.”
Which guy did you see? If you saw the first 2 starts as opposed to the next 2 starts, you saw a very different guy. One guy could be rated in the top 50 and the other guy outside of the top 100. A guy like Mac Wainwright, who has missed time with injury, is going to get a wild variance in where he falls. People who saw him – like the Reds who had scouts as coaches on one of his showcase teams – probably had him rated quite a bit higher than teams that didn’t get many good looks at him since he missed some of his junior season and didn’t get a chance to play his senior season.
I’ve got some questions with some of the picks, but none of them are at all related to what some other places rated a guy at. This year makes all of that even more sketchy because of the lack of available information and data points on guys.
Boom or bust is basically every player you select. There’s never any guarantees. It’s 5 rounds. Every pick has projectability in one form or another. The rule of thumb that GMs base a draft class success is if 3 out of 40 see mlb time. In 5 rounds, any team will be excited if one guy after their first pick makes it that far.