Tuesday, June 03, 2008

[RULE 4 DRAFT]
Steve Henson Projects First Round And Make Zero Sense
Steve Henson of Yahoo! Sports projects the first round of the upcoming baseball draft and predicts that the Tampa Bay Rays will select Buster Posey, the catcher from Florida State. Of course his reasoning is a little screwy...
1. Tampa Bay Rays – Buster Posey, C (Florida State): All of a sudden the Rays are a team with aspirations of winning now, and Posey – a converted shortstop – is an advanced player who could take the job from middling incumbent catcher Dioner Navarro by 2010.
Ahhh. So drafting Posey will help the Rays win "now" even though he won't be ready for the big leagues until 2010.

And apparently Henson believes that Navarro is an average catcher. First of all, Navi is only 24 years old. Most 24-year old catchers are still in AA and yet Navi is in his 5th season in the majors, which explains his slow development. But he is far from "middling" any longer. Since the All-Star break last season Navarro is hitting .313/.370/.461 with an OPS of .831, all while playing better-than-average defense. Did we mention he is only 24?

If somebody wants to argue that the Rays need catchers in the system because outside of Navi, there are very few, if any, options...that is an argument. But to say the Rays need to draft a catcher to win now, just shows that a writer only needs 36 words to sound like an idiot.

MLB first-round projections [Yahoo! Sports]

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Prof - I don't follow Mr. Yahoo's logic. I suspect the Rays will select the best player out there regardless of position. Then if necessary, trade this player for future useful players. The question then becomes, which of the choices is most likely to make a significant impact in the big leagues? Not a very profound analysis, but maximizes the return on investment.

5:12 PM  
Blogger The Professor said...

agreed. and everything i have read says that the best player is either Beckham (more tools) or Alvarez (more refined)

5:13 PM  

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