M’s Go to Germany and Cavan Cohoes for #273
I’ve been following the draft for over ten years now and this one is completely new to me.
For a long time, there’s been talk of instituting an international draft, and when the subject comes up, the issue is always logistics. How are we going to follow players from all around the world? How do we stack them up against each other? The Mariners just drafted a kid who goes to high school on a military base in Germany. What now?
Baseball America has no data on this guy. The draft map does not extend to U.S. barracks abroad. Cohoes is a guy who played tennis and baseball in high school, which is different, and on the field he was mostly a shortstop but got some time in center and on the mound too. In spite of the varying positions, he seems pretty darned smooth on the field, charges well, reads hops like a pro, and transfers but quick. His arm and his speed at the best tools there, and while the competition has been mostly European (again, not bad in Germany, better if he’s played a little bit against Dutch teams too), he’s always wanted to be a baseball player and works out constantly, and that seems like just the kind of thing that the M’s want to hear. He’s committed to Ohio State, but more than anything it seems like he just wants to play some baseball.
The bat looks decent. It’s a little upper body intensive, but he’s fast and level and it doesn’t seem like the swing really has significant holes in it. If he gets a little more lower body action into it, he seems big enough to generate some power later on. The M’s went way, way off the radar for this one but he could end up being a steal.
YouTube: Player Profile
Patch HS Feature
Patch HS story on Cohoes hitting game-winning two-run HR in championship game
Carson Smith, #243, but Talent May Be Much Higher
We got another pitcher here, which is cool. Carson Smith is another name that’s on the Top 200 board. He’s a transfer in to Texas State after a CC stint, so it’s a Fontaine-ish pick. The cool thing that pops out immediately is that he ended the season with twelve straight quality starts. On the whole though, he’s got some issues. Sure, his ERA is 1.99, but his FIP is 3.28, in part because he allowed forty-eight walks in 113.1 innings to go with his 129 Ks. He’s a hurler, high effort, big dramatic delivery, sort of power-slings the ball up there some injury and mechanical issues. I’m thinking that he’s the Tyler Blandford-like pick for this year, hopefully with better health than Blandford, but the reports seem to be that his velocity drops as games go on, so it’s hard to imagine him keeping on as a starter. I would think of him as also comparable to a Mark Lowe-type who starts a couple of years then moves to the ‘pen and becomes much more impressive there.
The national people seem to like the profile more than I do. That’s good by me. He’s a quality arm but it seems like the whole package here falls short of what are interesting pieces (live fastball, big kid, deception, passable secondaries)
MySan Antonio Story
MLB.com video
Another Hultzen Teammate Tapped, 3B Proscia to M’s at #213
Wacky. And yet I told everyone this would happen.
Proscia was better regarded than Hicks. He was a Don Bosco Prep guy in HS, and that’s a school that you hear a lot about if you listen to the draft long enough. He was also a football player way back when. That means, surprise, strong arm, and some other decent abilities on the defensive front. Not too much range though. He seems to compensate for that though as he’s able to pick it a bit and all of his other abilities are good enough to adapt to that.
He hit eight home runs for Virginia this year and nineteen doubles, so he has some pop in his swing and looks to have decent bat speed and a pretty level swing. It seems that a lot of his swing is upper body and he’s just barely able to work his hips in, but Matt Mangini was the same way for a long time until we fixed him last year and he turned into an interesting hitting prospect.
Youtube: Proscia at Boston College
Youtube: Proscia vs UNC
Youtube: Defensive vids
Zamarripa from Rancho Cucamonga, CF at #183
Here, we go completely off the board for whatever reason. Zamarippa isn’t in the Top 200 prospects BA has listed. He’s not even in their SoCal reports. But this isn’t entirely unheard of because there are so many prep prospects in California that you inevitably stumbled on to one guy that you really like while actually scouting some other player.
Left-handed bat, uppercut swing, not an amazing runner but better underway, seemed to have a decent throwing arm, with fits with the idea that he was pitching off and on at the start of the season. He has a San Diego state commitment, and that could be solid enough to where that’s the reason no one had mentioned him before. He was also a two-sport player, having played football in the past, but his letter of intent to the Aztecs mentioned baseball only. I don’t “get” this pick in the same way that the FO does, but hey, Taijuan Walker was 70th nationally last year and check him out now.
MLB.com video
MaxPreps Profile (senior year)
M’s Grab Catchers in Back-to-Back Rounds, Tyler Marlette at #153
Some people are inevitably going to say, “why a catcher in back-to-back rounds?” Marlette is actually a better prospect than Hicks, in all likelihood, and did well this season when people were starting to watch him. Part of that is the offense. Good bat speed, pretty level through the zone, and it just sounds good coming off the bat. Word is that he has power to all fields, which is another thing that the M’s have tried to target with their RH hitters of late. He’s also reportedly more athletic behind the plate, not slow as catchers traditionally are, but active and showing a strong arm, and he’s supposed to be a team leader. He seems to be quick to pop out the crouch too, even if his movements aren’t as fluid as Baron’s were when he was drafted (to be fair, a guy with Baron’s receiving abilities doesn’t come around every day). If he doesn’t stick there, and the rumors there seem to be more grounded in his size than anything else, there’s a chance that he’ll move off to third base, but it’s one of those situations where he probably doesn’t have enough of a bat to be great there.
Marlette is supposed to be going to Central Florida and was thought to need to go early in order to steer him away from that commitment. He’s still not going late, per se, but he’ll almost certainly take overslot money in order to sign with us. There’s a risk here because there is no compensation pick if we don’t get him, so I’m thinking that the Mariners have to be fairly confident that he’ll ink in order to try him this early.
MLB.com Video
YouTube: 2010 Aflac All-American BP
Perfect Game Player Profile
Article about Marlette hitting a home run out of Petco with a wood bat
Seattle Selects Hultzen’s Battery Mate, John Hicks, at #123
We’ve seen stuff like this happen before. Remember when we picked Ackley and half his draft-eligible teammates and some other guys who happened to be in state? Maybe we’re going to do it again this year with Hultzen and his posse.
The trouble with Hicks is that he’s considered a fringy catcher, a guy that is not entirely a lock to stick, which means that most of the news articles you’ll see on this guy in the coming years are going to mention Roger Hansen in some way. If he stays behind the plate, the offense is pretty good for it. The batting line this season is .339/.383/.516 with a 18/17 K/BB. He’s thought of as more of a gap hitter than anything else, and that shows up as a quarter of his hits went for doubles. He kind of slashes at the ball with a bit of an uppercut, but the loft seems decent enough and since it’s 2011 footage, the pop seems legitimate enough.
As a catcher, he’s not a bad pick. If he has to move off to really any other position, he’s not that exciting, and the best case scenario would be something like Chris Gimenez where he catches off and on and plays corner infield and outfield the rest of the time. That’s not so interesting a player, so hopefully he sticks behind the plate and somehow helps convince Hultzen to come on over.
UVa Bio
YouTube: Hicks defense and hitting
Mariners Pick Best Player of Supplemental Third Round, RHP Carter Capps
In a way, I’m torn. On one hand, there’s a part of my mind that always insists that there’s an art to pitching and that hurlers who didn’t grow up honing that craft are not to be trusted. On the other hand, attempts to convert a position player to the mound is always a practice that seems fascinating to me, like it’s completely new each time it happens even though I’ve watched this system so long that Rich Dorman, who was one of the first players I remember transitioning, is now a pitching coach.
Capps was a catcher in high school, just as Dorman was, just as J.J Putz was. He redshirted as a freshman and has since moved to the mound where he throws a live fastball that tops out in the mid-90s and seems to have an awful lot of sink to it. He’s been a starter throughout, but we’re probably looking at him as a reliever, similar to what we thought Pryor was going to be last year. Of course, Capps has better control than a guy who’s been catching should have, with a 129/18 K/BB and very few hits allowed. He needs to work on the secondary offerings though, and the slider is probably the best bet in that department.
Mount Olive College Stats
Interview with Capps and Dan Hayduk, some game footage
Top Slugging 1B Tabbed at #92, Kevin Cron to Seattle
Clearly, the Mariners don’t value offense in the slightest.
So the third round pick is the other Cron in the draft, which is to say not the old Cron. Kevin Cron is the brother of C.J. Cron, the Utah first baseman who went to the Angels as the seventeenth overall. Both are the offspring of Chris Cron who was a big leaguer and a current double-A manager. Both Crons are similar in that they’re mostly focused on hitting and lack defensive tools, but Kevin actually broke a lot of C.J.’s old records and a lot of the other prep HR records for Arizona along the way (hit fifty-nine, previous high: forty-four). Good bat skills, good power, right-handed hitter, but that’s not really damning considering that he’s believed to have so much power. The issue is that he’s known to have a commitment to Texas Christian, and the Horned Frogs tend to get their man a lot of the time. He probably was not so high on the boards because his commitment was thought to be fairly solid (3.92 GPA and baseball skills have helped him get a solid scholarship).
I’m not seeing defensive videos, likely for a reason but the swing seems level, the mechanics good, and the power super easy. High school hitters just don’t generally have power like that, but by high school standards, Cron is a mountain of a man.
Perfect Game bio
Youtube: DINGERS!
Youtube: More game footage
M’s Go With Shortstop, Pick Brad Miller at #62
Not exactly the name that people were expecting here, but considering how involved we seem to have been in Virginia and North Carolina and South Carolina these past few years, it makes a kind of sense. Miller hits lefty and had a .403/.506/.571 slash line at Clemson this year with a 40/34 K/BB. Craig Counsell is the comp that they’re throwing out for him, apparently, because he has an approach that seems superficially wonky/icky. I don’t remember Counsell’s batting particularly, but Miller keeps his hands really high while batting and somehow manages to generate the speed to get the bat through the zone, so unconventional, but not bad by any stretch. I’m looking at the BA report now and the final word is “baseball rat with good makeup,” which definitely sounds like the type of pick that we’re inclined to make.
He seems to have some defensive inconsistencies, but it’s not for lack of tools or range. His arm is fine, his speed is fine, he just seems to have a weird approach that leaves him unable to make certain plays. This sounds like the kind of thing that could be straightened out in time, so I think that the second base or third base claims are not necessarily solid, just stemming from the usual practice of moving slightly erratic guys to less demanding roles. It seems like a good pick even if it wasn’t one that was on our radar. Expect that phrase to fit into nearly every post from here on out.
Clemson bio
YouTube: Miller at USA Baseball Collegiate National Team Trials
Danny Hultzen is Our Number One Pick
Leading up to the draft, I spent the past couple of days researching hitters. Everyone told me that the Mariners were going to draft a hitter. It was a foregone conclusion. I sat at my computer and wrote up three different draft posts, one for Rendon, one for Starling, and one for Lindor. The way I figured it, any of these options would be more or less satisfactory: Rendon solves the third base issues, Lindor shores up the defense all around and gets some power, and Starling, though risky, had a lot of power potential and would likely play a good centerfield. Any of these options on the table, and we’d be in pretty good shape. Hell, Dave and I both had “M’s Draft Anthony Rendon” posts in the draft queue here. It was practically a foregone conclusion once the Pirates did their thing.
Now this happens. If you remember my post from last week, you’ll remember that Hultzen was the guy I thought was least likely to go to the M’s. He was good and all, but not sexy in the ways that a lot of number two picks should be. He’s low-90s with the fastball (some say he’s sitting mid-90s at times) and commands a strong three-pitch mix. The stuff has had people project him more as a #2 starter than anything else.
I think where Hultzen may have separated himself is that, in addition to being relatively safe, he gets rave reviews for the work ethic and mindset that put him around the top of his class in this draft. One has to think that if the M’s are buying into him as a legitimate number two pick, they’re also buying into him as a #2 pitcher and maybe then some. It’s easy to draft a guy like Rendon or Starling when the need is there and it’s a position of weakness in both the major and minor leagues. It’s really tough to justify picking a pitcher with your number one if you already have a killer rotation and a few other interesting hurlers on the way in Paxton, Walker, Erasmo Ramirez, and Robles. The Mariners scouting department had to have been supremely confident in Hultzen’s abilities in order to pick him where they did.
Right now, we’re all stunned to the point where we don’t really know how to rationalize it. If I were writing purely from a gut reaction here, the results would be nearly unintelligible. I was practically livid when the pick was first announced, simply because it was so hard for me to figure out where Hultzen fits into the Mariners scheme. But the M’s probably have a better sense of that than I do, and there’s no backsies on this kind of thing. I hope that the fear I had that, regardless of who we picked, the fans would be grousing three years from now about us not picking X obvious player, won’t end up being extra justified in this case.