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MLB Draft Results for Players with Local Ties for 2013

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Virginia Tech’s Chad Pinder represents the highest ranked Virginia-tied player in the 2013 draft. Photo via dailypress.com

After checking in with some local prep players early in March 2013, and then taking a more in-depth look at all the local player draft prospects (with a focus on any Virginia-based player) in May, here’s how the draft ended up working out for these and a few other Virginia players (table in order of overall draft position).

Couple of useful links while reading here: Total Team Bonus Pool limits for 2013 draft and Slot Bonus Values for the first 10 rounds of picks.

(Sorry for the formatting of this table at the blog itself: it looks fine in the WordPress editor and in the RSS feed)

Player Name Pos Current School Klaw Rank BA rank Coll Cmmt Drafted #overall Drafting Team
Chad Pinder 3B Virginia Tech 86 53 n/a 2nd-Supp 71 Oakland
Kyle Crockett LHP UVA >100 93 n/a 4th 111 Cleveland
Matt McPhearson OF Riverdale Baptist (Upper Marlboro) 62 136 Miami 4th 120 Arizona
Bobby Wahl RHP Ole Miss (from West Springfield) 66 36 n/a 5th 161 Oakland
Jimmy Reed LHP U Maryland (From Gaithersburg, MD) >100 >500 n/a 6th 185 St. Louis
Alex Murphy C Calvert Hall College HS (Frederick) >100 >500 Wake Forest 6th 189 Baltimore
Tyler Horan OF Virginia Tech >100 293 n/a 8th 252 San Francisco
Jake Joyce RHP Virginia Tech >100 >500 n/a 9th 286 Washington
Austin Nicely LHP Spotswood (Grottoes) 78 342 Virginia 10th 287 Houston
Ryan Cordell OF Liberty >100 196 n/a 11th 340 Texas
Alec Grosser RHP TC Williams (Alexandria) > 100 158 George Mason 11th 343 Atlanta
Conner Jones LHP Great Bridge (Chesapeake) 29 33 Virginia (strong) 21st 628 San Diego
Scott Silverstein LHP UVA >100 >500 n/a 25th 745 Toronto
Andy McGuire SS/3B Madison HS (Vienna) 74 196 Texas 36th 1069 Colorado
Jack Roberts RHP James River (Richmond) >100 360 Virginia
Thomas Rogers LHP Lake Braddock (Fairfax) >100 >500 North Carolina
Errol Robinson SS St. Johns (DC) >100 >500 Ole Miss (strong)
Alec Bettinger RHP Hylton (Woodbridge) >100 >500 Virginia
Zach Rice LHP Suffolk (Norfolk) >100 >500 North Carolina

Note that this is not an exhaustive list of Virginia or Maryland-tied players who were drafted; it is merely a list of some of the more notable names in the state pre-draft.   You can surf to MLB’s excellent Draft Tracker tool for the 2013 draft and query by state, which gives you any player who has a connection to a state (whether they’re from the state or attend college there).

Some thoughts here:

  • We continue to see the drastic effects the new draft bonus limits have on team’s decisions.  No longer are you seeing any high-end high schoolers taken with speculative picks in the 4th-10th round (much as the Nats picked and signed the likes of A.J. Cole and Robbie Ray).  Now, if a high schooler projected to go in the first few rounds falls … he may as well fall all the way out of the draft.  Consider what happened to Andy McGuire; pre-draft ranked relatively highly by pundits and projected as a 4th rounder by Keith Law.  What happened?  He falls to the 36th round where Colorado makes a (frankly) wasted pick on him.  So McGuire is clearly going to school.
  • Continuing on this theme, the number of college seniors and slot-signing players in the 4th-10th rounds continued to be high.  A number of Virginia-based college players went in this range despite not even being in the BA top 500 list.
  • Conner Jones is going to get his wish to go to school, falling from his end-of-1st round projection all the way to being a 21st round pick.  The lesson; the penalty for picking and missing on an upper-end pick is no longer just “saved” money but “lost” bonus money, so these tough-sign high schoolers went from first three rounds to nothing.
  • Bobby Wahl reportedly set out his bonus demands early ($1.5M or he returns for his senior season per Keith Law), dropping him from a worst-case end-of-2nd round projection all the way to the 5th.  Will Oakland find the money for him or will he go back for his degree?  Likely the latter.  Post-script: Wahl signed for $500k.
  • A couple of local prep players did get picked relatively high; Matt McPherson went in the 4th round to Arizona; will he take that slot money ($425k) or will he honor his University of Miami commitment?   And TC Williams hurler Alec Grosser was selected in the 11th round, which has a slot value of $100,000 unless Atlanta coughs up additional dollars saved elsewhere.  McPherson may want to take the money but Grosser likely could earn himself some cash by gong to school.  Post-script: both guys signed above slot deals; McPhearson for $500k and Grosser for a hugely overslot $400k.
  • The collection of high-profile Virginia hurlers who went completely unselected (the bottom names in the list above) includes a couple of guys whose lack of being picked surprised national pundits.
  • Lastly thought on all these highly regarded prep arms not being drafted: both the University of Virginia and North Carolina made out like bandits with this draft result.  All four major local UVA pitching recruits (Austin Nicely, Conner Jones, Jack Roberts and Alec Bettinger) are almost guaranteed to be going to college.  And UNC’s Thomas Rogers and Zach Rice will join that squad for the next three years.   The ACC should have some pretty significant pitching battles if these guys live up to their scouting reports.   Post-script: only Nicely ended up signing, for a big overslot $610k deal with Houston.

5 Responses to 'MLB Draft Results for Players with Local Ties for 2013'

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  1. Thomas riders is not on roster at unc. Doubt he is even in school.

    Frosty

    14 Feb 14 at 10:36 pm

  2. Thomas rodgers is not on unc roster.

    Frosty

    14 Feb 14 at 10:37 pm

  3. Thanks for the feedback Frosty. I see that his perfectgame.org profile shows no college now. However Rogers’ twitter account still pretty heavily is promoting the fact that he’s at UNC and that he’s playing. Meanwhile I see the 2014 UNC roster is up and Rogers isn’t on it. But, he threw in fall-ball. What happened?

    Todd Boss

    14 Feb 14 at 10:52 pm

  4. […] the fourth year running (here’s 2013’s wrap-up, 2014’s wrap-up, and 2015’s wrap-up), we’re going to keep an eye on “local” […]

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