Nationals Arm Race

You’d be smiling too if you just got a $3M check! Photo via MASN

July 6th came and went, and the Nats signed their #1 overall pick without too much fanfare, giving Mason Denaburg a nice bump over his slot value and wrapping up the 2018 Draft Class.

Here’s a table of the 29 players we successfully signed, with known bonus amounts.  The MLBpipeline Draft Tracker is the most up-to-date resource for this data now that Baseball America has taken most of its stuff behind a paywall.

Summary of the 29 drafted players:

• One High Schooler, 13 College Seniors
• 16 Arms (including Evan Lee) and 13 Bats
• Of the 16 arms, 4 were relievers in College and are (presumably) already routed to that role in the pros.
• Thus, 15 College players with eligibility remaining
• As of this writing, two guys have already been double promoted to Hagerstown; 11th rounder Frankie Bartow, UMiami’s closer this past season, and 5th rounder Cage Ganning, OF from UCLA.
• I count $6,800,500 in total bonus money paid out, more than their bonus pool figure of $5,603,800 and a bit more than their 5% cushion figure above the bonus pool figure of $5,883,990
• A few of the lower level bonus figures have yet to be disclosed; i could see Cole Daily getting a $125k bonus or near to it since he got bought out of his senior year, but the rest of the players w/o known bonuses were College Seniors who probably each got the same $3,000 bonus that other College Seniors got in rounds 20 and up.
• As of this writing, 2 have yet to be assigned, 15 went to the GCL, 9 went straight to Auburn, and 3 played a week or so in the GCL before getting to Auburn.

Verdict on this class overall: I like the fact that they threw out a ton of max $125k bonuses in the rounds 11-20; that certainly wasn’t the case last  year and it may have bought them some good players.  I’m ok with Denaburg as their 1st rounder and wasn’t as hung up on picking a more “famous” name at that point in the draft.  Unlike in 2017, I liked who they got in the rounds 3-6 area, and I think they may have a real player in 10th round senior sign Carson Shaddy.    In the rounds 11-20 they got a number of weekend starters from good schools to sign for the $125k figure, one of which has already forced his way to be twice-promoted.  Of course, when nearly half your draft dollars go to one kid, and that kid is a high schooler who probably is playing in our minor leagues for the next 5 years … its going to be quite a while til we really know if this was a winning class or not.

Here’s a table of the 11 guys who did not sign:

Quick Summary here:

• The big misses here of course are the 12th and 17th rounders from South Carolina, both of whom announced on twitter within a few minutes of each other of their intent to return to school.
• 19th rounder Zach Linginfelter was a draft-eligible Sophomore from Tennessee who made it into their weekend rotation late in the season and had the easy decision to return to school, where he probably is a weekend starter all next year and could easily find his way into the top 10 rounds.
• 6 of the 11 non-signees were 30th+ round prep players who were never going to sign … either because they were 1st round rumored kids with million dollar price tags or because they were legacy picks
• 2 of the non-signees are Juco guys who were a little hard to find info on: Cole Hamilton and Andrew Nardi.  Nardi seems to have a committment to go to Arizona; can’t blame him for heading to a good program.  Hamilton doesn’t even have a perfectgame.org profile and too common of a name to research on twitter.

No major misses; highest non-signed player was a 12th rounder.

Another  year in the books, and another 40 guys now potentially part of the Nats organization.  Ok well really more like 32-33 new guys; that’s about how many i’d expect to sign out of this class.

We reviewed the top 10 more in-depth in the previous post since, historically, the most likely eventual MLB impact players are all top-end draft picks.  Lets zip through the rest of the draft and do some quick commentary.

• Round 11: Frankie Bartow, U Miami’s closer.  I like this as an 11th rounder, which in today’s draft system are the first time you can grab someone of note and have a decent shot at them.  Bartow has some career accolades (freshman all-american, finalist for collegiate closer of the year, etc).  Yes he’s a college closer and that’s all he’ll be, but I like this as an 11th rounder.
• Round 12: Graham Lawson, also an 8th/9th inning guy for South Carolina.  Not as accomplished as Bartow, but similar role.
• Round 13: Cody Wilson, a corner OF from FAU.  Good power this year (14 homers), good speed (nearly 20 SBs).  Not a bad 12th rounder.   College Junior though so he has some leverage but it doesn’t seem like he slipped really.
• Round 14: Aaron Fletcher.  a Senior lefty starter from U Houston.  Um, this was Houston’s Friday starter, who pitched a 4-hit, 0 earned run gem in the CWS regional opener to beat Purdue.   Why wasn’t he picked up already?  College numbers look great for a good team in a decent conference, conference pitcher of the year in 2018.  Perhaps its because he doesn’t have massive K/9 numbers.  Nonetheless, I like this pick.
• Round 15: Evan Lee, a two-way draft eligible sophomore player for Arkansas.  Lefty reliever and a corner OF.  This is a weird one; he doesn’t have great numbers on either side of the ball, but he was an absolute beast coming out of HS (all-american on every service, Gatorade player of the state, etc).  I wonder if this is an over slot candidate.
• Round 16: Carson Teel, College Jr lefty starter from Oklahoma State.  Entered the weekend rotation mid-season, gave them 11 starts, including getting the Win over USF in last weekend’s regional.  Decent numbers on the season skewed by one bad outing against West Virginia.  Another value pick.
• Round 17: Ridge Chapman, coll JR mid-week starter for South Carolina; looks like a guy with some inflation in his stats; his BAA is .189 on the year but his ERA is 4.95.   He’s a Juco transfer into South Carolina and his Juco numbers were pretty impressive; perhaps an area scout remembered him from 2017 (when he was drafted late but chose not to sign).
• Round 18: Jacob Rhinesmith, Coll Jr center fielder from Western Kentucky (which, i’d like to point out, has completely ripped off the Nats Curly-W on their uniforms…).  14  homers, 13 SBs as a center fielder?  Another Juco transfer with very gaudy 2017 numbers.  Listed as 6’1″ 195, lefty.  Maybe he sticks in center?
• Round 19: Zach Linginfelter, RHP coll Sophomore from Tennessee.  Was in relief most of the season, then put into the rotation towards the end of the year.  Pitched well in the SEC tourney.
• Round 20: Onix Vega, a Juco C from Broward College.  Gotta have catchers for your short season teams.

Past Round 20, I’ll just note interesting guys; see the table above for the next 20 picks fully.  From here down honestly most guys are just one-and-done short-season players.

• Round 21: Ryan Tapani, 5th year Sr RHP from Creighton.  Looks like Creighton’s Friday starter with pretty gaudy numbers (10-1, 2.38 ERA on the year).  Just named 3rd team All-American by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper.  Son of former MLB player Kevin Tapani, a former pitcher who had more than 350 major league starts in a 13 year career. Nice 21st rounder senior sign.
• Round 26: Colin Morse, a senior RHP from Shenandoah University by way of … McLean HS.  A local kid.  He seemed like a weekend starter for Shenandoah the last three  years, and he had starts in all four years of his career.
• Round 30 Trey Vickers, senior SS from Wichita State.  Basically a four year starter at SS for a good baseball program.  Not flashy, but I like the career accomplishment for a higher profile program.
• Two late round picks (Rounds 34 and 40 picks Tyler Baca and Michael Menhart both seem to be related to Nationals front-office staff (respectively,  Assistant Director of Amateur Scouting Mark Baca and Pitching Coordinator Paul Menhart).
• Round 37 pick Cole Wilcox is an interesting throw-away pick; he was projected as a 1st rounder prior to the draft and was even tied to the Nats in some mocks, but he had a $3M price tag and so once he fell out of the 1st round he was guaranteed to go to school.  He announced his intent to honor his commitment to University of Georgia even before the Nats picked him, where he’ll be a draft eligible sophomore in two years’ time.

Its notable that every single pick the Nats had between rounds 25 and 32 (8 straight rounds) were College seniors.  And then, they ripped of five straight HS draftees from rounds 33-37, including a guy who was projected to go in the first round (Wilcox) in the 37th.   It is almost as if the team got to round 33 and was like, “eh, we’re good, pick a bunch of prep kids as favors to executives or who we have no chance of signing.”

Summary of the Draft class:

• 23 Arms, 18 Position players, which adds up to 41 since we have a 2-way guy in Evan Lee.
• 16 College Juniors (or draft-eligible Sophomores)
• 14 College Seniors with no leverage
• 3 Juco guys
• 7 High Schoolers, 6 of which are basically throw-away picks in the late rounds.

Of the 30 4-year college guys:

• 8 from SEC teams
• 1 from Pac12 teams
• 2 from ACC teams
• 1 from Big10 teams
• 2 from Big12 teams
• 5 from non-major conference but still big-time Baseball programs (FAU, Houston, Sam Houston State, UConn, Wichita State)
• 11 from smaller/non division 1 programs

Not surprisingly, a huge take from the SEC, which proved this year they’re unrivaled in terms of college baseball power.

Geographic Locations of picks:

• 6 from Florida, 4 from Georgia
• 4 from California, another 2 from Arizona
• 4 From Texas, another 2 from Oklahoma and 2 from Arkansas
• 3 from Tennessee, 2 from South Carolina and 2 from Kentucky
• 5 from the Midwest (Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska)
• 4 from random remaining states: one each from Connecticut, Wisconsin, Oregon and Virginia.

that’s 36 of the 40 picks from these 5 general areas.  We know that Florida, Georgia and California are the three heaviest areas for providing baseball talent, but normally we see a big focus in the Texas/Oklahoma area with our drafts.  Not this year; one quarter came from the two southeastern states this year.

Here’s a table with all 40 picks.