Nationals Arm Race

UVA’s Daniel Lynch is the highest-drafted DC/MD/VA player for 2018. Photo via Richmond Times Dispatch

Here’s a review of MLB Draftees in 2018 with Local ties.  By Local, I mean any player that either went to high school or college anywhere in DC, MD or VA.

We posted earlier about all the marquee names in the area who may get draft notice;  almost all of them went undrafted  this year and so lots of colleges are getting VA and MD based kids heading to school.

Its clear to me that several clubs in particular had strong area scouts in the Virginia area;

• Chicago Cubs: the Cubs took four Virginia-tied players in the top 10 picks and a fifth later on.
• Cleveland: they took three locally-tied players in the first 11 rounds
• New York Yankees: took four locally-tied players in this draft, three between the 8th and 13th rounds.
• Cincinnati took two VA-college players in the top 10 rounds (both likely senior sign/money savers)
• Arizona took three VA-tied players, including a flier on Zach Hess in the later rounds after he so precipitously fell.

There are several high schoolers in the DC/MD/VA area with commits to major colleges who went completely un-drafted, surprising me.  Stephen Pelli (UNC commit), Cade Huntgate (Florida State), Will Schroeder (also UNC), Kody Milton (UMD), Tyler Casagrande (Vanderbilt), Jacob Steinberg (Miami), and Ryan Archibald (Arizona).   This list includes both the Virginia and Maryland Gatorade players of the year for 2018, normally guys who are getting significant draft attention.

Its kind of a down year for prep players in the area.  We didn’t see a DC/MD/VA prep player even picked until the 18th round, and then  just a handful of others with throw-away mid-30th round picks.

Here’s a full table of all locally tied kids drafted this year.