Few top position players available this year
By John Manuel
May 19, 2006



Matt LaPorta led NCAA Division I in home runs in 2005. This year, the Florida
junior strained a muscle in his side sneezing, then aggravated the injury on
a swing. He was hitting .247 with 14 homers and only one double.

Agoura High's Jason Stoffel entered the season as perhaps the top righthander
in California's high school class. After a fast start, he faded, then missed
two starts later in the year when he tripped and fell on a concrete patch
while throwing a bullpen prior to a game.

Chris Marrero attracted scouts to see Monsignor Pace High in Miami as the top
position player in the high school class, only to be outshined by his
teammate, Adrian Cardenas. Marrero never got on a hot streak and failed to
dominate his high school competition.

At least he stayed healthy. Missouri's Max Scherzer, the top-rated college
righthander entering the season, struggled to get on track after slamming his
hand in a door early in the season, then coming back too quickly from the
injury and developing tendonitis. As the draft approached, he'd thrown barely
more than 50 innings.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the class of the 2006 draft.

"There's definitely quite a shortage," a National League scouting director
summed up. "It's particularly true among the everyday players, especially at
the college level. Without Florida's talent, this would be just a rotten
draft."

Scouts often knock draft classes as a year goes on, and in a way that's their
job. They're paid to see players' strengths, but also their weaknesses. And
in talking down a draft class, they also hope to keep signing bonuses from
escalating 1990s rates, when bonuses went up at rates between 20 and 40
percent almost annually.

"I believe there are some solid players in this draft," another NL scouting
director said. "The problem is, you're expected to pay the same rate you did
the year before, even if the players aren't as good as they were last year.
So I believe there will be a number of predraft deals cut. Teams are going to
have a list of players they can live with, and the guy who will sign for what
they are willing to pay is who they'll take."

Where Are The Bats?

The biggest concern scouts have with the 2006 draft is the absence of
polished hitting prospects. The top college batter, Long Beach State's Evan
Longoria, is considered a lesser talent than his former teammate, Rockies
farmhand Troy Tulowitzki. Tulowitzki lasted until the seventh overall pick
last June, and no one seems to think Longoria has any chance to last that
long this year. Some scouts have pegged the 2006 draft as a redux of 2000,
when signability convulsed the early rounds, and the only first-round pick
who is a big league regular six years later is Philadelphia's Chase Utley.
Longoria compares well with Utley, though he's a better defender and bats
righthanded instead of left.

"It hasn't been a normal year," said Rockies scouting director Bill Schmidt,
whose club picks second overall. "The way I look at it, though, big leaguers
will come out of this draft. In 2000, we had Matt Harrington and Jason Young
with the first two picks, but we still got eight big leaguers out of that
draft (led by current regulars Garret Atkins, Clint Barmes and Brad Hawpe).
It's a natural thing to look at the top because that's where the money is
spent in a draft, but it really comes down to what you as an organization do
with the rest of the draft in a year like this.

"It's a snapshot in time, but if you look at it, there are no high school
players like (Justin) Upton last year, and not the college position players
either."

After Longoria and Texas outfielder Drew Stubbs--whose hitting ability
remains in question (see Page 30)--only Wake Forest's Matt Antonelli was
expected to be drafted in the first round. Last year, college position
players occupied five of the first seven slots. The paucity of hitters leads
many scouts to believe the record of 20 pitchers taken in the first
round--set in 1999 and tied in 2001--will fall this year.

Even the consensus No. 1 talent, North Carolina lefthander Andrew Miller, had
his detractors. The highest unsigned draft pick out of high school in the
2003 draft (Devil Rays, third round), Miller has plenty of traits that would
make him a candidate to go No. 1 overall in any year. He's a 6-foot-6
southpaw and has performed (he's 24-8, 2.64 with 279 strikeouts in 267
innings for his career). Miller has thrown 95 mph and showed improved command
(23 walks in 82 innings this year), but his velocity has more consistently
resided in the 89-91 mph range.

Others point to Miller's slender frame and wonder if he can repeat his
delivery without putting too much stress on his arm over the course of a
major league schedule. The Royals had scouted him aggressively, according to
scouting director Daric Ladnier, and had narrowed their choices for the No. 1
overall pick to Miller, Washington's Tim Lincecum and Houston's Brad Lincoln.
Several officials from other clubs speculated that the Royals would opt for
Lincecum as a compromise choice if they could not reach a predraft framework
for a contract they were willing to pay with Miller.

Ladnier said making a decision among the three pitchers would come down to a
mix of factors: who can be the best major leaguer, who can get to the majors
the fastest, and off-field factors such as signability and makeup. Ladnier
insisted the Royals will take the player they want, however, and would not do
a signability deal.

"It still irks me that people call Billy Butler a signability pick," Ladnier
said of the club's 2004 first-rounder. "(Finances) are just a small part of
what goes into the decision-making process. Miller has a lot going for him,
but we're not closing ourselves off to the other guys."

Like Miller, the other pitchers at the top of most draft boards come with
some concerns:

‧ Lincecum and Lincoln have the best present stuff, but neither stands
taller than 6-foot-1. Lincoln's changeup remains a distant third pitch, and
many scouts believe Lincecum's best value comes in the bullpen, where his
resilient arm would be a weapon.

‧ Health concerns clouded the status of righthanders Mark Melancon
(Arizona), who hadn't pitched since April 7 because of a strained elbow
ligament, and Brett Sinkbeil (Missouri State), who had missed nearly a month
with an oblique muscle pull.

‧ Two prep pitchers with dominant stuff--righty Kyle Drabek (The Woodlands,
Texas, HS) and lefty Kasey Kiker (Russell County HS, Phenix City, Ala.)--had
their draft status clouded by off-field questions. Scouts were tight-lipped
about both players' indiscretions, yet few clubs would commit to saying they
wanted to pick either player where their pure talent warrants.

‧ Several Scott Boras Corp. clients, such as Scherzer, Southern California's
Ian Kennedy and Cal Poly's Gary Daley--all expected to be prominent picks
when the season began--have had their struggles. Daley's command struggles
and 6.13 ERA have sent him tumbling, while Scherzer's injury and Kennedy's
inconsistent velocity and lack of projection make their draft slots
uncertain.

Significant Draft-And-Follows

Three of the top arms were still under control to teams that drafted them in
2005. Another Boras client, righthander Luke Hochevar, dominates the list.
Hochevar was the 40th overall pick to the Dodgers last June out of Tennessee,
and after a long holdout, his case took a strange turn over Labor Day.
Hochevar switched agents from Boras to Matt Sosnick and agreed to a $2.98
million deal. However, after getting in touch with Boras, Hochevar switched
agents again and never signed the contract, pulling out of the deal.

The aftermath became acrimonious, and talks broke off. Hochevar joined other
past Boras clients in joining a team in an independent league. In his case,
it's the Fort Worth Cats of the American Association, and Hochevar had looked
good in two outings, one an exhibition and one a regular-season game. His
fastball, slider and changeup all had flashed above-average potential, but
the effects of his long layoff were evident in his lack of consistency.

"We're cautiously optimistic that there's an outside chance (to sign him),"
Dodgers scouting director Logan White said. "I've seen his first two starts
and I'll go back and see him again. Then (GM) Ned (Colletti) and I will get
our heads together and see what we can do."

Righthanders Bryan Morris (Devil Rays) and Sean O'Sullivan (Angels) were both
third-round picks out of high school who chose to be draft-and-follows. Both
had pluses--pure, hard stuff for Morris and pitchability and poise for
O'Sullivan--but both had been passed on the draft-and-follow list by righty
Pedro Beato. The Dominican righthander moved to New York as a child and was a
17th-round pick by the Mets last season. The Mets don't have a first-round
pick but were expected to have to pay first-round money to sign Beato, who
went to the city's Xaverian High in 2005.

While the Mets won't factor into the first round--and neither with the
Athletics, who don't pick until the 66th overall pick--White and the Dodgers
could make an impact with extra picks. They pick seventh overall as well as
26th and 31st (from the Angels as compensation for the signing of Jeff
Weaver), while the Red Sox have four picks between slots 27-44 after losing
free agents Johnny Damon (Yankees) and Bill Mueller (Dodgers).