MLB Amateur Draft 2015

The  marathon 40 round MLB amateur draft started on Monday and it concludes today. Baseball players from college and the best from high school are drafted as well as some international prospects mostly from Central or South America.
Rounds 1 and 2 were on Monday. The players that get picked on this day are the most talented players in the draft and have the best shot at making it to the majors.
Rounds 3-10 were yesterday. The players that get drafted here either fall because of injuries, sign ability concerns or just aren't 1st day talents. These players aren't as hyped, but some are still able to make themselves known at the big league level.
Rounds 11-40 are today. Most of the young baseball players drafted this late don't really make an impact, but there have been some exceptions like Albert Pujols.
Most high school players have college commitments so it's harder to get them to sign.
Plus, each team has an allotted amount of money they can use to sign their draft picks. This influences what they do because if they spend too much money on one player, then they're not going to have the money that they need to sign their other picks.
The MLB draft isn't as hyped as the NBA or NFL drafts because most of the players that get picked take way longer to reach the majors than athletes playing football and basketball. Most NFL and NBA draftees play right away, while MLB prospects spend at least 2 years in the minors unless they're extremely polished coming out of the draft. It's harder to make it in baseball than in football or basketball.

This year was the year of the shortstops as they were the first three picks, and then 8 overall were drafted out of the first 36 picks.

                                                                                  Day 1

The Diamondbacks had the number one overall pick and they drafted Dansby Swanson, a shortstop out of Vanderbilt which is the best baseball college in the U.S. This is showcased by all the star big league players that are Vandy alums like David Price and Sonny Gray, as well as the number of highly rated players they had in the draft.

The Astros had the number 2 pick as compensation for not signing Brady Aiken; and even though they just called up Carlos Correa to play shortstop, they went with the best player available and took Alex Bregman, a shortstop from LSU.

With the third pick, Colorado picked shortstop Brendan Rodgers from Lake Mary High School in Lake Mary, Florida. Rodgers was widely considered the top overall prospect in the draft. It now looks like he'll be the heir to Troy Tulowitski in Colorado.

With the fourth spot, Texas took the first pitcher Dillion Tate, a righthander out of UCSB who has the pitching ability to either be a dominant closer or the ace at the front of a rotation.
Houston had another pick at 5. This pick means that they were the 5th worst team in baseball last year. They took high school outfielder Kyle Tucker, brother of Preston Tucker who is already in their organization. Kyle projects to be even better than his older brother and he was the first outfielder chosen.
These are the 5 best players and now I will move on to who San Francisco and Oakland picked on day 1.

The A's chose two shortstops to address the need there after they traded away their top two shortstop prospects (Addison Russell and Daniel Robertson) in 2 separate deals. In the first round they picked Richie Martin, a shortstop out of Florida University. Scouts say that he has the ability to stay at shortstop long term, but there are questions about his hitting. The A's need a better defensive shortstop then Semien.


In the 2nd round, the A's chose Mikey White, a shortstop who went to the University of Alabama.
Scouts say that White has good power, but they don't know if he can stick at shortstop. He seems like the opposite player of Richie Martin, but they both seem really good.

The Giants had 3 picks.
In the first round, they chose Phil Bickford, a pitcher from the junior college Southern Nevada. He's a power pitcher who can hit 97 on his fastball, but a concern is that he just tested positive for marijuana.

Then they got a pick in the competitive balance round  because they lost Sandoval in free agency. With this pick in between the first and second rounds, they chose power hitting 1st basemen Chris Shaw who went to Boston College.
Then in the 2nd round they chose lefty Andrew Suarez from the University of Miami.
I like who the Giants took and, if their draftees keep their power tools, they could be really good.

Of course these are only five of the 40 names our Bay Area clubs are going to be drafting, and I decided to highlight them because 1st and 2nd rounders usually get talked about the most.

Some star players fell in this draft because of injuries or sign-ability issues.
Brady Aiken, the pitcher who didn't sign last year despite being taken number 1, and then got TJ this year, fell to number 17 where Cleveland grabbed him.

Mike Matuella of Duke has an arsenal of an ace, but he fell to Texas in the third round because he also got TJ this year.
Daz Cameron (son of Mike Cameron) fell to Houston at 37 because teams thought that he would be too hard to sign. He was considered the 6th best talent before the draft.

Justin Hooper of De La Salle is a lefty power pitcher who looks imposing on the mound and can light up the radar gun. He fell to the 25th round where Milwaukee picked him. He fell that far because he's hell bent on playing baseball at UCLA.
Joe Demers, a righty from College Park is just like Hooper in that he's pretty much locked in to play baseball at Washington University. Because of this, he hasn't even been drafted yet.

I'm excited to see which players from this draft class that sign a contract develop into solid players, which players are future stars, and which ones become busts.