Quite a bit of news broke yesterday regarding our 2013 crop of draft picks. Alex Anthopoulos alerted the media, or whatever Mike Wilner is, that negotiations with Phil Bickford had reached some sort of impasse. What the impasse is remains up for debate, but Jim Callis over at Baseball America assumes the issue is money. Later in the day Callis tweeted that eleventh round pick Jacob Brentz was unlikely to sign. He then sent out several cryptic tweets suggesting he was hearing conflicting reports on Jays’ draft picks. This morning in the BA roundup it sounded like Bickford was not going to sign.
So, where does that leave us? Well, as you can see below the Jays have not spent much money. Their top two draft picks have elbow issues; one has already had Tommy John. With Brentz reportedly not signing that leaves three draft picks after the tenth round who are highly regarded and could potentially put pen to paper. They are LHP HS Eric Lauer, RHP HS Sam Tewes, and 1B HS Rowdy Tellez. Lauer and Tewes have reportedly both told the Jays they will be playing college baseball next year. That may change, but call me a tad pessimistic. After the draft Tellez spoke about going to USC given where he was drafted. Jim Callis thinks he’s the most likely to sign given the money the Jays have saved through the first ten rounds. Note: the Bickford money is lost if he doesn’t sign.
The question then becomes, what do you think about this draft given the signings or lack thereof? Or, for me, how big of a mess is this draft? The Jays looted the prospect cupboard this past season to make a run at the postseason. The return, as we have seen so far, hasn’t been pretty. The Jays probably could have used this draft to do a bit of restocking. I don’t know if they’ve done that here. This was the first year Brian Parker ran the draft and there should be some questions asked. For one, what happened with Bickford? Why did you draft guys in the later rounds that clearly had no intention of signing even if you threw second round money at them? Perhaps I’m jumping the gun here as was pointed out in an earlier thread, there are still three hours to go and we really won’t know the ranking of this draft for another few years. For whatever it’s worth, the Jays will have the eleventh overall pick next year if Bickford does not sign. That picked is unprotected if we sign a marquee free agent. Next year’s draft is reported to be deeper and where this year’s draft lacked length in the marquee prospects at the top, there should be a bit more length to next year’s draft. Anyways, what do you think about this year’s draft?
Update:
Jacob Brentz signs for 700K
Rowdy Tellez signs for 850K
Bickford does not sign
