| 06 June 2011
The Orioles lost yesterday. So what else is new?
Tonight the Birds will welcome a slipping Oakland Athletics team to Camden Yards, they are fresh off a rather heartbreaking sweep at the hands of the Boston Red Sox, but that is not the most important thing going on tonight. Tonight is the 2011 Amateur Draft and the Orioles are picking fourth.
The likely picks: Dylan Bundy, Danny Hultzen and Archie Bradley. All three are pitchers, Hultzen is a college lefty and Bundy and Bradley are high schoolers.
All three have been rated as top ten picks in various pre-draft lists and up until this morning Bundy and Hultzen were the most common choices and seemingly out of nowhere Bradley has been linked to the Orioles by Keith Law and Jim Callis. The Orioles are picking fourth and have been linked to a player who was picked to barely get into the top ten in most pre-draft rankings and this has a lot of fans jumping directly to the Matt Hobgood comparrisons but I think that is a little premature. Bradley is considered to be a "big, strong righty" with a fastball consistently in the mid 90's and a "power" knuckle-curve.
Bundy was named Gatorade's Oklahoma Player of the Year and elected to the Rawlings First Team Preseason All-American. Hultzen is an ACC pitcher from Bethesda and is probably the most major-league ready player of the three, as he should be.
With power pitchers like Bundy and Hultzen most likely available at the fourth pick where is Bradley coming from? Questions have been raised about signability and contract value. Are the Orioles taking the cheaper road? Possibly, but it does not seem like Bradley is all that bad a pick, in fact he has just as good a chance as the other three and the reviews and reports I have read have me interested in his abilities but is he better than Bundy, Hultzen or even third baseman Anthony Rendon (projected to go second to Seattle) if he falls to the Orioles? Probably not.
Honestly, I am not going to sit here and pretend that I have some deep insight on any of these players. To me the bottom line in the first round comes down to this value judgment: Pure talent vs Major-League readiness. Do you take the high school pitcher with loads of natural talent or the college pitcher who might not have the stuff but is more likely to help you in the relative short-term?
In other news, Luke Scott will soon be a man without a position. Scott has a labrum tear that is preventing him from throwing the ball effectively so he is restricted to playing firstbase and designated hitter. With Derrek Lee coming back and Vald Guerrero comfortably performing in the DH role Scott will not be able to get a reliable amount of ABs. Scott may still want to work through his injury but he simply can not just sit there and not contribute in an effective way. He is basically just taking up a roster spot. Sooner or later he will need to be shutdown and put on the DL.
I like Luke Scott well enough, he has been a great Oriole in his time here but unless he drastically gets better he simply will not be getting the starts on this team to be an effective starter while Lee and Guerrero are on this team.
Other stuff:
Great to see Mark Reynolds hitting two long homeruns in back-to-back games. Hopefully this means that the maligned thirdbaseman is starting to turn things around at the plate.
Nick Markakis is still struggling and I am starting to get worried that there is something seriously wrong with him. Conversely Adam Jones has worked his batting average over .300 and he is clearly the front runner to be the Orioles lone All-Star representative. I say lone because so long as Joe Mauer is still getting the second-most votes among catchers Matt Wieters could throw out the next 400 runners and lead this and alternate realities in multiple offensive categories and it won't matter.
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