Today’s Daily will be an abbreviated one, and the draft will continue to take center stage. The normal “Other News” section has been replaced with a few things to watch for in today’s rounds of the draft.
My thoughts on the Cubs first two picks will be coming in a separate article.
Scores From Yesterday
Iowa – Iowa got on the board late, but ultimately lost 6-2. Tennessee – Tennessee was shut out 6-0. Daytona – The Cubs rallied with a four run seventh, and again in the bottom of the ninth, and they came away with a 5-4 win. Kane County – Kane County reached 40 wins with this come from behind 7-3 win.
[Iowa] Arismendy Alcantara homered for the 8th time and finished 2 for 4. Javier Baez was in the lineup, but finished 0 for 3 with a walk.
[Tennessee] Kris Bryant singled and Jonathan Mota doubled twice at the top of the lineup, and Elliot Soto doubled at the bottom of the lineup. That was the offense.
[Tennessee] Lendy Castillo walk 2 and struck out 3 in 2 scoreless innings of relief.
[Daytona] Jeimer Candelario homered (his 5th) off of Kevin Gregg (yes, that Kevin Gregg), walked, and finished 2 for 3. Dan Vogelbach walked and doubled as part of his 2 for 4 day. Vogelbach also stole his second base of the year.
[Daytona] Felix Pena struck out 7 and walked 4 in his 4 innings of scoreless, 3 hit ball. Closer Zack Godley worked a very long stint of 3.2 innings and allowed just one run on 3 hits with a walk and 3 strikeouts.
[Kane County] Tyler Skulina walked 3 and struck out 5 in his 6 innings on the hill. He allowed 3 runs (2 earned) on just 2 hits.
[Kane County] Jacob Hannemann and Jordan Hankins both doubled and finished 2 for 4. Hannemann also stole his 18th base.
Speaking of Hannemann, he seems to finally be adjusting to Low-A, and heating up. You’ll recall that Hannemann, who was also a football player at BYU, played baseball competitively last year for the first time in several years. So, although he’s older for a Low-A prospect (23), he’s young in baseball, and an adjustment period should have been expected. His OPS bottomed out on May 20 at an ugly .598. Since then, he’s hit safely in all but three games, and 7 of those 14 games have featured multiple hits (including the last three games). Moreover, he’s struck out just 6 times in those 14 games, while walking 4 times (and 6 SB with 0 CS). The OPS is up 78 points over that stretch.
Draft Items
Pitching – I expect that the Cubs will continue to take a bulk approach to pitching prospects and will draft a bunch of them today. The strength of this draft is the high school pitchers, so I think we can expect that quite a few of those pitchers will be teenagers.
College Guys – If the Cubs do take a hitter, odds are good it will be a college hitter. They have favored college hitters over high school ones fairly heavily over the past two drafts. If the better talent is available in high school pitchers they will certainly head in that direction, but don’t be surprised to see a few more college arms be taken by the Cubs today as well.
Who Gets The Cash? – The Cubs stand to have quite a lot of extra cash to spend after taking probable under slot guys in the top two positions. They could gamble that they can lure Jacob Bukauskas to sign and draft him today (or early tomorrow), or they could spread that cash around to a number of other players who fall down the boards and will be asking for extra to sign.
Twitter – If you were not on Twitter for the first day, you missed a great time. Be sure to follow Brett (@BleacherNation) and me (@ltblaize) to be tapped into the fast flowing conversations. I will not be as active today due to my regular job, but I’ll chime in when I can and will definitely be covering all the Cubs picks tomorrow.
The Draft Board – If you only keep one website open for draft news today, make it Bleacher Nation. If you have two websites open, then the Baseball America Top 500 database would be a nice choice for that second slot.
Predictions – Predicting the draft outside of the first round is an exercise in impossibility. But, based on past patterns, I think I can call out a few names that may be slightly more likely to go to the Cubs in the first few rounds today. Keep an eye on: Brett Graves (RHP), Jakson Reetz (C), Austin DeCarr (RHP), Bryce Montes de Oca (RHP), James Norwood (RHP), Keaton McKinney (RHP), Trace Loehr (SS), Jace Fry (LHP), David Peterson (LHP), Adam Ravenelle (RHP), Austin Byler (3B), Jordan Brink (RHP), and Skyler Ewing (C). Odds are the Cubs will take none of those (I have no inside information on any of them), but I am often asked for draft predictions. So there you go.
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NEWSLETTER
Today’s Daily will be an abbreviated one, and the draft will continue to take center stage. The normal “Other News” section has been replaced with a few things to watch for in today’s rounds of the draft.
