BA 2009 Draft Top 100

Baseball America today released their Top 100 Prospects list for the 2009 Draft.  This is ranked by their evaluation and is not adjusted for signability nor team needs, just purely on what they think are the top amateur players.   It is no surprise who is #1, but here is the Top 15:

1. Stephan Strasburg, RHP
2. Dustin Ackley, 1B
3. Donavan Tate, OF
4. Kyle Gibson, RHP
5. Jacob Turner, RHP
6. Alex White, RHP
7. Aaron Crow, RHP
8. Tyler Matzek, LHP
9. Tanner Scheppers, RHP
10. Matthew Purke, LHP
11. Shelby Miller, RHP
12. Zack Wheeler, RHP
13. Grant Green, SS
14. Mike Leake, RHP
15. Tim Wheeler, CF

I went with top 15 to show how top heavy this draft is with pitching, which held 10 of the top 12 spots, 11 of the top 15.  

The names I've seen associated with the Giants so far are Donavan Tate and Mike Trout (who is ranked 22nd).  I've seen some fans speculate on other top position prospects, Grant Green (13th) and Tim Wheeler (15th), plus Bobby Borchering (16th) sounds familiar to me, he's a switch-hitting 3B.

Other position prospects that I've seen that probably will be gone in the supplemental first round, but that might fall to us with our 2nd round pick (or later) include:

• Rich Poythress, 1B
• Brett Jackson, OF
• Kentrail Davis, OF
• Matt Davidson, 3B
• Jiovanni Mier, SS
• Mychal Givens, SS

Most of them I've seen in some draft discussions as ones to keep an eye out for.   Poythress really interests me based on what I've read, sounds like a good hitter, and Davidson, I've seen described as David Wright-lite.  

Obviously, when selecting anyone in the second round, you are typically past the 50 prospect point, and the odds of finding a good player has dropped to the low single-digit range (basically it is down to 10% by picks 21-30 overall, 10-25% for picks 6-20, and around 40-45% for the top 5 picks, based on past drafts).   But these names currently interests me because of their familiarity.  I'll try to do more research on some of them when we get closer to the draft.

I did some research on Jonathan Mayo's final mock draft for 2008, and found that he was very accurate with his selections:

1. Tim Beckham – correct
2. Pedro Alvarez – correct
3. Eric Hosmer – correct
4. Brian Matusz – correct
5. Buster Posey – correct
6. Kyle Skipworth – correct
7. Gordon Beckham – wrong, but had them picking Alonso in the prior list
8. Yonder Alonso – wrong, but had them picking G-Beck in the prior list, not bad swapped positions
9. Justin Smoak – wrong, first one really wrong, he had Crow going instead to Rangers though…
10. Brett Lawrie – wrong, but I don’t blame him, he had the right position, catcher, who knew the Astros would go mental and select Casto instead? (though to be fair to them, he’s doing as well as Posey is in Advanced A-ball offensively, so they obviously saw something most other people didn’t; Brett Lawrie is doing OK, but at one level lower, and he’s playing 2B, not C; look like 'Stros were right thus far)
11. Aaron Crow – wrong, but included to show that he got 10 of the first 11 players correctly, with the first 6 exactly correct (he also got 12th correct too and 14th correct too))

All in all, I would call that very accurate, particularly for a draft.