Your 2013 Giants: Draft Results

I'm so glad about the new CBA.  Prospects sign so much faster now that everything is slotted.  Now we just have to wait for Boras to find the next loophole and exploit it...

At his link is all the players the Giants drafted in this season's amateur draft.  Also, Shankbone followed the draft at his most excellent blog, You Gotta Like These Kids.  This one talks about the Giants and how they avoid consensus thinking.  Look around his June 2013 posts and there will be a bunch of great discussions about the draft and his analysis of a variety of rounds.   DrB also covered the draft, day one here, day two here and day three here.   There is also the BA list with signings and other info, at their Giants site.
ogc thoughts

I usually follow up the draft with all the talk I see out there on the prospects.   Just been too busy, sorry.  So far the Giants have signed 9 of their Top 10 picks, with only RHP Nick Vander Tuig unsigned, and he has a good excuse:  his team is still in the college World Series.  And 21 of the 40 have seen signed so far, 14 of their top 20, 19 of their top 30. 

They are currently $154,100 under budget, with Vander Tuig left to sign.  He was ranked by BA about where Ragira was selected, Vander Tuig was ranked 145, Ragira 142, Ragira was selected 132 and still got a bump on his bonus, so that whole amount could end up going to Vander Tuig if he pushes hard for an equivalent rank bonus.  He is slotted for $212,300 and 132 was slotted for $378,000.

There is some excitement over possibly signing Jonah Arenado, our 16th round pick, as he is the younger brother of starting 3B Nolan Arenado, a top prospect of the Colorado Rockies.  According to an MLB interview with his older brother, "I talked to him and he's excited.  He thought he was going to go a little bit earlier, but he's really happy.  ... He's put in the hard work ... got bigger and stronger, got quicker and got a lot better with the bat.  He's talking to some schools, but I think he really wants to go play some ball, so if the deal is right, he's going to go out there and play some ball."   The Giants listed him as 3B when drafting him.

The Giants can go as high as $100,000 plus they can go above their overall bonus pool by 5%, or nearly $236,000, and still only incur a monetary fine (any larger and they start losing picks) so even if Vander Tuig sucks up all the "savings" in rounds 1-10, the Giants still has a lot of spending room with picks 11-40.

This draft was different in that there were a lot of high school prospects drafted (14), though 9 of them were picks 30-40, but also the top two picks in the draft.  Those picks are also different in that they were position players, it has been a generation ago since the Giants did that, draft two high school position players 1-2.  It was also odd since "only" 5 pitchers were drafted in the first 10 picks, 9 of first 20, but then 17 of first 30 (or 8 of 10 in rounds 21-30), and 21 of 40, though with so many high schoolers drafted in rounds 30-40, probably many of them won't be signed.  It will probably depend on how much they sign Vander Tuig to.

Most of the experts viewed much of the Giants draft to be vast overdrafts.  BA rated Arroyo102 while the Giants used the 25th pick to select him, Ryder Jones 197 with 64th, Chase Johnson 183 with 101st pick, even Ragira was a little early, 142 with 132nd pick.  Dan Slania and Nick Vander Tuig were both selected after their ranking, also D.J. Snelten, Johneshwy Fargas, Pat Young, and Jonah Arenado (ranked 312, drafted with 492nd pick, a whole 6 rounds later). 

Arroyo vows to stick at SS, having done all sorts of training techniques (and I think he mentioned yoga fo flexibility), but most view him to have just one plus hit, his hitting, though it seems he will probably stick at SS.   Arroyo was Team USA's starting SS, as well as MVP in a tournament.  Jones' father is a college baseball coach.  So both can be viewed as having a lot of baseball intangibles that the Giants seem to like (Panik also was viewed in that way, Noonan as well). 
When your team's pick is so far back, it is hard for me to get too wound up negatively regarding the pick.  It is not like the experts like BA get that right all the time either, let alone the baseball experts in the GM suites across the MLB.   Plus, the odds of finding a good starting player this far back is really against any team, the talent is not readily discernable, almost random who makes it and who don't. 

In Stratton's case, we could celebrate that he fell to us, he was slotted to be drafted earlier.  In Brown's and Panik's cases, they were considered overdrafts, but Brown excelled to have one of the best OPS and batting line in his league's available 8 year history, even better than Evan Longoria.   And Panik is much like Arroyo, a leader with nothing much to speak of other than hit ability. 

On top of that, I've liked the Giants picks, post-draft, under Barr, so sometimes you just have to trust the process and in Barr We Trust.  It is also much harder to point out plus or minuses with high school players, Royce Clayton was a homerun hitting SS when we drafted him, but he didn't hit for any power once he became a pro.  So I'm open to whatever the Giants brain trust has decided and will evaluate further as the prospects turn pro and play ball.