Well, that’s it. The end of mock drafts. I hope you enjoyed this year’s mock draft, because this is the last one I’ll be doing. What started as a fun exercise—sparking discussion on the boards, arguing over rankings, debating upside versus readiness—has slowly turned into something that doesn’t quite feel the same anymore. And here’s the uncomfortable part: It’s become too easy. Too easy for teams to lean on these instead of...
And with that, we arrive at the final pick of the first round. The Cleveland Spiders are back on the clock after grabbing Matt Clement earlier, and their strategy here is refreshingly simple: Find more pitching. Keep finding pitching. Continue finding pitching until somebody can reliably get through six innings. The Spiders remain one of the league's most entertaining contradictions. Every year they score a ton of runs, hit a ton of home runs,...
And just like that, Washington is back on the clock. Of course they are. At this point, the Senators have accumulated enough first-round picks that I'm beginning to suspect they receive compensatory selections every time another general manager merely thinks about making a trade. The good news for Washington is that they've already done the heavy lifting earlier in the round. Assuming they've walked away with Carlos Beltran, Javier Vazquez, and...
We've officially reached the portion of the draft where teams should seriously consider trading these picks to organizations that collect first-rounders like baseball cards. The talent cliff is approaching rapidly. Only one three-star hitter remains on my board: Alex Cora. Only one three-star pitcher remains: John Rocker. And after that? Welcome to the land of preferences, projections, and pretending your scouting department definitely had this...