A year after using the draft to stock their minor league system with position players, it’s back to tradition for the Braves in this year’s draft.
“We’d like to get a little pitching,” said scouting director Tony DeMacio, re-invoking an emphasis the Braves have had for years. “We’re not going to pass on a guy that we feel like can be a nice position guy, but our druthers right now would be to get some pitching. We’d like to get some left-handed pitching in particular, if it’s there.”
The draft begins at 7 p.m. Monday with the first and supplemental rounds and continues through Wednesday with 50 rounds. Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s rounds begin at noon. Live coverage of the first and supplemental rounds will be available on MLB Network and mlb.com.
The Braves’ first pick is 28th overall in the first round, which is an area in the draft where they did some of their best work in the past decade. They took Adam Wainwright with the 29th pick in 2000, Macay McBride with the 24th pick in 2001 and Jeff Francoeur with the 23rd pick in 2002.
On the other end of the spectrum was outfielder Cody Johnson, the 24th overall pick in 2006, who never made it past Double-A with the Braves.
Baseball America projects the Braves could take Henry Owens with their first pick, a left-hander out of Edison High School in Huntington Beach, Calif., or Robert Stephenson, a right-hander from Alhambra High School in Martinez, Calif.
DeMacio is concerned as always with the ability to sign a player, which is as big an issue as ever in this draft with the end of the collective bargaining agreement approaching at the end of the 2011 season. Players and agents might have concerns that Major League Baseball will implement a more strictly enforced bonus slotting system in next year’s draft.
“I’m sure the agents are going to push for as much as they can,” DeMacio said.
That’s one area the Braves were especially pleased with in last year’s draft, when so many of their high-round picks signed early, including shortstop Matt Lipka, the supplemental first-round pick, and entered the farm system quickly. A group of college draftees from last year, including Andrelton Simmons, Todd Cunningham, Joe Leonard, Phil Gosselin and Joseph Terdoslavich, already are in high-Single A Lynchburg.
“I thought our scouts did a really good job last year of getting us to the right guys that wanted to go out and play, that had ability to play and that made a world of difference,” DeMacio said.
The Braves focused on up-the-middle defense in the draft last year, so for position players this year, they would like to nab some power at the corner spots.
“If we can get some power and some pitching, that’s what we’d like to do,” DeMacio said.
The Braves pick 85th overall in the second round and 115th in the third round.
The Braves’ system is known to be pitching-rich already, with some of the top prospects in baseball such as Julio Teheran, Arodys Vizcaino and Randall Delgado. But pitching also is a great tool to use to trade for position players at the major-league level, as the Braves did for years when Paul Snyder was running the scouting department and John Schuerholz was general manager.
“Somebody said the other day that John traded 50-some pitchers in all those years and was able to bring players back,” DeMacio said. “So you really never have enough pitching.”
