MVN - Most Valuable Network

Minor League Coverage to Merge with Royals Authority

Due to some ‘tidying up’ around the MVN network, the coverage of the Royals minor league system that we recently started here is going to be integrated into our overall Royals coverage at Royals Authority.

Look for a weekend post reviewing the happenings of the previous week down on the farm and also for some late afternoon/early evening posts sprinkled in during the week to catch the high points. As always, Craig Brown and I will continue to post every weekday morning on the big league club over at The Authority and update you when breaking news occurs.

It has been a busy couple of days with draft preparation, so here are some quick notes from around the system. We’ll be back with better coverage next week.

Billy Butler had a double and a triple (yeah, I’m trying to envision that, too) last night for Omaha and currently is hitting .364 since his demotion. He won’t be in Omaha long.

Speaking of Omaha, don’t look now but the always slow starting Chris Lubanski is starting to heat up. The former first round pick has hit .343 over his last ten games with two doubles, one triple and two home runs. For the season, Lubanski’s line is now at .268/.335/.497 with seven home runs.

Here is a good recap of Blake Wood’s second start in AA. With three years of college experience on his resume, the Royals are likely to push Wood through the system quite a big faster than the likes of Daniel Cortes and Julio Pimentel. As such, put him right behind Carlos Rosa in the ‘next to the bigs’ line.

All it’s been doing in Wilmington lately is rain.

Daniel Duffy gave up just one hit in 5.2 innings of work for Burlington last night, picking up the win. Fellow 2007 draftee Sam Runion gave up three runs in six innings the night before, also picking up a win. Mike Moustakas hit a three run homer, his eighth of the year, to help Runion secure his victory.

The Burlington Royals rookie team starts play June 15th, with Idaho Falls starting up on the 17th. The Arizona Royals wait until June 22nd to get going. Those rosters will start firming up in the next week.

Drafting is So Much Easier the Second Time Around

The perception surrounding the Thursday’s Major League Baseball Draft is that this event does not have the ‘make or break it’ consequences of the NFL and NBA drafts. In some respects, that is certainly true: no team is truly counting on its first few picks to start for them next year. With years to develop prospects, a league designed to make trading players much easier and the most liberal free agency system in professional sports, a team can certainly miss on entire drafts and not see a negative effect on the major league for years, if ever.

That is true, at least, for some teams. Big market, even medium market teams have the monetary flexibility to go out and get free agents or make trades to get better in a hurry. Small market teams, even with increased revenue sharing and a sport that is awash in cash right now, have a much finer margin for error. An organization that drafts poorly and cannot (or will not) tolerate a payroll outside of the lower third of the league simply must draft well: if only to produce legitimate prospects that can be traded for even more, younger prospects.

Here is an example of just how an organization could have been changed by better drafting. Unfortunately, the team I follow is one of the best to use for this scenario. My Kansas City Royals have not only drafted poorly, but they have made few ‘good’ trades and only recently have begun to spend any sort of money. How different would the Royals look if they had been better and luckier in this decade’s drafts? Take a look:

C – Brian McCann (drafted instead of Adam Donachie in 2002 Round 2)
1B – Casey Kotchman (drafted instead of Colt Griffin in 2001 Round 1)
2B – Chase Utley (drafted instead of Mike Stodolka in 2000 Round 1)
SS – J.J. Hardy (drafted instead of Roscoe Crosby in 2001 Round 2)
3B – Alex Gordon
LF – Grady Sizemore (drafted instead of Scott Walter in 2000 Round 3)
CF – Curtis Granderson (drafted instead of Dave Jensen in 2002 Round 3)
RF – Nick Markakis (drafted instead of Chris Lubanski in 2001 Round 1)
DH – Billy Butler

SP – Zack Greinke
SP – Luke Hochevar
SP – Rich Hill (drafted instead of Danny Christensen in 2002 Round 4)
SP – Shaun Marcum (drafted instead of Brian McFall in 2003 Round 3)
SP – Micah Owings (drafted instead of Chris Nicoll in 2005 Round 3)

BP – Jonathan Papelbon (drafted instead of Miguel Vega in 2003 Round 4)
BP – Bobby Jenks (drafted instead of Zach McClellan in 2000 Round 5)
BP – Huston Street (drafted instead of J.P. Howell in 2001 Sup Round 1)
BP – Manny DelCarmen (drafted instead of Mike Tonis in 2000 Round 2)
BP – Joakim Soria

Okay, okay – I know. Drafting in hindsight is simple…too simple. Take any NFL team, redo their last seven or eight drafts and you pretty much have a Pro Bowl lineup. Without too much work and very little cheating, I could have gone back over all the rounds in the last ten years and given the Royals a lineup almost completely made up of All-Stars.

Let’s even up the scales a little bit and try again. Throw out all the first rounders, as there were almost certainly major signability issues associated with those picks and, in addition, we will limit one draft pick switch per year and that switch must be to a player who went in one of the next five spots after the Royals’ original pick

Under that scenario, we could add Grady Sizemore, J.J. Hardy, Curtis Granderson, Tom Gorzelanny, Hunter Pence and Micah Owings to the current Royals roster. How different would Kansas City be perceived and how many more wins would they have? Ten wins, fifteen wins over each of the last two or three seasons?

Throw out three of those picks and the Royals could still have either Sizemore or Granderson patrolling centerfield, flanked on one side by Hunter Pence and with J.J. Hardy at shortstop instead of Tony Pena Jr. Almost certainly the Royals would be contenders this year in the A.L. Central.

Yes, drafting in reverse is an easy task. So easy, in fact, that it is really quite silly. What it lacks in application to reality, however, it more than makes up for in the illustration of just how important the seemingly ‘low risk’ Major League Draft truly is.

Ask the Rays, who are contending with a team made up almost entirely of their own draft picks how important the draft is. Ask the Royals, who have just four major league players from their top 30 picks over the last six years, just how badly they would like even a handful of those picks to do over.

The difference between a good draft and a bad draft is quite simply the difference between using the 74th pick on Scott Walter and the 75th on Grady Sizemore. Yep, I think maybe the baseball draft is pretty important after all.

Mock Draft

I have recently participated in a mock draft with a number of other bloggers/writers. You can access it here and see the picks for the first, supplemental and second rounds.

There will be more draft coverage here at The Royal Line and much more over at Royals Authority. Starting late Wednesday over at the Authority, I will try for the third year in a row to project the Kansas City draft picks for the first six to eight rounds. Last year, I missed on every pick, but the year prior I actually got two right! The Thursday and Friday proceedings will be updated often by both myself and Craig Brown.