The 2012 First-Year Player Draft will begin in the early hours of Tuesday, U.K. time.
The first round of the draft will be streamed live on MLB.com from midnight. Bud Selig has been the man announcing the draft picks in recent years and if that continues into this year’s show then you may need plenty of coffee on tap if you want to watch it live. Whilst the hoopla surrounding the seemingly never-ending NFL draft is far from a model I’d want baseball to overindulge with, adding a bit more razzmatazz than Bud can bring wouldn’t go amiss.
Presentation points aside, it should be an interesting draft to follow.
There isn’t a sensational star name like a Stephen Strasburg or Bryce Harper and the consensus among the experts is that this year’s overall crop of talent is not as impressive as we’ve had in recent years. However, reports suggest there is still a good amount of quality prospects available and the lack of a few incredible talents in some ways adds to the event as it makes it slightly less predictable from the point of view of who will be taken in the opening selections.
The other element of intrigue in this year’s draft is that it is the first under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. One of the more controversial parts of the CBA is the strict limitations placed on spending in the amateur draft. Each team has been assigned a draft budget, calculated to take into account how many selections they have – and where they fall – in the first ten rounds, and there are severe fines in the way of taxes to be paid if a team exceeds their budget.
Nobody knows quite how selections and the subsequent contract negotiations will be affected by the new rules and it’s likely to take a few years before teams, agents and players understand the new landscape and how best to work within it.
The Houston Astros had the worst record in MLB last year, so they will pick first in this year’s draft. The number one selection is always very important, but it has an added significance for the Astros because it represents a key moment at the start of a new era in Houston. The team will move into the American League next year and new owner Jim Crane and new General Manager Jeff Luhnow are rebuilding the organization from top to bottom.
Several players are in the ‘number one’ mix, but most of the experts have two names on the Astros’ list: a college pitcher in Mark Appel and a high school outfielder in Byron Buxton.
On an ordinary development curve you would expect Appel to make it to the Majors much more quickly than Buxton as he will be the more polished prospect. This could slightly tip the odds in favour of Buxton being the Astros’ choice as the team is unlikely to be competitive in the Majors over the next few years. However, it probably makes most sense simply to go with whoever the Astros believe to be the best prospect, with the expected Major League arrival time more a factor to be considered if there is little else to choose between the candidates.
That approach appears to be endorsed by the majority of the experts I’ve read that are predicting that Appel will be the name that Bud Selig reads out at the top of the show. No one is stating that definitively however, so the drama will unfold right from the very first pick as the next teams (the Twins, Mariners, Orioles and Royals are next up) will adjust as potential selections come off the board.
It often takes several years for players signed in the draft to appear on the Major League stage. If you want to follow a potential first-rounder who could be called up quickly, then right-handed college pitcher Marcus Stroman may well be the person you are looking for. He has been touted as someone who could be in a Major League bullpen by the end of this season if the team that selects him can sign him to a contract relatively early before the 13 July deadline.
It can take a fair amount of work to keep up with all the MLB stories, let alone what’s going on in the Minors and with amateur players.  Thankfully there are plenty of great sources on the web to rely on to keep you informed, principally Jonathan Mayo on the official MLB.com website, John Sickels on MinorLeagueBall.com, Keith Law at ESPN.com, Kevin Goldstein at BaseballProspectus.com and a bunch of people at BaseballAmerica.com (the latter three requiring a subscription to access most – if not all – of the content).