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The 2011 amateur player draft will begin at midnight UK time tonight.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\nThe 2011 amateur player draft will begin at midnight UK time tonight.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
This year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s class of the best high school and college ballplayers will be on tenterhooks as they wait to hear which team selects them and sets off the early stages of a professional career that, for some, will result in them fulfilling their lifelong dream of making it to the Major Leagues.<\/p>\n
The Pittsburgh Pirates are this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s team to have swapped being the worst for being the first.\u00c2\u00a0 Their Major League worst 57-105 win-loss record in 2010 means that they get to make the opening selection as they attempt to continue their rebuilding process.<\/p>\n
The Pirates have been slightly unlucky with their timing.\u00c2\u00a0 The Washington Nationals have been able to turn two terrible years into number one picks when there was an outstanding talent available on both occasions.\u00c2\u00a0 Pitcher Stephen Strasburg was selected in 2009 and made waves in the Majors last season before cruelly being cut down by an elbow injury requiring Tommy John surgery.\u00c2\u00a0 Last year, they selected Bryce Harper, another precocious talent who is tearing up the Minor Leagues on a fast track to the Big Leagues.<\/p>\n
There isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a standout Number One talent this year and the experts see it coming down to a choice between three talented college players: third baseman Anthony Rendon, right-handed pitcher Gerrit Cole or left-hander Danny Hultzen.<\/p>\n
The Pirates have yet to give any indication as to which they will go for and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible that the Buccos\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 brains trust is still to make a final decision.\u00c2\u00a0 That adds an extra element of intrigue to this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s draft that has been absent from the last two; rumours that the Nationals might look elsewhere due to the financial demands of Strasburg and Harper were never really believed.\u00c2\u00a0 Much as MLB has tried to limit spending on amateur players through the introduction of guide draft bonuses, teams now appreciate that saving money on the draft is a false economy.<\/p>\n
No drafted player, however talented, is guaranteed to make the most of their potential and large signing bonuses will always carry an element of risk.\u00c2\u00a0 However, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s often a risk worth taking.\u00c2\u00a0 Acquiring established impact players is now so expensive, either in terms of dollars for free agents or in terms of players and prospects when making a trade, that building from within is the best way to go for those without the big spending power.<\/p>\n
No one illustrates that point better than the Tampa Bay Rays.\u00c2\u00a0 The high draft picks they received after a series of losing Major League seasons helped them to develop a team that can compete against the seemingly insurmountable Yankees and Red Sox in the American League East.\u00c2\u00a0 That process is set to continue in 2011.\u00c2\u00a0 The Rays lost a horde of Major Leaguers to free agency over the offseason and consequently of the first 60 selections that are made in the early hours of Tuesday morning, 10 will be by Tampa Bay<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Rays will be allocating plenty of money to their draft pot and the Pirates will do the same.\u00c2\u00a0 A draft preview on MLB.com states<\/a> that “no team has spent more on the Draft since 2008 than Pittsburgh, and the organization has the backing of owner Bob Nutting to be among the highest spenders again this year”.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something for fans in Pittsburgh to be excited about and they undoubtedly deserve to have something to cheer after currently being on the longest sequence of losing seasons in North American sports history (18 and counting).\u00c2\u00a0 The Pirates have started bringing through youngsters such as Andrew McCutchen, Pedro Alvarez and Jose Tabata and their game against the Phillies on Saturday brought in the largest crowd ever<\/a> to see a game at their beautiful PNC Park.<\/p>\n We’ll find out just after midnight which prospect will start his road to PNC Park, ready to be cheered on by another large crowd.<\/p>\n Matsuzaka’s future uncertain as he goes under the knife<\/strong><\/p>\n The amateur draft will be one of many items discussed in the upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement talks between MLB and the Players Union, as will the prospect of an international draft.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unlikely that an international draft would include professionals in Japan, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no doubt that MLB owners would change that signing process if they could.<\/p>\n It was confirmed on Friday<\/a> that the Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka will undergo Tommy John surgery.\u00c2\u00a0 It typically takes a year for a pitcher to return from the operation and that means Matsuzaka may well have pitched for the last time in a Red Sox uniform, as his current contract expires at the end of the 2012 season.\u00c2\u00a0 Some have even questioned whether he will pitch again in the Majors, with the possibility open that he may opt to return to Japan instead.<\/p>\n If Matsuzaka doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t return to the Majors then it will be an ignominious end to a decidedly mixed term Stateside.<\/p>\n The Japanese star helped the Red Sox to a World Series in his first season, earning wins in the ALCS and World Series in the process, and he had an excellent second season, going 18-3 with a 2.90 ERA in 2008.\u00c2\u00a0 However the last couple of years have been full of frustration, with Matsuzaka rarely going deep into games due to his \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcnibbling\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 approach that ramped up his pitch count.\u00c2\u00a0 Add in reports that he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t adjust well to the American way of preparing for games, and him not always being in the best condition physically, and the Red Sox were left with a pitcher who didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite live up to his billing.<\/p>\n Or his price tag.<\/p>\n The 2006 offseason has become the best example for opponents of the posting system, used to acquire Japanese players still under contract with a professional team in their homeland.\u00c2\u00a0 If the Japanese team agrees to make the player available, MLB teams can submit a blind bid for the rights to negotiate with the player.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n While football fans are accustomed to outlandish transfer fees, they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t play a part in baseball (or other major North American sports) and the $51,111,111.11 posting fee that Boston paid to the Seibu Lions was genuinely shocking.\u00c2\u00a0 Barely two weeks later, the Yankees responded to missing out on Matsuzaka by winning the rights to Kei Igawa with a $26,000,194 posting fee.\u00c2\u00a0 Matsuzaka received a six-year, $52m contract; Igawa a five-year, $20m contract.<\/p>\n The Red Sox could at least comfort themselves with the fact that their dip into the Japanese market wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the complete, abject failure that the Yankees experienced with Igawa, but they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t receive a great return on their $100m+ commitment in Matsuzaka and it may make teams think twice before investing so heavily in Japanese pitchers again.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help but feel that the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dodged a bullet by failing to agree a contract with pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma after bidding $19.1m for him over the offseason.<\/p>\n Seeing-eye singles<\/strong><\/p>\n Since we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re on the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, their fourteenth inning loss to the Red Sox on Saturday was a tough one to sit through.\u00c2\u00a0 They seemed dead and buried heading into the top of the ninth trailing 8-4, but managed to send the game to extra innings after catcher Jason Varitek and closer Jonathan Papelbon lost their cool and got ejected due to arguing with the home plate umpire (who didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to have done a whole lot wrong with his balls-strikes calls).\u00c2\u00a0 To have fought back so well, and to have taken the lead in the eleventh inning, made the final loss all the harder to take.<\/p>\n SNY broadcaster Ron Darling made a classic comment during the Pirates-Mets game on Thursday.\u00c2\u00a0 He described a pitch by Mike Pelfrey to Andrew McCutchen as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153please hit me\u00e2\u20ac\u009d pitch.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately for Pelfrey, Darling had barely finished making the comment during a replay when Neil Walker took a 1-0 sinker into the right-centre field seats.<\/p>\n The Giants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 General Manager Brian Sabean has every right to be upset at losing Buster Posey for the season, but his comments about Scott Cousins (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153if I never hear from Cousins again, or he doesn’t play another day in the big leagues, I think we’ll all be happy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) were completely uncalled for.\u00c2\u00a0 The fact that Cousins has been receiving death threats from some idiots made the way Sabean needlessly stoked the flames of controversy all the more disappointing.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Note that Johnny Bench, who knows a thing or two about catching, made the point<\/a> that Posey got himself into a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bad position\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on the play.\u00c2\u00a0 As stated in this column last week<\/a>, there are ways for the catcher to protect himself on that sort of play.\u00c2\u00a0 Again, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcblame\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Posey, but it does have an impact on the argument as to whether the rules should be changed as a result of his injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 2011 amateur player draft will begin at midnight UK time on Monday. Also, thoughts on Matsuzaka’s injury and a Ron Darling phrase<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-10991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-hit-ground-ball","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10991"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11001,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10991\/revisions\/11001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}