Is Eddie's kid going to sign or was that just a vanity pick?
First of all, it's not like we'd forfeit our later picks by going heavier at 3. We'd still get very good players. We just wouldn't be able to go overslot as much.
Next, I doubt we'd have to go full slot on most of our options at 3. Maybe I'm wrong but I get the feeling that we'd probably be able to get whoever we wanted there for about $5 million. Considering what Anderson is rumored to be signing for, we'd probably come out about even if we paid $5 million at 3 and then went slot at 40 instead of getting Wentz.
So to me, getting Pint, Lewis, or Ray at 3 and going slot at 40 would be a better draft than getting Anderson and Wentz. I understand that I don't have all the info the Braves scouts have but that hardly means I can't disagree with the front office decisions.
I honestly would have been pumped to see us grab Lewis at 3 and then grab Muller and Alec Hansen at 40 and 44. Hansen is an enormous risk but has as high of an upside as any pitcher in the draft. I think that with some coaching he could be a dominant closer at worst and if you can get his control issues ironed out he's got ace stuff. But that's just my own personal preference.
I think the combination of not being 'blown away' by Lewis and being able to go further underslot to sign more studs later in the draft makes quite a bit of sense.
If you look at the pure slot values and the amount that Wentz/Cumberland/Muller/Harrington/Wilson signed for -- we ended up with a ton of talent. You can certainly argue that could happen regardless, but it seems to me we went hard after the strength of the draft which most experts agree wasn't at the top.
I'll be the first to admit that early in the process I didn't love this strategy, but it seemed to work out.
Groome > Anderson/Wentz/Muller --- I don't know, maybe
point is we can cock fight about this all day long, but we won't know until these guys get a few years of pro under them. We got what we got and now we are moving to signing some good players. If we missed our Trout we won't know about it until 2018 at the earliest.
There is no avoidance of hitters. They have drafted 9 players in the first two rounds over the last two years. 6 are pitchers, 3 are hitters. That is not an avoidance. It goes back to the Paul Snyder philosophy where if the arm and the bat are equal, take the arm.
Brian Bridges made a comment the other day that they did a lot of work on the college bats, but there simply wasn't a Manny Machado or Bryce Harper type of bat in this draft. Therefore, they went with the arm.
I saw Callis was asked why Senzel was paid more than Moniak... and the answer was because if Moniak wasn't picked first, he would have slipped further... Unlike Senzel, who likely would have fallen to 3.
Same is true of Lewis.
We have irrefutable indisputable evidence that he was willing to forgo his college leverage to sign for $3.2M.
Now go on and do you your usual insults.