Draft Thoughts for 2024

This will be the first year in many that I haven’t done extensive draft reportage and analysis for Crashing the Pearly Gates (or its godfather blog, HH). The Angels farm has been so bad for so long, it’s just hard to get hopped and drink deep from the gathering gloom, especially given the Halos draft room record of BPA avoidance and puzzling selections: Thaiss, Adams, Wilson, Bachman, Schanuel. They always seem to be reaching for low-ceiling, high-floor selections

I don’t think there’s a lot of unique insight I can offer to this year’s draft. I largely agree with the consensus: One, this is a terribly weak draft class, so it makes little sense to try to save money on a first-rounder in hopes of spreading more around later. The college crop is thin, beyond the first 30 picks, and the prep talent is more raw and high-variance, so paying top dollar for low-probability projects seems inadvisable. There’s a consensus top 8 or top 11 players (if you include Yesavage and the two prepsters Rainer and Griffin) on the board, and I think it’s a pretty sound consensus. At least four of those eleven are going to fall to the Angels, and it really doesn’t make sense to reach beyond them.

Assuming the Angels are not going prep in round one, and that Bazzana and Condon are not falling beyond the top four selections, here’s how I would feel about the Angels selecting the following:

HOMERUN: Chase Burns, JJ Wetherholt, Hagen Smith

TRIPLE: Jac Caglianone

DOUBLE: Trey Yesavage, Seaver King, Braden Montgomery, Nick Kurtz

SOLID SINGLE: Cam Smith, Christian Moore, James Tibbs

I’m higher on Yesavage than some, because the Angels aren’t a free agent destination for starting pitching. They have to overpay in years and dollars, and many pitchers avoid them outright. The draft (and, well, trades) is the most efficient place to acquire it, and Yesavage is the type of mid-rotation (3/4) starter that offers value over cost for several years, even if he becomes something like a Canning in his first few seasons.

Caglianone and Kurtz both offer “do-overs” for last year’s draft. Both will present power-over-hit risk, despite their college numbers, but both have tremendous raw power that teases 35+ HR potential, whereas Schanuel is a 15 HR reserve player on most first division teams. I rate Caglianone a “triple” here because he’s the most exciting player on the board – highest risk, highest reward, with 70 grade power that’s rare even in a good draft class. But can he tame that chase rate to hit enough to find it? Kurtz has a more balanced hit/power profile, and some analysts love him (“Jim Thome with defensive value”), though others (eg, Fangraphs) find his swing and load transfer may open him up to vulnerability on the outer third of the zone.

I think if Perry is chasing Tibbs, the best he is going to get is a Taylor Ward or Kole Calhoun with slightly worse defense. And that’s the upside case. In this draft, that might be fine, but there’s good chance that Tibbs is merely a platoon leftfielder with a 20-25 HR ceiling. To me, there’s no sensible world where, say, Braden Montgomery would be on the board, and you’d reach after Tibbs. Likewise, I think Smith and Moore are more positionally valuable than Tibbs, if the Angels reached beyond the consensus 11. A few analysts think that Cam Smith is being seriously underrated and may become a 30HR 3B fixture in a few years.

One guy I have up there that’s outside the consensus, but I would consider a solid play, is Seaver King. Not my usual profile for a first-round selection, but he strikes me as an unusually talented superutility guy with 70 grade speed – one who can actually play six positions, but positions of need (like 2b and 3b) rather well – and who has makeup and energy for days, and ceiling to match. (He’s even had a couple Mookie comps, which reads like damnation with high praise.) He feels like this year’s Neto to me, and he’s the one player on the board I’d feel good about if the Angels stood astride consensus and opted to do it differently.

In terms of some of the other “discount” names that have been attached to the Angels, Bende and Waldschmidt strike me as platoon outfielders, guys you’d hope to pick up in the 2nd or 3rd round of a more typical draft. Brecht and Cijntje both have tantalizing upside, but are developmental projects unsuited to a system with no compelling infrastructure for pitching development. The Angels haven’t developed a prep position player of note since Trout’s draft, so Rainer and Griffin feel like selections for a developmental org that doesn’t exist.

In terms of their second rounder, well, one hopes that there’s still a college arm and backend rotation type still in the mix: Jonathan Santucci, Ben Hess, Bryce Cunningham, Luke Holman. With an extra pick in the first three rounds, they could absorb the risk of a projectable HS pitcher – maybe a Dasan Hill or Owen Hall.

Position players in rounds 2-4 are a lot tougher to weigh this year. Kyle Debarge is interesting to me as a high-contact, quick-moving keystone guy. Sean Keys and Mike Sirota if they’re available pick three or beyond. There are some decent relief candidates for round 3-5: David Hagaman, Chris Cortez, Thatcher Hurd.

Let’s see what happens. Given how random this org is, nothing would surprise me at this point.