Draftermath

I was simply going to comment on Tad's post, but my comments turned out to be somewhat longer, so...

It's tough to get worked up about the draft just yet...although there's plenty of gloom and doom around the M's blogosphere regarding Morrow over Miller. This was universally regarded as a weak draft class, so nabbing a gem like Miller would have helped the M's immensely (IF he doesn't hurt himself....).

There's plenty of gloom and doom every day in Safeco to go around without having to wail about the future. Minor league pitchers, in the Mariners' system, have turned into pumpkins at an astonishing rate, and COUNTING on even a polished, college pitcher to come up and contribute is unwise.

What's really bad is that as a whole, if the draft class WAS weaker than usual--which to be sure the M's compounded if they skipped over a premiere talent over money--then little of this year's crop can be counted on down the road. Still, it's almost as much quantity as quality in prospecting, since the attrition rate is so high for promising minor leaguers. I DO like the fact that we went pitching-heavy (34 of the 50 picks were pitchers), but I'm not remotely enough of a prospect expert to comment meaningfully here.

Interestingly, in an insanely deep fantasy league that I play in, we held our inaugural amateur draft back in January (this year only; in the future it will coincide roughly with the June MLB draft). Andrew Miller was nabbed by a forward-thinking owner then in the 9th round (of a 40-round draft that included as eligible all MLB minor leaguers retaining rookie status). Morrow went ten rounds later. This was before the college season went down, so that says really quite good things about Morrow, as he hadn't done ANY of the things at that point that turned him into a first-round prospect.

Back to this year's really exciting big-league club....