Blue Jays play the field in June draft
Sure, the Blue Jays have gone to the post-season two years in a row but it would be hard to argue that it’s due to the major-league entry draft. The annual June entry process for high school and college players, which concluded Wednesday with rounds 11 through 40, has produced just one Jays major-league position player, injured outfielder Anthony Alford, from the last five drafts.
But the Jays aren’t alone with the paucity of instant satisfaction via the draft. Just 30 players, or an average of one per team, have reached the majors out of the 2014, 2015 and 2016 drafts combined. The Jays are right on average with one. And that one was pitcher Jeff Hoffman, the 2014 first-rounder who made it to the majors with the Rockies after being included in the Troy Tulowitzki trade.
Jays scouting director Steve Sanders is in his first year in the Toronto front office, but he sat in on the six prior drafts with the Red Sox. He knows the problem of the draft as a crapshoot, especially with regard to position players.
“Our hope is that there are a lot of position players in this draft that we hope and expect to go and have good professional careers (and) impact this team at the big-league level,” Sanders said.
Six of the Jays’ first seven picks in the draft were position players, led by shortstop Logan Warmoth, catchers Hagen Danner and Riley Adams, shortstop Kevin Smith, second baseman Cullen Large and outfielder Brock Lundquist. Only Danner is a high school player. After that, 22 of the last 34 picks were pitchers.
“At the end of the day we felt we struck a pretty good balance with pitchers and position players,” Sanders said. “But in the early rounds our goal was to add impact and we’re going to try and do that wherever we feel that we can. This year in those first few rounds we felt the best avenue for us to add impact that was available to us at the time was the position players that we took.”
Among the 19 position players, the Jays managed to choose two young Canadian outfielders — Tanner Kirwer, from Sherwood Park, Alta., in the 20th round and Cooper Davis, of Mississauga, in the 25th. Kirwer, a right-handed batter, hit .329 in three seasons at Niagara University, with 66 steals. The left-handed hitting Cooper is a product of the Ontario Blue Jays and the Canadian national team with a letter of intent to go to school at baseball powerhouse Vanderbilt University.
“We’re certainly excited about both those guys,” Sanders said. “Obviously we’re in a unique situation as the only major-league team in Canada and the pride certainly plays into it. We feel we’re very well positioned with the Canadian amateur talent base. Tanner and Cooper were two guys that we really liked and hoped to have a chance at. Both guys are outfielders with speed and good bats, instinct.”
Traditionally, it has been very difficult to anticipate major-league success for anyone chosen in the second half of the draft. But the Jays took a chance in the 35th round Wednesday, selecting centre fielder Brandon Polizzi from a small Division II school, Cal St.-Dominguez. The Jays found lightning in a bottle in 2011, choosing current centre fielder Kevin Pillar in the 32nd round from that same small school.
Somebody in the draft room must have told Sanders, who was with the Red Sox at that time, about the synchronicity of the Polizzi selection.
“Not until after the draft,” Sanders said. “We certainly hope that’s another Kevin Pillar. Day 3 of the draft is a pretty unique thing. It moves quickly. A lot of players are taken. There are a lot of major-leaguers come out of that group of players. From the 11th round all the way through the 40th, our hope is that all those guys are going to have a shot to make that happen.”
There is no doubt baseball’s draft has the least immediate impact on individual franchises when it comes to turning fortunes around. You have to go back four years to the 2013 draft to find a significant number of major-leaguers (79).
“It’s kind of an ongoing process,” Sanders agreed. “It’s part of what makes the baseball draft so unique is that it can take a while to see where these players really end up. But I think it’s something that we continue to look at moving forward.
“It’s not something where we sit back and wait three to five years before we look back. We’re con- stantly monitoring these guys’ progress. It’s our goal to continue to learn from our successes, learn from our mistakes.”
Teams have until July 7 to sign their drafted players.