Marlins still figuring out plan with No. 16 overall pick in draft
The 2021 MLB Draft is about two weeks away. Who do the Marlins plan to take at No. 16? It’s tough to say. DJ Svihlik breaks down the team’s thought process.
Before he started his nearly 30-minute interview Monday morning previewing the 2021 MLB Draft, Marlins director of amateur scouting DJ Svihlik had a request to make to the media members on the call.
“If somebody on this call can help me with who to select this year, I would more than welcome that information,” Svihlik said. “It’s an exceedingly difficult year.”
Three questions in with no recommendations, he doubled down.
“I need a name!” Svihlik said. “I need a name!”
The three-day, 20round MLB Draft begins on July 11, less than two weeks from now.
The Marlins have the No. 16 pick in the draft and three of the first 52 overall selections.
Who exactly will they
pick? It’s tough to say at this point. Svihlik noted the Marlins have “a nice group of players to pick from” but have yet to lock in their decision in a draft where there’s a noticeable drop-off after the small top tier of players.
Some names being floated around in mock drafts for the Marlins: catcher Henry Ford out of Kennesaw (Georgia) North Cobb High, right-handed pitcher/shortstop Bubba Chandler out of North Oconee (Georgia) High and Kansas State left-handed pitcher Jordan Wicks.
“The difference between — and this is just an arbitrary number — the difference between player, eight or nine, seven to nine, right in that range and player maybe 20 to 25 on the board? They’re very similar players,” Svihlik said.
Another factor the Marlins have to deal with this year before making their first selection: How the rest of the draft plays out ahead of them. Miami had the No. 3 pick in 2020 when it selected right-handed pitcher Max Meyer and the No. 4 overall pick in 2019 when it drafted outfielder JJ Bleday.
This year, 15 teams will make their picks before the Marlins.
Now, Svihlik knows there are about a half dozen high-end prospects in this draft that have almost no chance of dropping to the No. 16 spot. He’s not anticipating the chance to draft either of Vanderbilt’s star pitchers in Jack Leiter or Kumar Rocker. Prep shortstops Marcelo Mayer, Jordan
Lawlar and Kahlil Watson will all likely be gone, too. Same with Louisville catcher Henry Davis.
Beyond that? The Marlins are preparing for any possible scenario.
“What other people do and the information that we gain over the next two weeks is going to help us make that decision on who it’ll be,” Svihlik said. “There’s going to be a lot of conversation this year that we didn’t have in years past about if this, then that. What scenario, what package, what portfolio of players do you want to bring in and how do we make that the most realistic? How can we do that?
“As I see it, when you’re in the middle of the first round, and you’re looking at a group of say 10 to 12 players, the next step is ‘OK, how do we acquire as many of those players as possible because they don’t exist further in the draft?’ So really trying to take that group that we’ve identified and say ‘OK, what do we do from here? How do we get it? How do we manage relationships with agents and players to make that the most realistic accurate acquisition?’ ”
Svihlik points to the second tier of college hitters — players who should be available on
Day 2 of the draft — as the strength of this cycle. There’s less depth when it comes to pitching this year compared to 2020, when the Marlins used all six of their picks on pitchers.
But with that also comes the extended uncertainties that were created when the COVID-19 pandemic prematurely ended seasons in 2020. College players, normally viewed as safer picks to their high school senior counterparts, lost one of their main years of development during the season and in the summer circuit that usually follows.
“With that came upand-down performances,”
Svihlik said. “We were really well prepared for it. We talked about it. I talked to our analytics guys about how we’re going to handle that back in January, but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t any less stressful. It wasn’t any less difficult.”
The high school summer circuit, however, was still pretty active in 2020, giving the Marlins’ scouts a chance to see prep prospects up close heading into their senior seasons.
“Our ownership provided us the opportunity to go out and scout,” Svihlik said. “If you would have gone out in the summer of 2020, you wouldn’t have believed what I saw in the environment we were in. It goes to show you how much people want college scholarships and how much people want to be seen by professional scouts because on the high school side, it was business as usual. So therefore we got to see a lot of the players, and it creates a lot more comfort as we moved into the spring.”