Charm City 2053.2

[DaveB]

Recently the BBA had their annual draft. Your Charm City Jimmies held the 12th over selection in the draft. I was hoping to be more hands on with the selections as I have been in previous drafts, but after making our 6th round selection P: Hunter Jones late on Friday evening of the draft I fell went to bed and slept through our 7th and 8th round picks. Seeing as how there were slim pickings after about the 3rd round I decided to let our Assistant GM Chris Bennett complete the draft. Hopefully he'll have made some solid selections in my slumbers. With this piece we're going to take a look at our first two selections.

1st Round Selection:
The 2053 draft was one of the drafts where I've seen folks saying it was a weak draft. These are actually the kind of drafts that I love as a GM because in order to have a hit with the draft choice you have to really dig deep on what you like as a GM and then hope for some luck. With our first selection we drafted 1B: Máximo Littlefield. This was a pick that when I made the selections I felt was a "Roll of the dice pick". Littlefield is going to be a boom or bust selection for us. He's strictly going to be first baseman or a DH because he doesn't have the range for any other positions. When I was up in the draft my draft list had I think 6 players listed on it and he wasn't one of the 6 players initially on the list. I wanted someone who can play the field at least at an average rate, a starting pitcher, or an elite reliever. Unfortunately there weren't any starting pitchers as the players available to me looked like #4-5 guys in the rotation. I didn't see any elite relievers. The position players I was attracted to were more of the backup/depth players. I took one last look at the players available and noticed the ratings on Littlefield. He has a 9 gap, 9 power, 7 eye which are good ratings. He also had a high leadership, loyalty, and work ethic. I thought "You know if we can get a talent bump or two on the contact he can be a solid ball player" so we decided to make the selection. Fingers crossed, but I do like the potential that is there. I do have concerns with the last name Littlefield. The last guy that that had the name Littlefield on a baseball team drove my favorite baseball team into the ground. Thanks Dave.

2nd Round Selection:
With our second round pick we took 2B: Héctor Escobedo. Escobedo was a player that I had on my draft list actually in the first round. He wasn't a player that I took seriously enough to select with our first round pick, but I did like some of his intangibles with his high work ethic and intelligence as well as his ability to be a leader. I believe Escobedo will be one of the utility/depth players I talked about with Littlefield. This is due to his 8 in range at both outfield as well as infield. The thing that will hurt him a bit with his chance to reach the majors for us as a potential utility guy is that he only has a 2 arm on the infield which will limit him to be a second baseman or first baseman on the infield. Our scouts noticed the ball jumping off his bat a little bit more this spring as opposed to last year. We're hopeful that those positive developments continue and he can surprise us.