A's Draft Picks Rounds 5-16

This is my last article on the 2009 Draft.  Thank goodness!  You’re probably thinking the same thing, if you haven’t already moved on to another web page.

However, the A’s are a great team for considering draft picks.  The A’s are the Money Ball team, and they in particular like college players and give more weight to college stats than most of the other teams.

Here are their picks in Rounds 5 through 16 with my comments:

5th — Stephen Parker, 3B BYU.  In his three college seasons, Parker has had OPS numbers of 1.010, 1.031 and 1.060.  Very impressive.  The biggest knock on him is that his hitting has improved dramatically over his three years of college.  Still, he looks to be a good pick for the 5th round.

6th — Ryan Ortiz, C Oregon State.  The last two seasons, he has had OPS numbers of .969 and .963, very good for a catcher.  Surprised he was still around until the 6th round.  Perhaps his defense isn’t very good.

7th — Ian Kroll, LHP (HS) Neuqua, Illinois

8th — Robert Gilliam, RHP UNC Greensboro.  Has a good arm, but not currently a good pitcher.

9th — Myrio Richard, OF Prairie View A&M.  He had a 1.095 OPS in 2008, but his OPS dropped to .913 in 2009.

10th — Samuel Dyson, RHP South Carolina.  He looks exactly like the kind of pitcher Oakland tends to target.  He went 9-4 last year for the Gamecocks, but his ERA was an ugly 5.17 because he gives up  a lot of long flies.  In 102 IP this year, he had 94 K’s and 37 BB’s, which are terrific numbers.  The Twins also tend to target guys like Dyson.

11th — Michael Spina, 3B Cincinnati.  In 2008, he hit 21 HRs and had a 1.172 OPS in his first year at Cincinnati after coming out of junior college in Florida.  The Twins drafted him in the 45th round last year, so he went back to school in 2009.  He hit 23 HRs this year and had a 1.121 OPS.  Surprising that he would still be around in the 11th round after two years like that, even if he already is 22 years old.

12th — Connor Hoehn, RHP St. Petersburg JC.

13th — Murphy Smith, RHP Binghamton.  He had a solid year in 2008, and this year he went 7-3 with a 3.12 ERA with 79 hits allowed, only 14 BB’s and 84 K’s in 89.1.  Like the Twins, the A’s like pitchers who attack the strikezone.  Smith only allowed six HR’s last year, which is pretty good for a guy doesn’t walk anybody.  Binghamton is small school, however.  As a 13th round pick, Smith was the second highest in school history behind only Dan Gray who was selected in the 7th round of the 1990 Draft.

14th — Drew Gagnier, RHP Oregon.  He started his college career at baseball powerhouse Fresno State, had a brutal season in 2007 and transferred to Oregon.  This year, he had a 2.70 ERA as a reliever with 14 hits allowed, 25 BB’s and 30 K’s in 30 IP.  This looks like a relatively rare “raw talent” pick by the A’s.  It would not surprise me at all if Gagnier decides to return to school for another season to see if he can go higher in the 2010 draft.  He hasn’t pitched much at the college level.

15th — Antony Allioti, 1B St. Mary’s.  Allioti had a .951 OPS in 2009.  Aside from being a local player, the A’s probably liked his .460 OBP this year.  Doesn’t have a 1Bman’s power, however.

16th — Joshua Leyland, C (HS) San Dimas, CA.

Around this point in the draft, 500 picks in, almost all of the 200 or so players on a team’s short list have been selected, so teams begin to draft based on their need to fill out their rookie and short season league rosters and by taking high school players who are either raw or other teams have stayed away from because of their bonus money demands or their expressed intent to go to college.

If the team likes the player enough, sometimes they will offer enough money so that the player will forego college.  For example, I noticed that the blogosphere generally thought that the Pirates should have done better than taking Boston College catcher Tony Sanchez with the 4th pick of the draft, but praised the Pirates for taking a lot of players demanding six-figure bonuses in Rounds 15 through 30.