Scouting for the Upcoming Draft

One of a good handful of players (Trevor Story) that could go #1 overall on Draft Day.

One of my goals for this blog is to do more all-around pieces of everything APBA. Looking back at last year, I was not pleased that for the second consecutive year, I have done less blog pieces... Although my blog stats show that the blog has been gaining a bigger & bigger supportive audience over this span, I am still not satisfied on my end, with the production.

As my regular readers know, I also run a APBA Baseball computer league (through APBA Baseball for Windows) named 'The Boys of Summer APBA Baseball League' (Initials - BoS) with 16 owners (including myself) with 16 teams. We are now entering our 5th season, and are all preparing for our upcoming 2017 BoS Annual Draft.

This year's draft may be the most loaded-up draft yet, talent-wise. An amazing rookie class with many big-time prospects, plus plenty of free agent veterans are available as well. There is 6 guys that really could go #1 overall, legitimately -- So it will be interesting to see who goes #1 overall with the King Road Kings' selection at the top.

My team could contend for the division this year, if I truly like, and we will still give it a serious go, but our goal is to make the best team possible, so if that means grabbing the best player (upside) available, we will do it in a heartbeat, even if it means not taking the best player that can help now.

My Traverse City Panthers ended up trading both Josh Donaldson & Matt Carpenter before last year's mid-season trade deadline, and we still only ended up 5 games out of the division lead at season's end... Could we have won last year's division title? Possibly, but it really would not have been worth it, the team was getting longer in the tooth, and we needed to create franchise building blocks to help us become more successful in the future.

I was real happy with the return we got in both the Donaldson & Carpenter trades...

• Josh Donaldson (3B) sent to Fairgrove Tigers along with Nori Aoki (OF) & TC's 6th Round Draft Pick in exchange for Nick Castellanos (3B), Yordana Ventura (SP) & Fairgrove's 1st Round Draft Pick (16th overall); We would later trade the late Ventura back to Fairgrove for that same 6th Round Pick.
• Matt Carpenter (3B/2B/DH) sent to the San Diego Heroes in exchange for Brandon Drury (IF/OF), Daniel Norris (SP), Yasiel Puig (OF) & San Diego's 3rd Round Draft Pick.

Carpenter helped land some franchise building blocks for the Panthers.

The deal with Fairgrove allowed us to have two 1st Rounders in a loaded first round draft. We also acquired a good pitching prospect, along with a versatile Drury, plus re-acquired former 2014 BoS #1 overall pick Yasiel Puig; The 3rd Round Draft Pick will the equivalent of a 2nd Round pick in this year's draft. 

Our off-season leading up to the draft, started off slowly, as the Panthers traded probable-cut in Derek Dietrich (2B+) to the Portland Microbrewers in exchange for their 5th Round Draft Pick & Jesse Hahn (SP); We eventually traded similar deals, while shipping off other players like Josh Harrison (2B+), Alex Cobb (SP) & Jarrett Parker (OF) for a couple late draft picks. 

We would make a huge deal with the Seattle Rainiers...

• Kelvin Herrera (RP), Masahiro Tanaka (SP) & San Diego's 3rd Round Draft Pick sent to Seattle, in exchange for Jonathan Lucroy (C), Yasmany Tomas (OF), Brad Miller (1B/SS), Alex Wood (SP) & the 2nd Round Draft Pick (that Seattle acquired in a previous trade with Corktown). 

Lucroy gives Panthers a strong, dependable presence behind the plate

We finally acquired a dependable full-time catcher in Jonathan Lucroy, while we add some power & OF arm in Yasmany Tomas; Brad Miller gives us flexibility to play some future 1B, while playing Miguel Cabrera as the DH. Alex Wood unfortunately did not make the cut for the pre-draft 28-man roster & was released; We'll hope to re-acquire him, all depending how the draft goes... Jesse Hahn was dealt the same fate as Woods. 

The team will have to do 4 post-draft cuts afterwards, but they now have plenty of picks, plenty of pieces to plug, especially with the 5 picks inside the 1st 3 rounds.

Looking at my depth chart, I have the luxury of taking many prospect & risks on high payoffs, and only really need to add some bullpen. I will be looking at the best player available with every pick... in the end, Traverse City may be sitting nice & pretty as a sleeping giant ready to pounce.