Yankee Draft `13: Draft Peeves

As much as I love the baseball draft every year, there are a few things both teams do and fans do that bother me a bit.   We all know about signability kids.   High School or Prep picks have the most leverage cause they can go back into the draft, two or three more times, as well as use the standard of a college education to set their dollars high.   The second highest leverage belongs to college juniors and third year sophomores, cause in both cases they have eligibility left and can go back in the draft.   Some sites treat third year sophomores like they are some exotic value pool, but really they are just kids who should be juniors and either red shirted or had folks who liked trotted them out against younger kids when they were coming up.   There's no extra value in that.   Their options are to become old juniors and old seniors.   Neither  of those are really good things to be, so their best bet in terms of getting a deal will be as a third year sophomore, they are the ones who are up against lesser options, not the teams.  

College Juniors offer more honest value, but again, their option if they don't sign it to become a college senior, and though that can work out if you're Stephen Strasburg, seniors almost always get less money.   So they should get what they can and get on with their careers, and teams shouldn't bend over backwards for them unless they are future all stars.

Fans can get annoying when they feel like the the baseball draft is the football draft and  you can just read some prospect stuff on the web or pony up for the book, and you know what the Yankees should do.  Yet the Yanks are the ones with real scouting reports from real scouts, and though they are not perfect and miss on picks, fans couldn't do better.    And no matter how much fans complain about the Yanks not doing well enough, there is nothing the Yanks can do to increase the talent pools that correspond with how late they generally pick.   So, the best thing to do is realize this isn't the NFL draft, see who they pick and then see what information is out there about the picks.    The teams cast a much wider net than Baseball America, or Keith Law does or can.  

Go Yanks.