Five rounds. No games to scout. Remote interviews. How the Marlins navigate the 2020 draft
Miami Marlins director of amateur scouting DJ Svihlik has his share of adjectives for the how the past few months have unfolded.
Frustrating. Exciting. Exhausting. Creative.
The 2020 Major League Baseball draft is a week away, and the weeks leading up to it have been anything but ordinary for Svihlik and his staff due to the coronavirus pandemic. There have been no live games to scout, no ways to update evaluations with fresh information. In-person interviews and meetings have now taken place remotely via Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
And then there’s the fact that the draft, normally 40 rounds, has been condensed to five rounds this year under a March agreement by MLB and the MLB Players Association.
“It’s just the environment we have to navigate,” Svihlik said.
It’s one that will serve as a test for the Marlins’ scouting department. The exam begins on June 10 when they go on the clock for the first time.
Trusting the evaluations
The Marlins have six selections in the 160-pick draft, including the No. 3 overall pick as a result of finishing with the 2019 season with a 57-105 record.
Svihlik said Tuesday the Marlins’ draft board consists of a little more than 100 players and that he and his team are just about finished with their final round of virtual interviews.
He also said that in any given season, “upwards of 75 to 80 percent” of scouting for the draft is worked on during the summer and in the fall. The spring season, which was cut short at both the college and high school levels, is when they polish up their final evaluations.
With at most 20 games to work with for any given prospect this spring, Marlins scouts are trusting that their evaluations heading into this year were correct.
“They’ve been hard at work and making sure that all of the information that we collected through last summer and through the fall and early spring is in our internal system,” Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill said in April.
“Obviously, all 30 clubs are in a unique spot, in a sense that the college season has been canceled and the high school season has been canceled. You put a huge emphasis on your summer coverage, your fall coverage and your early spring coverage.”
This, however, also puts some prospects who had the chance to rise up draft boards in uneasy positions.
An example from the Marlins’ organization from last year’s draft is Peyton Burdick. Miami took the Wright State University outfielder in the third round in 2019 after he posted a staggering .407 batting average with 72 RBI and 79 runs scored as a senior.
Burdick shined in his first season in the Marlins’ farm system, playing 63 games with the Class A Clinton (Iowa) Lumberkings and hitting .307 with 59 RBI and 57 runs scored. MLBPipeline now has him ranked as the club’s No. 14 overall prospect.
“Here you have a college player that has some holes in his game, and it took a little bit of time to develop that evaluation,” Svihlik said. “With a season that’s cut short, that type of player potentially could suffer here. ... If the player isn’t allowed to stamp what he is or isn’t, that becomes very, very challenging.”
That, in turn, could make things very, very challenging for a Marlins team still relying on the draft to build up their organizational depth as they maneuver through their rebuild under the Bruce Sherman and Derek Jeter ownership group. Trades helped them get a group of top prospects who are either already on the big-league club or are on the cusp, but the homegrown players they are developing from the start are pivotal to making or breaking this team’s future.
Of the Marlins’ top-30 prospects according to MLB Pipeline, nine were selected in the past two draft cycles: Outfielder JJ Bleday (No. 2, first-round pick in 2019), outfielder Kameron Misner (No. 12, competitive balance pick in 2019), outfielder Connor Scott (No. 13, first-round pick in 2018), Burdick, shortstop Nasim Nunez (No 17, second-round pick in 2019), pitcher Evan Fitterer (No. 18, fifth-round pick in 2019), shortstop Osiris Johnson (No. 24, second-round pick in 2018), catcher Will Banfield (No. 25, competitive balance pick in 2018) and pitcher Alex Vesia (No. 27, 17th-round pick in 2018).
The Marlins are going to have to be wise with their picks this year. Again, they only have six. They’re also going to have to be creative with how they approach the undrafted free agency process. Teams are only allowed to give those players a $20,000 signing bonus compared to the usual $125,000.
The goal right now is quality over quantity.
“We’re not going to be able to introduce the volume of player to the system,” Svihlik said, “but I have a lot of confidence that we are going to introduce, will be at least as much impactful talent for those six players and hopefully there’s a few players that that people wake up, after the draft, and they look at the marvelous, and they say, ‘Wow, how did you sign Joey Smith or how did you sign Stevie Smith for $20,000?’ If we can do that, if we can bring in six impactful pieces and add a few more pieces afterwards on players that were that were found just through the hard work of our scouts, knowing the players and knowing their situation, I would say that that’s a very fruitful draft.”
The top draft prospects
Making it a fruitful draft starts at the top, and the Marlins on paper should be getting a top prospect with the No. 3 overall pick.
The consensus top three prospects for the draft this year are Arizona State first baseman Spencer Torkelson, Vanderbilt third baseman/outfielder Austin Martin and Texas A&M pitcher Asa Lacy.
The Marlins are most likely set to pick whichever of those three players is still on the board when they are on the clock.
Torkelson posted a .337 batting average with 54 home runs and 130 RBI in 129 games for Arizona State. He had a .340 batting average and seven homers through 17 games in 2020 before the college season came to an abrupt end.
Martin, a Jacksonville native and teammates with Marlins 2019 first-round pick JJ Bleday the past two years at Vanderbilt, had a career .368 batting average and struck out just 82 times in 665 plate appearances for the Commodores (12.3 percent). He had a .392 batting average with 87 runs scored during Vanderbilt’s run to a College World Series title last season.
Lacy, a 6-4 left-handed pitcher, had a career 1.96 ERA over two-plus seasons at Texas A&M, giving up just 24 earned runs over 110 innings. He struck out 164 batters while walking just 44 in that time. His fastball runs between 92 and 97 mph and he complements it with a plus-slider, an above-average changeup and a curveball.
Other contenders at the No. 3 spot are Georgia right-handed pitcher Emerson Hancock, New Mexico State middle infielder Nick Gonzales and UCLA outfielder Garrett Mitchell.
After that is where the draft will get interesting.
The Marlins have some needs in their farm system. They lack depth at catcher and first base, and Hill always notes that a team can never have enough pitching depth. However, with only six picks to use on a considerably strong draft class, there is an argument for the team to go with the best player available each time they are on the clock.
Svihlik refers to the Marlins’ process as a “broader portfolio approach.” Yes, the top pick is going to be the one that’s the most heavily scrutinized. However, the sum of the production of their picks will determine the overall success of their draft.
“Everybody wants to talk about the first pick, which certainly I understand that. I’ve done this a long time,” Svihlik said. “But when we look at our drafts, we want to bring in a group of players that when you sit back and you look at the whole body of work and say ‘Well look at this, this, this, this and this,’ it’s not all just one player. I’m excited about what’s going to come in, even though we won’t be able to introduce the body that we did previously.”
What does the future hold?
And it’s uncertain if teams will ever have the chance to introduce that annual large volume of players in the future. The 2021 draft is also anticipated to be condensed, most likely in the 20-round range.
The uncertainty surrounding the structure of minor-league baseball in the future will also play a factor. The 2020 minor-league season is not expected to be played, an announcement that should come when (or if) MLB and the players’ association come to an agreement on how to play the MLB season this year. Baseball America reported that as many as 40 full-season minor-league teams could lose their affiliation with MLB teams by the 2021 season
However, Svihlik said only minor adjustments will likely need to be made on the scouting side should this happen.
“If that’s the case, it doesn’t change what we do,” Svihlik said. “It doesn’t change how we allocate our resources. It might change how we route scouts around the country. I think that the landscape how we scout players in the summertime can change as the calendar changes and that landscape changes. There’s a lot at play with the NCAA, they’re talking about reworking their calendar. So I think more than anything else, it’s going to just change when we do our jobs over the course of the year versus how we do our jobs. We’re always focused on, regardless of when we see the players, we’re always focused on developing a track record with them, getting to know them, and really being true to what that player is. It takes time to do that so I don’t see that changing over time.”
This story was originally published June 3, 2020 at 11:33 AM.
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