Biggest.Sandwich.Ever

Friday, December 08 2006 @ 09:30 AM EST

Contributed by: Pistol

The sandwich round of the 2007 draft is going to be a long one.

EDIT (4:45 Fri): The order of the sandwich round was incorrectly presented earlier. It is correct now (I think).

How long? It's not set in stone yet, but potentially it'll be up to 36 picks, and it'll be at least 25 picks long. By my count there's 11 players remaining who were offered arbitration, but didn't accept. They would give their former team a pick if they switched teams.

As I recently found out, the order of the picks is not on the Elias rankings. Many thanks to the e-mailer who pointed out the correct ordering:

The order of selection in the compensation round does not follow the Elias rankings. The selection order in the compensation round follows the same order as the general order of selection (worst record to best). For example if Tampa Bay were to lose a type 'A' or type 'B' free agent, they would have the first selection in the compensation round regardless of where that free agent ranked according to Elias. The next selection would belong to the next highest drafting team that lost an 'A' or 'B' free agent. In looking at the current situation, the Cubs would have pick #31 based on their 3rd place in the selection order (TB and KC did not lose any free agents deemed worthy of compensation) for losing Juan Pierre. Pick #32 would go to Washington for Soriano, pick #33 to Arizona for Counsell and so on.

In the event a team, like the Blue Jays this year, loses multiple free agents the selection order goes through an entire rotation, then the order would repeat itself, again in reverse order of finish, for any teams that lost a second free agent, then again for a third free agent and so on and so forth.

Here's the list, and the order of the picks:

Pick   Team   Player Lost
1 Chicago  Pierre
2 Washington  Soriano
3 Arizona  Counsell
4 San Francisco  Schmidt
5 Seattle  Meche
6 Atlanta  Baez
7 Cincinnati  Aurilia
8 Texas  Matthews
9 Philadelphia  Dellucci
10 Boston  Gonzalez
11 Toronto  Speier
12 Dodgers  Lugo
13 San Diego  Roberts
14 Angels  Kennedy
15 Oakland  Thomas
16 Detroit  Walker
17 NY Mets Hernandez
     
18 Washington  Guillen
19 San Francisco  Alou
20 Texas  DeRosa
21 Toronto  Catalonotto
22 San Diego Williams
     
23 San Francisco  Stanton
24 Texas C Lee
25 Toronto  Lilly


There's 11 players remaining that could add to the sandwich round:
Barry Zito
Jeff Suppan
Mark Mulder
David Wells
Ron Villone
Chan Ho Park
Scott Schoeneweis
Miguel Batista
Keith Foulke
Alan Embree
Ryan Klesko

So the sandwich round will likely end up being around 30 picks, which effectively makes it the draft's 2nd round. This past year the sandwich round was 14 picks long and 18 and 11 picks the two years before.

At this point the Jays have the Rangers first round pick, #16 overall. However, this will drop to the Rangers second round pick if they Zito (or Suppan). That would drop the Jays from #16 to around #76.

Here are the 8 picks the Jays have at the moment in the first 3 rounds (again, this can, and likely will, change slightly based on the remaining free agents in above):
#16 (from the Rangers)
#21 (own 1st round pick)
#42 (for Speier)
#52 (for Cat)
#55 (for Lilly)
#71 (own 2nd round pick)
#74 (from the Angels)
#101 (own 3rd round pick)
The Star had a short article this morning, quoting Jays scouting director Jon Lalonde.
"I'm excited,'' said scouting director Jon Lalonde. "I think it's going to be a good (draft) year, strongest at high school position players, weakest at college-level pitchers. It's a good time for us to get some young guys (high schoolers) and just let 'em play ... percolate, as they say.''
The strengths and weaknesses of the draft according to Lalonde don't match up with BA's top 50 list. Here's a breakdown of BA's top 50:
Ricciardi also mentioned the Jays taking high school players in the 07 draft as well. I suspect that the success of Travis Snider played a part in this thinking. What will really be interesting is to see if the Jays venture into the high school pitching waters.

18 comments



https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20061208085322507