Time to once again check in on the college players the Blue Jays may select with their first pick in the June draft.

The college baseball season is a couple months old, so as many students prepare to take midterm exams we'll take a look at how the top baseball prospects are grading out on the field so far.

The Blue Jays will be selecting 6th in the 2005 Draft next summer. Some of the top candidates the Jays may select were discussed previously.

Previously, Mike Moffatt looked at the history of the 6th pick in the draft going back until 1965.

While the Jays will be selecting 6th in the draft I wanted to take a broader look at the players selected in previous drafts. So I went back, using The Baseball Cube as a resource, and looked at the players drafted from pick 6 through pick 15 from the ten drafts in the 90s.

Yesterday I looked at the Blue Jays drafts from 1997 to 2003. On average the Jays drafts have produced one major league player per year, about average for the draft. Today I will do the same for the A’s, the Twins and the Indians.

Success in the draft is a key component of the “plan” for the low budget Blue Jays; “poor” teams cannot afford to sign top free agents and must develop them themselves. JP Ricciardi is a former scout; was Director of Player Development in Oakland; and lists player evaluation as one of his strengths. JP, and his team, must utilize their player evaluation skills to draft and develop major league talent to strengthen the Blue Jays from the inside. The Jays would like to emulate Oakland’s success in the draft; when JP was working for Oakland they drafted Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito and Eric Chavez.

Some dirt on the 2004 draft class...

As Scott pointed out on one of yesterday's threads, Baseball America is reporting that the Tigers have decided to end their pursuit of #2 overall pick Justin Verlander.

Not too many positives come out of a season where you end up with 90+ losses. However, one of these positives is a high draft pick in the following year's draft.

Okay, now we know about the months of preparation that went into this draft, the countless hours of scouting and meeting and analysis. So it's time to find out some more about exactly who the Blue Jays acquired in the 2004 draft. No waiting -- let's get to it!

In a large conference room at Skydome on June 7, 2004, a number of men are gathered. Toronto Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi is there, along with Director of Player Personnel Tony LaCava, Assistant GM Keith Law, and Scouting Coordinators Andrew Tinnish and Alex Anthopoulous, as well as a number of Blue Jay area scouts. It’s Draft Day in major-league baseball.

Here's a clean thread to discuss the flurry of picks that are almost upon us. I feel like I'm in a great restaurant after I've ordered, just waiting for the food to come.

The Blue Jays first round selection is David Purcey, LHP, Oklahoma University

The following are composite statistical rankings of draft-eligible college pitchers. Only 2004 Division 1 stats were considered and only pitchers with at least 40 innings pitched were included. The composite ranking is based of 4 relatively evenly weighted categories: 1) Runs Saved Above Average, 2) FIP Run Average, 3) Component Performance Rating, 4) Component Performance Points Above Average.

What's the point of previewing a draft if you don't have a mock draft to go with it?

The final pre-draft NCAA adjusted hitting and pitching statistics for 2004 (which will be current to May 30) will be released today, tomorrow, or Thursday, depending on how many delays I encounter. Today, however, I thought that I would take up an idea of Aaron Gleeman's and look at some of this year's surprise performers. They are the guys who came out of nowhere to put up big numbers in 2004 - the "Nowhere Men". All of these guys finished in my Top 100 hitters or Top 100 pitchers, which I posted on Friday.

With the 2004 draft coming up shortly on June 7th, it’s a good time to look back on the first two drafts of JP Ricciardi.