Prior to covering professional baseball, I covered household expenses and built a meager savings by reporting on Clemson athletics for the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier. Clemson has typically been a fixture in the NCAA Tournament and in early June of 2010 I covered a bizarre scene at the regional in Auburn, Alabama.

One of Clemson’s star players was Kyle Parker, who was also the starting quarterback for the school’s football team. While playing quarterback at Clemson was the higher-profile amateur position, he was expected to choose baseball professionally, as he’d shot up draft boards that spring and was regarded as a potential first-round pick. On the opening night of the draft, Parker found himself also playing an NCAA Tournament regional elimination game against Auburn in Auburn.

Parker was the starting right fielder for Clemson, and Auburn had something of a party deck just beyond and above the right-field wall, where a rowdy collection of loyal Auburn partisans gathered. As a sort of preemptive measure, Parker approached the section of fans before the game and suggested they heckle him in any manner they chose, but he made one request: he ask they avoid one subject matter in their taunts and that was anything related to the draft.

Parker envisioned a scenario in which the fans out there distracted him while his team was on the field. “Hey, Kyle, you just went fifth overall!” “Hey, Kyle you’re really sliding!” Imagine the NFL draft taking place the night of the national title game. This was nearly the baseball equivalent.

In the middle of the seventh inning, a cheer went up during a rather innocuous, low-energy point in the game. It was audible throughout Plainsman Park. It had been produced by the Parker family, seated in the grandstands on the first-base side. The yelps indicated that Parker had been selected 26th overall by the Rockies, who at the time had a thing for college quarterbacks (See: Helton, Todd and Smith, Seth.) Earlier in the game, Parker had smashed a three-run homer, so maybe the whole life-changing-moment, life-changing-money thing hadn’t been so much of a distraction. Or maybe Parker was smart to make a personal appeal to the Auburn’s rowdiest contingent of fans. A similar situation played out this past Monday night, as University of Florida Friday night starter Alex Faedo was selected 18th overall by the Tigers while his Gators were in the midst of an NCAA Tournament game.

I will hardly be the first or last person to question the awkward timing of the amateur baseball draft. Baseball faces a number of challenges related to the draft given that it has its own feeder system (the minor leagues) to consider, while the NFL and NBA largely use colleges to develop much of their future talent. Major League Baseball probably has little interest in pushing back the draft and losing weeks of potential development time with minor-league seasons underway and short-season ball on the verge of beginning. College baseball, for its part, has shown little interest in changing its schedule. While the sport might benefit from holding its postseason when school is still in session and students are on campus, cool early-spring weather already puts Northern schools at a disadvantage.

While the timing of the draft isn’t the most pressing issue facing college or professional baseball, it is the most obvious portal through which to view the imperfect relationship between MLB and college.

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Episode 749
When Mike Trout slid headfirst into second base recently on a stolen-base attempt, he incrementally improved his odds of beating the catcher’s throw. He also increased the probability for injury. In the end, he did steal the base. He also did suffer an injury, one that’s likely to keep him out till mid-July and cost the Angels a couple wins. The cost, in this case, would appear to seriously outweigh the benefit. Does that mean that Trout shouldn’t ever attempt a steal if the play is likely to be close? Is there an argument for valuable players to avoid unduly exerting themselves? Managing editor Dave Cameron answers similar to these.

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Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 42 min play time.)

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Writers have a tendency to fall all over themselves in their haste to identify the newest breakouts. I do it, myself, because that’s the kind of stuff that’s most exciting, and you always want to be first. So this is why, every April, you’ll see enthusiastic articles about players who seem to be over-achieving. Once April is in the books, then only April is in the books, and surprisingly strong numbers stand out. Potential breakouts make themselves known, and few writers have the willpower to resist.

What’s less common is the eventual follow-up. Absolutely, some of those potential breakouts turn into actual breakouts. Far more often than not, the potential breakouts end up having been just regular players on hot streaks. This specific article — this is a follow-up. The Yankees are in first place in large part because the Aaron Judge breakout seems to be real. And yet Judge isn’t alone in being a major contributor, because there’s also increasing reason to believe in Aaron Hicks. Hicks right now is tied for sixth among position players in WAR, and he started as one of the Yankees’ backups. He is a backup no longer.

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We’re still 100 games away from the end of the season, but we’re getting closer to that time when teams have to decide whether they’re in or out of contention for the playoffs. Some clubs might have to make the tough choice of moving themselves out of contention despite having a reasonable playoff shot. In the American League, nearly every team is still in the race. That might change over the course of the next month, of course, but the field certainly looks like it will still be crowded come July.

There are five playoff spots up for grabs in the AL, and while a lot can and will happen the rest of the way, there are four teams to which our playoff odds give roughly an 80% or better chance of making the playoffs: the Houston Astros, Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox, and New York Yankees. The Astros look well on their way to potentially 100 wins, while the Indians, Red Sox and Yankees appear to be moving toward close to 90 wins, a figure that generally amounts to a spot in the postseason. Those four teams total 359% of the 500% total odds available. After that, seven teams have something close to a 10%.

After the first four teams, no club has a better than a 50% chance at the playoffs. The team at the top, Toronto, is currently in last place in its division. Here are the playoff odds since the beginning of the season for the rest of the teams in the American League — with the exception, that is, of the rebuilding Chicago White Sox, who have been near zero all season long.

Does that look like an incomprehensible mess? Well, welcome to the AL Wild Card race. If it helps at all, the list of teams at the bottom of the chart is in order in terms of their current playoff odds. There are seven teams with close to a 1-in-10 shot of making the playoffs, with a couple more in Kansas City and Oakland that possess an outside chance of getting back into the mix. If you picked the top team currently by the odds, Toronto, taking the field is probably a better bet.

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As you’re probably aware, the first two rounds of Major League Baseball’s amateur draft took place last night. With the first 75 picks off the board, let’s take a look at what my KATOH projection system has to say about the Division 1 college players who have been selected thus far. I’ll be back with projections for the remaining players once we know where they are going.

Scouting the stat line is always dangerous, and it’s perhaps even more dangerous than usual at the college level, where the samples are small, the players are raw, and the quality of opposing pitching runs the gamut. Nonetheless, performance is often an overlooked component of prospect evaluation, and the players who outperform expectations in college often go on to do the same as professionals. A sortable table is included towards the end of this post.

4. Brendan McKay, LHP/1B, Tampa

KATOH Forecast: 8.0 WAR (0.3 as a hitter)

McKay was KATOH’s top draft-eligible player, largely due to his high strikeout totals. He also did a tremendous job of limiting hard contact, resulting in a 2.34 ERA this year. McKay was excellent in his freshman and sophomore campaigns, too, giving him a long track record of success. As a first baseman, McKay projects for just 0.3 WAR, which would make him one of the worst players drafted last night. However, since he’s primarily focused on pitching to date, I suppose one could argue he has more development left than your typical 21-year-old hitter with his numbers.

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On May 10th, Jeff wrote a post here called “Well, the Orioles Are Doing it Again“, recognizing that the Orioles were once again winning a bunch of games despite a fairly pedestrian BaseRuns record. At the time, the Orioles were 22-10, outpacing their BaseRuns expected record of 16-16, as they had clutched their way to the best record in baseball.

A little over a month later, the Orioles are 31-31. They’ve gone 9-21 in their last 30 games, and they’re now a half-game out of last place in the AL East. But this isn’t a case where their reliance on winning close games has come back to bite them, with the one-run bounces going against them. They are still outpacing their BaseRuns expected win total by six games. They’ve won 9 of their last 30 games because they’ve played like a team that should have only won 9 of their last 30 games. And they’ve played that poorly because their starting pitching is awful.

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Also see: National League.

Below are brief summaries of each American League team’s draft class following the end of the event’s first day. The numbers in parentheses beside each name indicate where the prospect was ranked on my top-100 list, which is also where players’ scouting reports can be found. Players who were not on my top 100 and were drafted yesterday have brief reports in this post.

Baltimore Orioles

Round 1, Pick 21 — D.L. Hall, LHP, Valdosta HS (GA) (10)
Round 2, Pick 60 — Adam Hall, SS, A.B. Lucas Seconday (ON, Canada) (NR)
Hall runs well enough to play up the middle but scouts question his athleticism, physicality, and swing. He’s an interesting developmental project.
Comp B, Pick 74 — Zac Lowther, LHP, Xavier Univ. (89)

Thoughts
The first Hall was great value and, I think, immediately became the organization’s best prospect; the second seemed a bit of a reach.

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Also see: American League.

Below are brief summaries of each National League team’s draft class following the end of the event’s first day. The numbers in parentheses beside each name indicate where the prospect was ranked on my top-100 list, which is also where players’ scouting reports can be found. Players who were not on my top 100 and were drafted yesterday have brief reports in this post.

Arizona Diamondbacks

Round 1, Pick 7 — Pavin Smith, 1B, Virginia (20)
Round 2, Pick 44 — Drew Ellis, 1B/3B, Louisville (84)
Comp B, Pick 68 — Daulton Varsho, C, UW-Milwaukee (NR)
Varsho’s a stocky, plus-running catcher with high-effort, above-average bat speed. He has some catcher’s traits but his arm strength might not fit behind the plate. Some have concerns about strikeouts.

Thoughts
Three college performers, two whose futures likely lie at first base.

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