College Weekend Roundup

by
February 23, 2009

College baseball season kicked off over the weekend, and so while the news is pretty slow at the major league level, let’s take a look at what some of the interesting draft-eligible guys did this weekend, with the understanding that none of these statistics matter at all.

Stephen Strasburg, RHP, San Diego State

The presumed #1 pick in the country took the hill against Bethune-Cookman on Friday and continued to show why he’s everyone’s number one prospect. 5 2/3 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 11 K, and a lot of hard fastballs. It will be interesting to see how Strasburg’s junior season ends up compared with Mark Prior and David Price – the last two college arms who had these kinds of expectations.

Grant Green, SS, USC

The Trojans shortstop keeps getting compared to some kind of hybrid of Troy Tulowitski and Evan Longoria, though no one thinks he’s as good defensively as TT or offensively as Longoria. But a combination of an above average glove and above average bat at shortstop is a pretty valuable thing, and Green’s probably the frontrunner to go #2 right now. His weekend didn’t go so well, though – 2 for 11 with 1 HR, 1 BB, and 3 K against Long Beach State.

Dustin Ackley, 1B/CF, UNC

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

The Tar Heels opened with the Virginia Military Institute, which isn’t really much competition for one of the top baseball programs in the country. So, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that Ackley – the best pure hitter in this draft – went 9 for 13 with three doubles and a walk over the weekend. The kid can hit. However, his bat won’t determine his draft spot, but instead, his potential position will. He’s a pretty good athlete, definitely good enough for the outfield, but arm problems (he’s coming off TJ surgery) have limited him to first base so far in his college career. He’s the Heels starting first baseman again this year, but they’re aware that scouts want to see him play CF, and he got a couple innings in center on Friday night. How well he shows he can handle center field will go a long way to determining where in the first round he ends up getting selected this summer.

Alex White, RHP, UNC

There’s some really good players over in Chapel Hill this year. Besides Ackley, White is the leader among non-Strasburg arms for this summer, and he’s Carolina’s Friday starter. His season opener probably wasn’t what he was hoping for – 5 IP, 8 H, 3 R, 1 HR, 1 BB, 9 K – but he still flashed his power fastball and showed dominating ability by striking out the side in both the first and second innings. He struggled a bit in the 4th and 5th innings, but it was the first game of the season, so no one’s worried. The stuff is still lights out.





 

Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

6 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Nate
16 years ago

If Strasburg holds up this year like he should…..YIKES! This is pretty much your last chance to trade for 1st overall prospect pick in your fantasy leagues because he’s going to get the Price hype close to the draft.

0