00:00:08
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Snake's Territory, part of the Foul Territory Network. Be sure to like this video, subscribe to our YouTube channel, maybe leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. I am Jesse Friedman, soon to be joined by Jack Summers and not only Jack, but also today's special guest, Jordan Schusterman, who is an MLB draft guru, and we are going to do a Dbacks draft deep dive with Jordan, so let's go ahead and jump on into that interview. We are so excited in this edition of Snake's Territory to be joined by the one and only Jordan Schusterman. Jordan is at half of the Cesspitous Barbecue Twitter account, which hopefully you're familiar with if you're a Diamondbacks fan or a baseball fan at large. Phenomenal stuff over there. Jordan also is a host on the Baseball Barbicast podcast, which is as I said in our last episode, it's probably the best baseball podcast that you will find out there. Jack, Jack and I were doing our best to be number two, but that's the pretty clear number one in my book. Jordan also writes about Baseball for Yahoo Sports. So Jordan, thanks for taking the time. We're excited to talk some Dbacks draft with you.
00:01:21
Speaker 2: You know, there's there's no there's only so much right like this Thursday, we're recording this, you know, on All Star Break, which, by the way, absolutely preposterous that the Mets and Phillies are playing tonight. That is an egregious decision for everybody involved. Whoever thought that was a good idea. There's you know, this should be a day of rest, right, this should be a time when I am logging off and recharging for the second half. So there's not that many things where I'm going to like leap up and volunteer to do, but this is one of them if you want. Because the reality is like the draft comes and goes. It's the first thing I cover at All Star Week, and it's something that I spent a lot of time on during the spring, and then it passes and then I kind of have to just leave it behind because as much as I love this stuff, it's not the full time, right, like the Baseball Americas and Fangrad, like there are outlooks that Cup Pipeline that are covering amateur and draft stuff. Like year round and I do it too, but I have a lot of other responsibilities that kind of pull me away from it, and so once they get past the draft, I often don't actually have as many platforms to like dig in on what actually happened. It's you know, it's a lot of the build up to it, and so I really like, I really appreciate you guys inviting me to dig into just one team's draft. So so yeah, let's let's do it. I'm so excited to be here.
00:02:42
Speaker 3: Let's roll. Man, this is awesome. You know, It's just it's a great opportunity to for our listeners to be able to, you know, listen to here somebody else that has some really great insights on the draft. So let's just dive right into it. Jesse, you fire away with the first question.
00:02:56
Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, I guess we'll we'll start from the top, as it feels like we ought to. We talked about Diamondbacks first couple picks in our last episode. With their first round pick, they took catcher writer Helfrick out of the University of Arkansas at number fifteen. Overall, seems like it is a power over hit sort of profile. Offensively, but the defensive grades there are seemed very very strong across the board. We also talked about Blake Bryant a little bit in our last episode Competitive Balance Round a pick high school pitcher, big size there out of Citizens Christian Academy. So we'll start with those two guys Jordan, and then we'll kind of see where we see where we go after that.
00:03:43
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I think with Helfrick, I can't remember exactly where I had him on my top fifty. Again, I only have time to rank fifty prospects, and honestly, I like doing a top fifty because it forced me to be really disciplined on it's my rankings, but I also do it as a reflection of the actual class, and so because of that, I want it to be as many of the players that are going to go in the top fifty as possible. And in Helfrick's case, you know, building up to the draft was like, Yeah, this guy is clearly going to be a top I mean I didn't think it was a slam dunk top ten, top ten, but clearly a top half of the first round. He ends up going maybe a little bit later that than a lot of the rankings had him and I wasn't totally shocked by that. I think what was difficult to evaluate Helfrick, Like there are now advanced defensive metrics at the college baseball level, and certainly for those of then SCC, and his framing numbers and some of his defensive numbers were so far off the charts that it was almost hard to believe. Wow. So like if you looked at like the Synergy Sports and like the six or three charts, which has a lot of advanced data, I mean, it had him as like by far the most valuable defender in college baseball. I think what is interesting about that now you have to take some of those metrics with a grain of salt, just as we do in defensive metrics even at the major league level. What's interesting about that is that was not his reputation necessarily when he arrived on campus. He had a really good arm, but he was known for his bat right. He was a really really good high school hitter, kind of struggled in the spring, that's why he ended up going to school to begin with. But his development defensively was just incredible during his three years at Arkansas. And I think that's really what you're excited about as far as like the floor that you're getting, because it wasn't great right away. I mean, he had like a six forty two ops as a freshman and then just gets better and better offensively and has a big year this year led to Cape cod leaguan home runs or tied for the lead after his freshman year, and so, yeah, it's power and patience. You're probably not going to get a lot of batting average, but hey, twenty twenty six, I mean, come on, guys, we know that's not a big deal. That's not going to doom anybody's profile. So if he can draw his walks, which you did a lot better this year compared to last year, get the ball in the air has real power, and if you can be a plus defensive catcher, that's obviously a pretty exciting collection of skills. I would say.
00:06:04
Speaker 3: One thing I was curious about is Ian Revin was telling us that he felt that help improved a lot with regards to hitting spin, that in that there was actually data and metrics, and I was just wondering, if you know, in your journey, have you seen anything to support that supposition.
00:06:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I mentioned that I'd be curious of how much of that is as much hitting spin is as much as not missing spin right, not chasing spin. As I mentioned, the strikeouts went down a little bit, but the walks is really what what kind of leapt forward this year on the whole. His WRC plus was actually down from what he did is sophomore, but that's just because the power was a little bit more like this year he only hit six doubles and eighteen homers. That kind of speaks to like, yeah, he's got real juice if he gets it in the air, especially now in modern college baseball is probably going to go over the fence. What that spray chart starts to look like at the next level I think will be interesting. But again I think that you're and this year in the draft, once you got past that first group of players, I mean, it's a huge range of opinions. I mean, I don't know if they said I actually would be curious because I didn't care exactly what what Ian Revins said or did they say, because you do hear this sometimes do they send the lines of something along the lines of like, yeah, we had help for on their top five in the class, and we were so lucky to get him at fifteen. I don't know how much they expressed surprise that he was there at fifteen, because, as I mentioned, a lot of the public bars did have him as more of a top ten talent. I don't think he felt some shocking way, but I would be curious if they viewed him as truly one of the top players in the class and were really excited to get him.
00:07:39
Speaker 3: Oh, he acknowledged like it was nice for him to fall to them. I mean, you know, he said, hey, we line him up.
00:07:46
Speaker 2: You know.
00:07:46
Speaker 3: They they insist that they always go best player available, and they had him lined up, and they were pleasantly surprised that he came down to them, and they feel like they got a great player at that value. One other question on him, and they'll let you move on if you want. Does in your opinion, do you think that he'll they'll be able to maybe save a few bucks, you know, on him, maybe get him, you know, no, not have to go overslot because he was expected to go higher than fifteen or anything like that.
00:08:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good question. I always have a really kind of difficult time evaluating college signability. I for as long as I've been like following this closely, I still don't totally understand totally where the leverage comes in with players in these positions and why those college guys normally do end up right around slaughter or slightly below, because what are you going to do? Yeah, okay, technically go back to school, but you're not making more money next year, even if it's just not how it's going to work for ninety five percent of these guys. So I would imagine he comes in around slot, maybe slightly below, but I mean that's also just a good transition to the next pick, right because the fact that they took Blake Brian at thirty one, that was one where Lake Bryant was one of the first players on that was drafted. I guess he was the fifth player drafted who was not on my top fifty, but he was right in the mix. I mean, this is someone who the more feedback I got about him a series like, yes he is, he should be considered among the best high school right handers in the draft. The problem is that he's a high school right hander. So I didn't want to go out of my way to put on more high school pictures on my list than I needed to and so I mentioned him in my write up when I was writing about Carson Bolman and Coleman Borthwick, both of whom went like right before Blake Bryant. So I ended up feeling pretty validated about that. But the fact that Bryant was the second high school right he taken, I think speaks to the fact that he was absolutely in the mix. And so I mean credit to him. I mean, he checks all the boxes of what you want to see. It's just the nature of the demographic and we'll see because I don't got to tell you guys that Arizona, this is the track record of developing pictures. It's not awesome. So I you know, I'm not Maybe it's slowly starting to change. Maybe they've made some progress more recently, but there are certainly sometimes when pictures land in certain positions where I'm like, oh, that's gonna be awesome, you know, like that's gonna go great. They know what to do with him.
00:10:19
Speaker 4: Respectfully, I don't know if I can say that about Arizona, but I hope I'm I hope I'm wrong, and I hope that Blake Bryant, you know, gets every opportunity to kind of show that he is one of the most talented high school pictures in this class.
00:10:32
Speaker 3: We live it every day, so we were well aware and not rereading up and Jeremy Blashree trust you know it, just hopinged up. Whatever systems he's putting in will help them. We'll circle back to that and something else said he and Revn said about this draft and the pictures that they took was pretty interesting.
00:10:49
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:10:49
Speaker 3: So, I mean again, you're weighing the signability, right, I mean, you know, he's clearly was picked at a slot way over you know what you would expect, but he's a high school guy that bitted to Clemson all the way back in twenty twenty two. I read, you know, so, like, how does that kind of weigh against each other? You know, you're trying to keep the guy out of college and get him signed. You can't sound like you can just lowball and say, oh, well you should have gone fifty sixty something.
00:11:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I'm looking so that slot is about three point one, right. I don't really know what to expect, especially because, like I don't know if you guys saw, but another one of the top high school right handers in the draft, Jensen Hirshcorn got four million from the Braves in the third round, which is like, whoa. So that's not to say that he's about to get four million or more than four million because he was drafted so much earlier and a lot of people thought he's better than Jensen Hirshcorn. But maybe it's a situation where yeah, you you really got it, you really got to pay up now. The other way to interpret it is they were able to get Jensen Hirshcorn all the way down there because they must have promised something early enough that he was like telling other teams, don't pick me because I got four million in the third round, whereas in Blake Bryan's case, it might be like the fact that he went even earlier than expected might means he's just getting a round slaughter slightly above. Does that make sense? The fact that they weren't waiting and thinking, oh, you know, maybe we can get Blake Bryant, I would imagine maybe a month ago or at some point during these process they were like, oh, Blake Bryant would be a good target at picked fifty three, right. I'm sure there were a lot of teams that were thinking like, okay, second round. That's where we're going to try to pay this guy. And I would guess that the d Backs found out at some point that, you know, once we're moving towards the back of the first round, like oh no, like Blake Bryant's gonna get picked, So if we want him, we need to just pick him now and with this pick and figure it out later. So I would imagine that's where it is. So what the bonus looks like, I don't know. Again, that's like the part of the world that I just struggle with, like predicting, because especially with the high schoolers, it can come into all kinds of crazy ranges. But yeah, that's kind of where I would sense that ends up being. I probably is above three point one, but how much above that, I don't really know.
00:13:08
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00:14:09
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00:14:10
Speaker 1: We were we were taking a look at at Diamondbacks past draft picks and realized, I think the last time they took a high school pitcher this high in the draft was Blake Walston back in twenty nineteen, and unfortunately that hasn't worked out so well, but at the time.
00:14:26
Speaker 2: The big leaguer was like barely yes, right, yes, barely a big leaguer.
00:14:30
Speaker 1: Technically, yes, and he's working his way back from Tommy John surgery. So maybe, you know, maybe that story isn't isn't quite over it at this point. But but yeah, you mentioned it earlier, like the Diamondbacks track record developing pitching is not awesome, and at the same time, we still have them, and I imagine pretty much any other team around the league saying, no, we're always taking the best available player, right, Like we're just you know, we're just going out there taking the guy highest on our board. I'm curious, just generally, Jordan, like, it's it's probably fair to say that, like teams aren't really taking the player that is best available in like the universal sense. They're they're maybe viewing it as like the best available player for our organization and our skill set to a degree, And that's why the Diamondbacks keep taking like five 'ot ten outfielders, you know, like every single year, or infielders. I guess in some cases, like that's not a coincidence, right, Like, do you think that's fair to say?
00:15:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do like that, you know, Trevor Connon goes off the board a couple of picks before them, and they're like, guys, don't worry, we'll still take Brandon down. It's just the college version of this, Like, I know we're not going to get Trevor Connon, but it's weird because in that case, that specific example, like I get annoyed. I don't do mock drafts, so I'm glad I don't have to. Like it's easy for me to sit back and laugh at the level to which everyone just does the same trends with the same stuff, but in a lot of cases it ends up being correct. Sometimes that's based on until sometimes that is based on demographic trends. But yeah, like what if I was doing mock drafts, would I put Trevor Conny with the dimondbacks? I don't know, probably, but it just felt like because the mock drafts, because mock drafting is talking to people who actually do them, because it's such a difficult exercise. You whenever you have an opportunity to do something that it feels a little bit easier and obvious, it's just like, okay, great, I'll just do that because I don't have to think about it as much before I start shuffling through these, So I agree with you. It is kind of weird. It's always funny to me when when teams come out and be like, yeah, we take the best player available. It's like, yeah, duh, I hope. So I'm so glad thanks for that insight into the your process. And I think in the case of Rite health break, like, yeah, that probably was who was the best on their board play, especially when you're picking in the middle of the round. Right well, with Blake Brian, I think it probably was a mix. Right was the number one on the board? Probably not. Was it someone that they really wanted and realized he wasn't going to be there the next time around? Yes, And so you make it happen. You have to. You have to elevate those high school players because it's it's just going to cost more, and when you get to that range of the draft, those are the guys that are going to come off the board. So I don't know, I always kind of go back and forth on this, but you know, it's a mix. You have to acknowledge that all these all these teams are playing the game in that degree there's there's very few. There's very few teams now that are just picking and giving everybody slot. That is a very short and small number of teams. And you can just say that that's stupid, that that's how our draft works, and I would say, yep, I can't tell you you're wrong, But to me, it also kind of makes it fun, the unpredictability of it.
00:17:48
Speaker 3: I have a question. So, you know, the one thing that they said that they were they saw the trend of hitters going early, so they leaned into college pitchers with power stuff, big bodies, guys that can log innings. And sure enough, four through seven they took you know, four college pitchers Josh McDevitt, mer Curious, Mitch Michael Whorley, and Carson Turnquist, who is a Timmy John survivor. And I was just curious amongst those four who kind of jumps out to you the most, like that the dbacs have a better chance of being able to develop.
00:18:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would say that Mercurious is the one. I mean, he's certainly the one that I think casual fans have become more familiar with. And Worley is very interesting that one's he's certainly on my radar as someone who kind of popped right. You're not seeing that many guys getting picked out of Stony Brooks, so whenever that happens, that's gonna and not just Stony Brooks. Someone who is like from the middle of the country and went to California Junior College. Like how he even ended up at Stony brook in the first place. I would love to learn more about Frankly, but Worley is interesting, but mer Curious is the one that I am just like, what is I don't know what to expect. This is someone who had a lot of There was like real hope that he could pitch his way into the top few rounds when he transferred to Oklahoma from UNLV, and he was so bad in it. I mean, he had like a nine era and sec play and he had scattered in like some really nice performances here and there, here and there, and you would see the stuff. But when you're getting shelled against the best competition to that degree, even if the stuff looked pretty good, it was kind of hard to know what to expect. And then he's a key contributor on one of the most incredible College World Series runs we've ever seen. At the same time, he also wasn't starting right. We see him bouncing back and forth between the bullpen and the rotations, so you know, you watch him and he certainly looks the part. But that is another one that I imagine is going to need some developmental love. And I don't know, back to the point about Blake Bryan, It's like it's a different conversation when you're talking about a college guy. But that's another one that it'll be interesting to see what tweaks that they make with him. And also in round five, you know, maybe you do just see him as as like a multi inning reliever, and then he could thrive in that role. Maybe you don't feel as much pressure to continue to develop him as a starter. I think that'll be really I don't know if you know Ian Revin said anything about that, but yeah, I'm're curious just because of the trajectory of his season, which certainly ended in triumphant fashion. I just am really interested to see what happens next.
00:20:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're going to start him as a starter, but you know, we'll see how long that left.
00:20:31
Speaker 1: I know you mentioned over text earlier in the week, Jordan that you have plenty of Carson Curse thoughts Diamondbacks fifty third overall pick, second rounder shortstop by of Georgia Tech. Would would love to hear what you got on him.
00:20:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is just a classic case of like and I honestly am kind of bummed. I'm now. I know he doesn't go in the top fifty, but this is someone that as the Springer's going on, I was like, man, I'd love to find a way to get this guy on my list. I saw him in person. I saw Georgia Tech. There's like bludgeon Boston College for for a few days at the end of the season. In person, That's when I was like, oh my god, Von Lackey, Oh my god, Von Lackey. But also Carson Curs Man, Like, this dude is a really really impressive player, and he is in an era of guys are just going to you know, five schools in five years and the portal the portal Mania, And there's plenty of that across the world. I just mentioned one with We're Curious, and Helford kind of fits this too, I should say, right, But guys that play at that start or play a lot all three years at one school. But this sounds so stupid because this is like what college baseball was for a long time, but now it's like this rarity. But you if you have someone that starts with three years at the same place and just takes a big step forward each of those successive years, I just love that. I love that trend line, and really nobody embodies it more than Carson Curse, who played a lot as a freshman, only hits two homers, seven fifty nine ops, jumps to eight seventy one as a sophomore, and then this year was one of the best players in college baseball. Twenty nine doubles is just outrageous. Eleven homers. How much power is really going to be in there at the next level. I think we'll see. But he can play shortstop. He's got great contact skills. I ended up not putting him on just because he is right handed and he doesn't really have a lot of power. And there's some people that are still not like, oh my god, he's the best. He's an amazing shortstop. But there's a lot to like here, and this could be a situation where, if it goes well, we're kind of looking up in a year and being like, well, duh, Like look what he did his junior year. This guy was one of the best players in the country. Like what more did you want them to do? So I'm I'm all in again. Do I think this guy's gonna slid close to seven hundred in pro ball? I don't. I don't. I don't think that. But what a fun player and what a what a cool what a cool rise for him to play his way up to this. But because you know, a year ago, it would have been like nice eighth round and he'll get drafted because he's playing, you know, starting infielder a really good acc school, but he did not pop as like stand out prospect in a way that he really did by the end of the season.
00:23:15
Speaker 3: That's exciting. By the way, how much college baseball do you get to watch? That's great that you were able to go watch them play, like.
00:23:22
Speaker 2: I mean, I dude, I try. I try to watch as much as I can, and frankly, like obviously on the weekends, it's become much more watchable just in terms of it being broadcasted. I mean that was this case. I try to get out. I don't live near a whole lot of high level college baseball. But you know, when I'm traveling, I try at the beginning of the season, Like I like to line up my spring training trip with the college baseball opening weekend so I can see a bunch of players there. That's always good. And yeah, whenever I travel, if I can, if I can go down and see guys in person, it's it's it's I always find it to be really valuable. And also just like you just have the history with these guys, I think the high schoolers there's always just a lot more mystery. And that's why I like to go to the combine and get to know some of these high school kids. I didn't meet with Blake Bryant, but some of these other top high school picks getting to know them because I just I have never covered like any of the showcase stuff or followed that. So whereas with the college players, especially who've been there for three or four years, I mean, these guys have a lot of history. They have a lot of data to evaluate, but also just really interesting journeys, like just an interesting path and not to steer the conversation too hard, but like that's what makes some of their later picks, some of their later college picks. I mean, there are some crazy trajectories with some of these players, and those are the stories that just like capture my heart because I recognize that the chances of any of these Day two guys becoming big leaders as low. But they got drafted for a reason, and some of these players have really followed some interesting paths, whether it is multiple schools, whether it is just breaking out late. And so yeah, they definitely have a few of those guys late in their draft class that stand out to me.
00:24:56
Speaker 3: That's a perfect segue because you know, one other thing that Ian said to us was as he ran down the list of Day two guys and especially you know from eleven to twenty, he said, they all have a carrying tool.
00:25:08
Speaker 2: And you know he was Moran.
00:25:10
Speaker 3: It just kind of really reminded me of back in the old money ball days, like you know, focus on what the player can do, not what he can. So, you know, with that in mind, let's dig in, man, Like, tell us you know who's really jumping off the page for you What what what's the best stories that you see out there?
00:25:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'll go, I'll go, I'll do four of them and I'll try to I'll try to do it quickly. Well, the one that I don't know as much about, like personally, but from a prospect standpoint clearly is someone that THEBA experis should be paying attention to is the eleventh rounder Cody Bouchell. Just because he was I think that this is someone that is going to get a seven figure bonus and assuming he is going to sign, and normally eleventh rounder is there's a reason they're getting picked like that, that is they have some sort of deal in place, big lefty first base, and like, this is someone that would not be surprising if he becomes one of their better hitting prospects. So as far as like this guy should be on your prospect list radar, I would say, Cody Bochell, you should definitely be and do. But as far as just like human beings and like trajectories to be invested in, I would say the three that I definitely want to highlight are Paul Schoenfeld, Chris Katz, and Andrew Wurtz. So Schoenfeld I don't know as much about, but he really popped on our radar this year because this is a D two guy centerfield, incredible centerfield. If we're talking about carrying tools, terrific centerfield, are huge part of the West Virginia team that went to the College World Series for the first time. So Shoan Feld's really interesting. He's obviously, all three of these guys are old, right, these are twenty three year old, so these are not going to cost very much in terms of signing bonuses. But they had big enough and interesting seasons to get drafted. And then Chris Katz is a wild one. This dude wasn't Wake Forest for four years, really just barely played. He just did not could not get on the field. He performed well in the summer in the Valley League, and then this year transfers to Mercer as a fifth year senior and has one of the best seasons in college baseball. I mean, there's really no other way to put you. You put up his season statistically against anybody else, and you know he's playing mostly first base, corner outfield. He's a right handed hitter. But the numbers are just outrageous. But the fun fact about Chris Katz that I did not know until more recently is that he was on the USA Baseball twelve U national team, which the fact that this even exists to begin with, is already a little bit like what are we doing? Why are we sending twelve year olds to compete in Taiwan? But like, you know, I love the LILL League World Series, but really the best twelve year olds are playing on this team. And Chris Kads was on this team in twenty fifteen that went to Taiwan, that won the gold medal, that had a bunch of future big leaguers on that team, including Nick Kurtz, his former teammate at Wake Forest, who at that point was like the Sho Heeo Tani of twelve year olds. He was like leading the team at innings, leading the team at homers. So anyway, that's Chris Katz, So you know, they never speak for themselves. And then finally Andrew works the twentieth rounder, pick number five, ninety six. Listen, there was only so many twentieth rounders that I can say I've seen pitch in person, but this is one of them. This guy's is another three schools three school Journey D two Stone Hill D three Salve Regina, Who's shirt I'm wearing today, shouts out to their head coach, Eric Soirella, who I'm tight with. I went and saw Salve play last spring in Boston, and I saw Andrew Worth's pitch and I was like, damn, what's this guy doing in D three He's got some good stuff. Sure enough, transferred to Northeastern and he's one of the best relievers in that conference this year. And now he's now he's in the Diamondbacks organization. So the journey continues for Andrew Wurtz. Northeastern kid, I believe it's from New Hampshire, so not a lot of big leaguers coming out of Dover, but yeah, man, I mean those are those are my guys. So all old pressure on the Dbacks Development's little system to keep these players relevant and uh maybe maybe you know, at some point of the next few years, I'll come to spring training and I'll be on a backfield with one of you guys somewhere and I'll be like.
00:29:15
Speaker 4: Oh, man, there's Andrew Wurtz throwing Corbin Carrol or whatever.
00:29:20
Speaker 2: That'll fire me up if I ever get to do that.
00:29:23
Speaker 3: Jesse, you got to blow Jordan's cover here. How he signed in to the to the pod.
00:29:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jordan may or may not have joined this episode as number one. Andrew Wurtz fan. It's like his little uh title.
00:29:36
Speaker 2: Okay, someone's got to be got right. I mean, I presumably like his family is bigger fans than I am. But maybe you know I'm for this kid. Yeah, I love it so and and but look, I'm excited to look like I don't. I'll be honest. You know I know what rounds thirteen through nine seventeen, I got nothing. I've never never heard of any of these guys. So I'm excited to know I'm doing my best here. I'm trying to keep up, but I'm sure I'll learn about So if Jack span Your or Andrew Evans ends up being awesome and I didn't tell you about it, like, that's on me. I apologize. This is great.
00:30:15
Speaker 1: Well, well, we won't hold it against you, Jordan, we won't hold it against you. Well we could. We could go on for for much longer, I am sure. But but Jordan, we really appreciate your time, all your dedication to staying on top of all this stuff. I know it's been a busy week for you, so so thanks again for hopping on. We really appreciate it, really appreciate it.
00:30:36
Speaker 2: Thank you. Brandon down you probably deserve more time. But you know what, Yeah, well we'll do it. Next time I come on, we'll we'll talk about it more. So, thank you, thank you both for having me on. This was really fun, really cool to have this platform to talk about these picks. And yeah, well we'll see how it goes. I look forward to doing this again soon.
00:30:55
Speaker 1: Thanks George.
00:30:56
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00:31:56
Speaker 1: Welcome back in to Snake's territory as we knew the show. With a few final notes here at the end, just a few things to hit on. First of all, Jack, Tommy Troy unfortunately has landed on the injured list. This is news that we just got in the past forty eight hours or so. He is going to the ten day injured list with a sprained right aca joint. This of course came as a result of banging into the center field wall on Saturday in Los Angeles. And this isn't great, Jack. I know Tommy Troy was not necessarily clicking on all cylinders at the plate, but he was an important part of this team's outfield depth.
00:32:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is really rough, you know, I mean it fits the most mild form. Look, this is sprained it right a sea joint. Is he dislocated it at least temporarily? You know, maybe it just popped right back in that I'm not sure, but you know, if it's the smallest grade or most easiest Grade one two that's still at least a couple of weeks. So, I mean, look, you're not going to see Tommy Troy before August one, almost thousand percent certain on that. The question, and we'll find out from Tori when we see him during workouts Thursday night or by Friday afternoon will be you know, are we looking at a grade three or four where you're talking about over a month missing, you know, and I don't think it's a type of injury that's going to likely require surgery, but you know, we'll find out about that soon. So my guess is that the most optimistic is he's going to be out two weeks to anywhere to six or eight. So we'll just have to find out. So don't expect to see Tommy Troy for a while, which creates some issues for them. I mean, they they got to replace him. We don't know who that's going to be just yet. Again, we might not know that until Thursday night or even Friday during the day. You have basically four players in the minor league that are on the forty man IL forty man roster. Lou James Gruverer Tyler Locklear, Adrian del Castillo and Jose Fernandez, and they need an infielder. I mean they're going to have to add an infielder. They don't need seven outfielders six outfielders. So my guess is probably going to be Locklier. I think it's his turn to get a shot. I mean he's been hot lately. Maybe he's been beating up on some week pitching. But bottom lines, as he was PCL Player of the Week. You know they traded for him, So don't be surprised if they bring him in because you can play Tim Tower anywhere. They need more coverage in the outfield. They want to rotate still the first base. If they can play Tim at third base, if Nola needs a day off, you still have Vargus to back up a short stop at the second base. So my guess is probably going to be Lockleier. But you never know. Fernandez, Groover, they could also be guys that get called them. Fernandez has been hot in July, he's hitting three seventy one for the month. And Groover, you know, I mean he had a shot. Now whether or not they would bring him right back, which they can because of an injury, but you know, maybe it's somebody else's turn, so we have to see. Now there's the last thing on this is there is an open spot on the forty man roster, So if they did want to add somebody like Christian Robinson, theoretically they could, but I just don't think the odds of that.
00:35:18
Speaker 2: Are very high.
00:35:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't seem like it. Robinson has a seven ninety seven ops this season in Reno, which is decent, but considering the ballpark environment and so forth, not necessarily jumping off the page. So be interesting to see what the Diamondbacks do. Their unfortunate news for Tommy Troy. Hopefully he's able to get back soon. Also on the injury front, Jack there was a picture floating around on social media of Heraldo Perdomo with his hand wristd area wrapped up, and people were slightly concerned about this, like is Perdomo going to open the second half on the injured list. We got a report from Steve Gilbert on this yesterday. He said that Perdomo received a cortizone injection in his left wrist to battle some inflammation that he's experienced in that area, and it is not a serious injury. According to Mike Haysen, Perdomo is still expected to play on Friday against the Cardinals, so crisis averted there. Jack sounds like Perdomo is going to be just fine.
00:36:23
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:36:23
Speaker 3: I had a lot of people nervous, but you know the fact that it was a wrap not a cast was encouraging to astute observers, And it turns out that's the case. So usually courtizone shots you need three four days to rebound from, so that timing works out. Like you said, he's expected to play on Friday, you know, hopefully there's nothing else going on there. I assume it was from the hit by pitch against the Dodgers. I've also seen some awkward swings, so hard to say exactly what caused it when we talked to him. Well, we'll find out.
00:36:53
Speaker 1: Another piece of news that we got here in the last couple of days is that Pavid Smith is in fact in the organization. He has cleared waivers and has been outrighted to triple a reno. So Smith is still in the organization. I know. I think you and I touched on this on the show at one point and suggested that another team probably would claim peven when when if he was designated for assignment. So this came as a little bit of a surprise to me, Jack, But I guess also just reflects that the Diamondbacks are not the only team that had some doubts about Peven Smith, that maybe his perception around the league is also not that of you know, a league average type hitter that technically he's been over his career.
00:37:39
Speaker 3: Or the other take on that is, the Diamondbacks were the only team in baseball that felt that Peven Smith can hit.
00:37:46
Speaker 1: Also possible this is true, so Peven is still in the organization. I mean, theoretically he could he could come back up to the big leagues at some point. I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, certainly not right now. I think Tyler Locklear would would certainly get a shot in the big leagues before Smith would. Maybe the DBACS would would bring Groover back as well before they would do that. So I don't think a Paven Smith returned to the big leagues is imminent, but doesn't hurt to have him in the organization. Still, as far as guys that you could have as available depth, you could, you could do a lot worse than him, so, so Smith stays in the organization. One other storyline, I guess is there anything else on peven Jack before we.
00:38:31
Speaker 3: Well, I've thought that our good friend Diamondback stabs an info highlighted in his Twitter account a blurb from the from an article on MLB Trade Rumors. I'm not sure if you happen to have that handy by any chance. If not, I will find it. Yeah, but I thought that that's important information.
00:38:53
Speaker 1: Let me see if I can drag it in here we are. I'll go ahead and read this out. This is from MLB Trade Rumors. Some good information on Pavent Smith's situation. It says Smith has the right to elect free agency, but isn't likely to do so. Players with at least three years of service time have the right to reject outright assignments in favor of the open market, but if they have less than five years of service, they have to forfeit their remaining salary commitments and exercising that right. Smith is in that three to five window and is making two point twenty five million dollars this year. That leaves about nine hundred thousand dollars still to be paid out, assuming he doesn't want to leave that on the table. Smith will report to Reno, So yeah, helpful contacts there. It seems like just from a financial standpoint, it makes more sense for Pavin to return to the organization and stay in Reno than to pursue something on the open market.
00:39:44
Speaker 3: Yeah for sure. I mean, no one's spitting away nine hundred k. I mean, you know, he could gamble that no team wanted to pick up the remaining amount of his MLB salary, and you know, he would get signed as a free agent at league minimum, you know, for the remaining two and a half months of the two plus months of the season. So then you're looking at about four hundred thousand, so you know, and that's if he got signed by a major league organization to a major league contract, So you know, the best case scenarios, he would lose five hundred k. So nobody's spitting away that kind of money. So that makes total sense.
00:40:20
Speaker 1: The last thing we wanted to hit on on this episode is that Mike Hazen apparently had a discussion with the team before the All Star break festivities began. Sounds like this was sort of in contrast to last year where Hazen had of course, a big conversation with the team once the team was officially selling and Hazen was starting to make those moves. This time around, it happens before all of those decisions are made and Hazen, it sounds like Jack, according to the reporting we've gotten, he just wanted to make it really clear to the team the opportunity that's in front of them, the importance of coming out and playing well to start the second half, and really to force his hand to go out there and to add to this roster. And it sounds like players were also encouraged to come to him with any any questions or concerns or whatnot. He's been just kind of very upfront and honest about where the team is and he wanted players to be very clear on that before they enter the second half.
00:41:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the way Steve you know, wrote it, players were encouraged to speak to him privately if they had any concerns about his message or wanted to share their feelings about it. So, you know, his message was, Hey, you know, you guys got to do this now and turned me into a buyer. You know, it's up to you, guys, It's in your hands. What I'm going to do next. So I mean that puts a lot of pressure on them too. As we've seen over and over and over with the Arizona Diamondbacks, when there are low expectations, they do well. When they're a high dias they do poorly. Or is that just regression to the mean? Jesse, I don't know, help me out here.
00:42:06
Speaker 1: Who's to say? Nobody knows? But yeah, definitely a change of course here for Hazen trying to get in front of this. His exact quote was, I didn't want to wait to hold back some of the things I wanted to say to them that maybe I should have said last year on July first. So this is him kind of looking at the way things turned out last year and wanting to wanting to change course there. Granted, yeah, we did hear Corbyn Carroll talk about how the team was pressing, you know, going into the trade deadline a season ago, and some part of me is like, I don't know if the GM, you know, giving this sort of talk in front of everyone is going to prevent that. I wonder if it might make that an issue, But you know, what, do I know? These are these are real human beings and I'm not in I wasn't in that meeting. I wasn't in that room to see everyone's faces. Maybe they view this as being very motivating and energizing going into the second half, and that sets the stage four. This weekend, Jack Diamondbacks have three very important games against the Saint Louis Cardinals at home. Of course, ten of their first thirteen games coming out of the break are against teams that they are directly competing with in the wildcard race, so it is hard to overstate the importance of the games this weekend the games coming up after that. We don't have pitching matchups as of right now, but hopefully we'll get that here before too long.
00:43:32
Speaker 3: Absolutely, there are workouts at Chase Field Thursday night, and we will get a chance to talk to Tory, so you know, we'll come be and we'll see him again on Friday afternoon. So when we do our live show on Friday evening postgame at Chase Field, we'll have lots of updates and information for you guys, as well as the game. We can here we go.
00:43:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, next show will be live from Chase Field after Friday night's game. I'll be out there as well. Jack and I will be together in person, which is always fun, so be sure to join us on YouTube then, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hit the bell icon for notifications so you never missed an episode of the show. Also really helps us out if you would drop a like on this video. If you haven't already, you can find us on Twitter as well. I am at Jesse and Friedman. Jack is at Shoe Wizard fifty nine. The show is at Snake's Territory, and our special guest today Jordan Schusterman. You can find him at Jay Underscore. Shusterman Underscore a great follow. Shouts out to him once again for hopping on really really great time there. Thank you again to all of you for being with us on this episode. We really appreciate it, and we'll be back once again tomorrow night, Friday Night with a live postgame show. We hope to see you then.
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Snake's Territory, part of the Foul Territory Network. Be sure to like this video, subscribe to our YouTube channel, maybe leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. I am Jesse Friedman, soon to be joined by Jack Summers and not only Jack, but also today's special guest, Jordan Schusterman, who is an MLB draft guru, and we are going to do a Dbacks draft deep dive with Jordan, so let's go ahead and jump on into that interview. We are so excited in this edition of Snake's Territory to be joined by the one and only Jordan Schusterman. Jordan is at half of the Cesspitous Barbecue Twitter account, which hopefully you're familiar with if you're a Diamondbacks fan or a baseball fan at large. Phenomenal stuff over there. Jordan also is a host on the Baseball Barbicast podcast, which is as I said in our last episode, it's probably the best baseball podcast that you will find out there. Jack, Jack and I were doing our best to be number two, but that's the pretty clear number one in my book. Jordan also writes about Baseball for Yahoo Sports. So Jordan, thanks for taking the time. We're excited to talk some Dbacks draft with you.
00:01:21
Speaker 2: You know, there's there's no there's only so much right like this Thursday, we're recording this, you know, on All Star Break, which, by the way, absolutely preposterous that the Mets and Phillies are playing tonight. That is an egregious decision for everybody involved. Whoever thought that was a good idea. There's you know, this should be a day of rest, right, this should be a time when I am logging off and recharging for the second half. So there's not that many things where I'm going to like leap up and volunteer to do, but this is one of them if you want. Because the reality is like the draft comes and goes. It's the first thing I cover at All Star Week, and it's something that I spent a lot of time on during the spring, and then it passes and then I kind of have to just leave it behind because as much as I love this stuff, it's not the full time, right, like the Baseball Americas and Fangrad, like there are outlooks that Cup Pipeline that are covering amateur and draft stuff. Like year round and I do it too, but I have a lot of other responsibilities that kind of pull me away from it, and so once they get past the draft, I often don't actually have as many platforms to like dig in on what actually happened. It's you know, it's a lot of the build up to it, and so I really like, I really appreciate you guys inviting me to dig into just one team's draft. So so yeah, let's let's do it. I'm so excited to be here.
00:02:42
Speaker 3: Let's roll. Man, this is awesome. You know, It's just it's a great opportunity to for our listeners to be able to, you know, listen to here somebody else that has some really great insights on the draft. So let's just dive right into it. Jesse, you fire away with the first question.
00:02:56
Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, I guess we'll we'll start from the top, as it feels like we ought to. We talked about Diamondbacks first couple picks in our last episode. With their first round pick, they took catcher writer Helfrick out of the University of Arkansas at number fifteen. Overall, seems like it is a power over hit sort of profile. Offensively, but the defensive grades there are seemed very very strong across the board. We also talked about Blake Bryant a little bit in our last episode Competitive Balance Round a pick high school pitcher, big size there out of Citizens Christian Academy. So we'll start with those two guys Jordan, and then we'll kind of see where we see where we go after that.
00:03:43
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I think with Helfrick, I can't remember exactly where I had him on my top fifty. Again, I only have time to rank fifty prospects, and honestly, I like doing a top fifty because it forced me to be really disciplined on it's my rankings, but I also do it as a reflection of the actual class, and so because of that, I want it to be as many of the players that are going to go in the top fifty as possible. And in Helfrick's case, you know, building up to the draft was like, Yeah, this guy is clearly going to be a top I mean I didn't think it was a slam dunk top ten, top ten, but clearly a top half of the first round. He ends up going maybe a little bit later that than a lot of the rankings had him and I wasn't totally shocked by that. I think what was difficult to evaluate Helfrick, Like there are now advanced defensive metrics at the college baseball level, and certainly for those of then SCC, and his framing numbers and some of his defensive numbers were so far off the charts that it was almost hard to believe. Wow. So like if you looked at like the Synergy Sports and like the six or three charts, which has a lot of advanced data, I mean, it had him as like by far the most valuable defender in college baseball. I think what is interesting about that now you have to take some of those metrics with a grain of salt, just as we do in defensive metrics even at the major league level. What's interesting about that is that was not his reputation necessarily when he arrived on campus. He had a really good arm, but he was known for his bat right. He was a really really good high school hitter, kind of struggled in the spring, that's why he ended up going to school to begin with. But his development defensively was just incredible during his three years at Arkansas. And I think that's really what you're excited about as far as like the floor that you're getting, because it wasn't great right away. I mean, he had like a six forty two ops as a freshman and then just gets better and better offensively and has a big year this year led to Cape cod leaguan home runs or tied for the lead after his freshman year, and so, yeah, it's power and patience. You're probably not going to get a lot of batting average, but hey, twenty twenty six, I mean, come on, guys, we know that's not a big deal. That's not going to doom anybody's profile. So if he can draw his walks, which you did a lot better this year compared to last year, get the ball in the air has real power, and if you can be a plus defensive catcher, that's obviously a pretty exciting collection of skills. I would say.
00:06:04
Speaker 3: One thing I was curious about is Ian Revin was telling us that he felt that help improved a lot with regards to hitting spin, that in that there was actually data and metrics, and I was just wondering, if you know, in your journey, have you seen anything to support that supposition.
00:06:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I mentioned that I'd be curious of how much of that is as much hitting spin is as much as not missing spin right, not chasing spin. As I mentioned, the strikeouts went down a little bit, but the walks is really what what kind of leapt forward this year on the whole. His WRC plus was actually down from what he did is sophomore, but that's just because the power was a little bit more like this year he only hit six doubles and eighteen homers. That kind of speaks to like, yeah, he's got real juice if he gets it in the air, especially now in modern college baseball is probably going to go over the fence. What that spray chart starts to look like at the next level I think will be interesting. But again I think that you're and this year in the draft, once you got past that first group of players, I mean, it's a huge range of opinions. I mean, I don't know if they said I actually would be curious because I didn't care exactly what what Ian Revins said or did they say, because you do hear this sometimes do they send the lines of something along the lines of like, yeah, we had help for on their top five in the class, and we were so lucky to get him at fifteen. I don't know how much they expressed surprise that he was there at fifteen, because, as I mentioned, a lot of the public bars did have him as more of a top ten talent. I don't think he felt some shocking way, but I would be curious if they viewed him as truly one of the top players in the class and were really excited to get him.
00:07:39
Speaker 3: Oh, he acknowledged like it was nice for him to fall to them. I mean, you know, he said, hey, we line him up.
00:07:46
Speaker 2: You know.
00:07:46
Speaker 3: They they insist that they always go best player available, and they had him lined up, and they were pleasantly surprised that he came down to them, and they feel like they got a great player at that value. One other question on him, and they'll let you move on if you want. Does in your opinion, do you think that he'll they'll be able to maybe save a few bucks, you know, on him, maybe get him, you know, no, not have to go overslot because he was expected to go higher than fifteen or anything like that.
00:08:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good question. I always have a really kind of difficult time evaluating college signability. I for as long as I've been like following this closely, I still don't totally understand totally where the leverage comes in with players in these positions and why those college guys normally do end up right around slaughter or slightly below, because what are you going to do? Yeah, okay, technically go back to school, but you're not making more money next year, even if it's just not how it's going to work for ninety five percent of these guys. So I would imagine he comes in around slot, maybe slightly below, but I mean that's also just a good transition to the next pick, right because the fact that they took Blake Brian at thirty one, that was one where Lake Bryant was one of the first players on that was drafted. I guess he was the fifth player drafted who was not on my top fifty, but he was right in the mix. I mean, this is someone who the more feedback I got about him a series like, yes he is, he should be considered among the best high school right handers in the draft. The problem is that he's a high school right hander. So I didn't want to go out of my way to put on more high school pictures on my list than I needed to and so I mentioned him in my write up when I was writing about Carson Bolman and Coleman Borthwick, both of whom went like right before Blake Bryant. So I ended up feeling pretty validated about that. But the fact that Bryant was the second high school right he taken, I think speaks to the fact that he was absolutely in the mix. And so I mean credit to him. I mean, he checks all the boxes of what you want to see. It's just the nature of the demographic and we'll see because I don't got to tell you guys that Arizona, this is the track record of developing pictures. It's not awesome. So I you know, I'm not Maybe it's slowly starting to change. Maybe they've made some progress more recently, but there are certainly sometimes when pictures land in certain positions where I'm like, oh, that's gonna be awesome, you know, like that's gonna go great. They know what to do with him.
00:10:19
Speaker 4: Respectfully, I don't know if I can say that about Arizona, but I hope I'm I hope I'm wrong, and I hope that Blake Bryant, you know, gets every opportunity to kind of show that he is one of the most talented high school pictures in this class.
00:10:32
Speaker 3: We live it every day, so we were well aware and not rereading up and Jeremy Blashree trust you know it, just hopinged up. Whatever systems he's putting in will help them. We'll circle back to that and something else said he and Revn said about this draft and the pictures that they took was pretty interesting.
00:10:49
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:10:49
Speaker 3: So, I mean again, you're weighing the signability, right, I mean, you know, he's clearly was picked at a slot way over you know what you would expect, but he's a high school guy that bitted to Clemson all the way back in twenty twenty two. I read, you know, so, like, how does that kind of weigh against each other? You know, you're trying to keep the guy out of college and get him signed. You can't sound like you can just lowball and say, oh, well you should have gone fifty sixty something.
00:11:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I'm looking so that slot is about three point one, right. I don't really know what to expect, especially because, like I don't know if you guys saw, but another one of the top high school right handers in the draft, Jensen Hirshcorn got four million from the Braves in the third round, which is like, whoa. So that's not to say that he's about to get four million or more than four million because he was drafted so much earlier and a lot of people thought he's better than Jensen Hirshcorn. But maybe it's a situation where yeah, you you really got it, you really got to pay up now. The other way to interpret it is they were able to get Jensen Hirshcorn all the way down there because they must have promised something early enough that he was like telling other teams, don't pick me because I got four million in the third round, whereas in Blake Bryan's case, it might be like the fact that he went even earlier than expected might means he's just getting a round slaughter slightly above. Does that make sense? The fact that they weren't waiting and thinking, oh, you know, maybe we can get Blake Bryant, I would imagine maybe a month ago or at some point during these process they were like, oh, Blake Bryant would be a good target at picked fifty three, right. I'm sure there were a lot of teams that were thinking like, okay, second round. That's where we're going to try to pay this guy. And I would guess that the d Backs found out at some point that, you know, once we're moving towards the back of the first round, like oh no, like Blake Bryant's gonna get picked, So if we want him, we need to just pick him now and with this pick and figure it out later. So I would imagine that's where it is. So what the bonus looks like, I don't know. Again, that's like the part of the world that I just struggle with, like predicting, because especially with the high schoolers, it can come into all kinds of crazy ranges. But yeah, that's kind of where I would sense that ends up being. I probably is above three point one, but how much above that, I don't really know.
00:13:08
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00:14:09
Speaker 2: Use it later.
00:14:10
Speaker 1: We were we were taking a look at at Diamondbacks past draft picks and realized, I think the last time they took a high school pitcher this high in the draft was Blake Walston back in twenty nineteen, and unfortunately that hasn't worked out so well, but at the time.
00:14:26
Speaker 2: The big leaguer was like barely yes, right, yes, barely a big leaguer.
00:14:30
Speaker 1: Technically, yes, and he's working his way back from Tommy John surgery. So maybe, you know, maybe that story isn't isn't quite over it at this point. But but yeah, you mentioned it earlier, like the Diamondbacks track record developing pitching is not awesome, and at the same time, we still have them, and I imagine pretty much any other team around the league saying, no, we're always taking the best available player, right, Like we're just you know, we're just going out there taking the guy highest on our board. I'm curious, just generally, Jordan, like, it's it's probably fair to say that, like teams aren't really taking the player that is best available in like the universal sense. They're they're maybe viewing it as like the best available player for our organization and our skill set to a degree, And that's why the Diamondbacks keep taking like five 'ot ten outfielders, you know, like every single year, or infielders. I guess in some cases, like that's not a coincidence, right, Like, do you think that's fair to say?
00:15:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do like that, you know, Trevor Connon goes off the board a couple of picks before them, and they're like, guys, don't worry, we'll still take Brandon down. It's just the college version of this, Like, I know we're not going to get Trevor Connon, but it's weird because in that case, that specific example, like I get annoyed. I don't do mock drafts, so I'm glad I don't have to. Like it's easy for me to sit back and laugh at the level to which everyone just does the same trends with the same stuff, but in a lot of cases it ends up being correct. Sometimes that's based on until sometimes that is based on demographic trends. But yeah, like what if I was doing mock drafts, would I put Trevor Conny with the dimondbacks? I don't know, probably, but it just felt like because the mock drafts, because mock drafting is talking to people who actually do them, because it's such a difficult exercise. You whenever you have an opportunity to do something that it feels a little bit easier and obvious, it's just like, okay, great, I'll just do that because I don't have to think about it as much before I start shuffling through these, So I agree with you. It is kind of weird. It's always funny to me when when teams come out and be like, yeah, we take the best player available. It's like, yeah, duh, I hope. So I'm so glad thanks for that insight into the your process. And I think in the case of Rite health break, like, yeah, that probably was who was the best on their board play, especially when you're picking in the middle of the round. Right well, with Blake Brian, I think it probably was a mix. Right was the number one on the board? Probably not. Was it someone that they really wanted and realized he wasn't going to be there the next time around? Yes, And so you make it happen. You have to. You have to elevate those high school players because it's it's just going to cost more, and when you get to that range of the draft, those are the guys that are going to come off the board. So I don't know, I always kind of go back and forth on this, but you know, it's a mix. You have to acknowledge that all these all these teams are playing the game in that degree there's there's very few. There's very few teams now that are just picking and giving everybody slot. That is a very short and small number of teams. And you can just say that that's stupid, that that's how our draft works, and I would say, yep, I can't tell you you're wrong, But to me, it also kind of makes it fun, the unpredictability of it.
00:17:48
Speaker 3: I have a question. So, you know, the one thing that they said that they were they saw the trend of hitters going early, so they leaned into college pitchers with power stuff, big bodies, guys that can log innings. And sure enough, four through seven they took you know, four college pitchers Josh McDevitt, mer Curious, Mitch Michael Whorley, and Carson Turnquist, who is a Timmy John survivor. And I was just curious amongst those four who kind of jumps out to you the most, like that the dbacs have a better chance of being able to develop.
00:18:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would say that Mercurious is the one. I mean, he's certainly the one that I think casual fans have become more familiar with. And Worley is very interesting that one's he's certainly on my radar as someone who kind of popped right. You're not seeing that many guys getting picked out of Stony Brooks, so whenever that happens, that's gonna and not just Stony Brooks. Someone who is like from the middle of the country and went to California Junior College. Like how he even ended up at Stony brook in the first place. I would love to learn more about Frankly, but Worley is interesting, but mer Curious is the one that I am just like, what is I don't know what to expect. This is someone who had a lot of There was like real hope that he could pitch his way into the top few rounds when he transferred to Oklahoma from UNLV, and he was so bad in it. I mean, he had like a nine era and sec play and he had scattered in like some really nice performances here and there, here and there, and you would see the stuff. But when you're getting shelled against the best competition to that degree, even if the stuff looked pretty good, it was kind of hard to know what to expect. And then he's a key contributor on one of the most incredible College World Series runs we've ever seen. At the same time, he also wasn't starting right. We see him bouncing back and forth between the bullpen and the rotations, so you know, you watch him and he certainly looks the part. But that is another one that I imagine is going to need some developmental love. And I don't know, back to the point about Blake Bryan, It's like it's a different conversation when you're talking about a college guy. But that's another one that it'll be interesting to see what tweaks that they make with him. And also in round five, you know, maybe you do just see him as as like a multi inning reliever, and then he could thrive in that role. Maybe you don't feel as much pressure to continue to develop him as a starter. I think that'll be really I don't know if you know Ian Revin said anything about that, but yeah, I'm're curious just because of the trajectory of his season, which certainly ended in triumphant fashion. I just am really interested to see what happens next.
00:20:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're going to start him as a starter, but you know, we'll see how long that left.
00:20:31
Speaker 1: I know you mentioned over text earlier in the week, Jordan that you have plenty of Carson Curse thoughts Diamondbacks fifty third overall pick, second rounder shortstop by of Georgia Tech. Would would love to hear what you got on him.
00:20:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is just a classic case of like and I honestly am kind of bummed. I'm now. I know he doesn't go in the top fifty, but this is someone that as the Springer's going on, I was like, man, I'd love to find a way to get this guy on my list. I saw him in person. I saw Georgia Tech. There's like bludgeon Boston College for for a few days at the end of the season. In person, That's when I was like, oh my god, Von Lackey, Oh my god, Von Lackey. But also Carson Curs Man, Like, this dude is a really really impressive player, and he is in an era of guys are just going to you know, five schools in five years and the portal the portal Mania, And there's plenty of that across the world. I just mentioned one with We're Curious, and Helford kind of fits this too, I should say, right, But guys that play at that start or play a lot all three years at one school. But this sounds so stupid because this is like what college baseball was for a long time, but now it's like this rarity. But you if you have someone that starts with three years at the same place and just takes a big step forward each of those successive years, I just love that. I love that trend line, and really nobody embodies it more than Carson Curse, who played a lot as a freshman, only hits two homers, seven fifty nine ops, jumps to eight seventy one as a sophomore, and then this year was one of the best players in college baseball. Twenty nine doubles is just outrageous. Eleven homers. How much power is really going to be in there at the next level. I think we'll see. But he can play shortstop. He's got great contact skills. I ended up not putting him on just because he is right handed and he doesn't really have a lot of power. And there's some people that are still not like, oh my god, he's the best. He's an amazing shortstop. But there's a lot to like here, and this could be a situation where, if it goes well, we're kind of looking up in a year and being like, well, duh, Like look what he did his junior year. This guy was one of the best players in the country. Like what more did you want them to do? So I'm I'm all in again. Do I think this guy's gonna slid close to seven hundred in pro ball? I don't. I don't. I don't think that. But what a fun player and what a what a cool what a cool rise for him to play his way up to this. But because you know, a year ago, it would have been like nice eighth round and he'll get drafted because he's playing, you know, starting infielder a really good acc school, but he did not pop as like stand out prospect in a way that he really did by the end of the season.
00:23:15
Speaker 3: That's exciting. By the way, how much college baseball do you get to watch? That's great that you were able to go watch them play, like.
00:23:22
Speaker 2: I mean, I dude, I try. I try to watch as much as I can, and frankly, like obviously on the weekends, it's become much more watchable just in terms of it being broadcasted. I mean that was this case. I try to get out. I don't live near a whole lot of high level college baseball. But you know, when I'm traveling, I try at the beginning of the season, Like I like to line up my spring training trip with the college baseball opening weekend so I can see a bunch of players there. That's always good. And yeah, whenever I travel, if I can, if I can go down and see guys in person, it's it's it's I always find it to be really valuable. And also just like you just have the history with these guys, I think the high schoolers there's always just a lot more mystery. And that's why I like to go to the combine and get to know some of these high school kids. I didn't meet with Blake Bryant, but some of these other top high school picks getting to know them because I just I have never covered like any of the showcase stuff or followed that. So whereas with the college players, especially who've been there for three or four years, I mean, these guys have a lot of history. They have a lot of data to evaluate, but also just really interesting journeys, like just an interesting path and not to steer the conversation too hard, but like that's what makes some of their later picks, some of their later college picks. I mean, there are some crazy trajectories with some of these players, and those are the stories that just like capture my heart because I recognize that the chances of any of these Day two guys becoming big leaders as low. But they got drafted for a reason, and some of these players have really followed some interesting paths, whether it is multiple schools, whether it is just breaking out late. And so yeah, they definitely have a few of those guys late in their draft class that stand out to me.
00:24:56
Speaker 3: That's a perfect segue because you know, one other thing that Ian said to us was as he ran down the list of Day two guys and especially you know from eleven to twenty, he said, they all have a carrying tool.
00:25:08
Speaker 2: And you know he was Moran.
00:25:10
Speaker 3: It just kind of really reminded me of back in the old money ball days, like you know, focus on what the player can do, not what he can. So, you know, with that in mind, let's dig in, man, Like, tell us you know who's really jumping off the page for you What what what's the best stories that you see out there?
00:25:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'll go, I'll go, I'll do four of them and I'll try to I'll try to do it quickly. Well, the one that I don't know as much about, like personally, but from a prospect standpoint clearly is someone that THEBA experis should be paying attention to is the eleventh rounder Cody Bouchell. Just because he was I think that this is someone that is going to get a seven figure bonus and assuming he is going to sign, and normally eleventh rounder is there's a reason they're getting picked like that, that is they have some sort of deal in place, big lefty first base, and like, this is someone that would not be surprising if he becomes one of their better hitting prospects. So as far as like this guy should be on your prospect list radar, I would say, Cody Bochell, you should definitely be and do. But as far as just like human beings and like trajectories to be invested in, I would say the three that I definitely want to highlight are Paul Schoenfeld, Chris Katz, and Andrew Wurtz. So Schoenfeld I don't know as much about, but he really popped on our radar this year because this is a D two guy centerfield, incredible centerfield. If we're talking about carrying tools, terrific centerfield, are huge part of the West Virginia team that went to the College World Series for the first time. So Shoan Feld's really interesting. He's obviously, all three of these guys are old, right, these are twenty three year old, so these are not going to cost very much in terms of signing bonuses. But they had big enough and interesting seasons to get drafted. And then Chris Katz is a wild one. This dude wasn't Wake Forest for four years, really just barely played. He just did not could not get on the field. He performed well in the summer in the Valley League, and then this year transfers to Mercer as a fifth year senior and has one of the best seasons in college baseball. I mean, there's really no other way to put you. You put up his season statistically against anybody else, and you know he's playing mostly first base, corner outfield. He's a right handed hitter. But the numbers are just outrageous. But the fun fact about Chris Katz that I did not know until more recently is that he was on the USA Baseball twelve U national team, which the fact that this even exists to begin with, is already a little bit like what are we doing? Why are we sending twelve year olds to compete in Taiwan? But like, you know, I love the LILL League World Series, but really the best twelve year olds are playing on this team. And Chris Kads was on this team in twenty fifteen that went to Taiwan, that won the gold medal, that had a bunch of future big leaguers on that team, including Nick Kurtz, his former teammate at Wake Forest, who at that point was like the Sho Heeo Tani of twelve year olds. He was like leading the team at innings, leading the team at homers. So anyway, that's Chris Katz, So you know, they never speak for themselves. And then finally Andrew works the twentieth rounder, pick number five, ninety six. Listen, there was only so many twentieth rounders that I can say I've seen pitch in person, but this is one of them. This guy's is another three schools three school Journey D two Stone Hill D three Salve Regina, Who's shirt I'm wearing today, shouts out to their head coach, Eric Soirella, who I'm tight with. I went and saw Salve play last spring in Boston, and I saw Andrew Worth's pitch and I was like, damn, what's this guy doing in D three He's got some good stuff. Sure enough, transferred to Northeastern and he's one of the best relievers in that conference this year. And now he's now he's in the Diamondbacks organization. So the journey continues for Andrew Wurtz. Northeastern kid, I believe it's from New Hampshire, so not a lot of big leaguers coming out of Dover, but yeah, man, I mean those are those are my guys. So all old pressure on the Dbacks Development's little system to keep these players relevant and uh maybe maybe you know, at some point of the next few years, I'll come to spring training and I'll be on a backfield with one of you guys somewhere and I'll be like.
00:29:15
Speaker 4: Oh, man, there's Andrew Wurtz throwing Corbin Carrol or whatever.
00:29:20
Speaker 2: That'll fire me up if I ever get to do that.
00:29:23
Speaker 3: Jesse, you got to blow Jordan's cover here. How he signed in to the to the pod.
00:29:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jordan may or may not have joined this episode as number one. Andrew Wurtz fan. It's like his little uh title.
00:29:36
Speaker 2: Okay, someone's got to be got right. I mean, I presumably like his family is bigger fans than I am. But maybe you know I'm for this kid. Yeah, I love it so and and but look, I'm excited to look like I don't. I'll be honest. You know I know what rounds thirteen through nine seventeen, I got nothing. I've never never heard of any of these guys. So I'm excited to know I'm doing my best here. I'm trying to keep up, but I'm sure I'll learn about So if Jack span Your or Andrew Evans ends up being awesome and I didn't tell you about it, like, that's on me. I apologize. This is great.
00:30:15
Speaker 1: Well, well, we won't hold it against you, Jordan, we won't hold it against you. Well we could. We could go on for for much longer, I am sure. But but Jordan, we really appreciate your time, all your dedication to staying on top of all this stuff. I know it's been a busy week for you, so so thanks again for hopping on. We really appreciate it, really appreciate it.
00:30:36
Speaker 2: Thank you. Brandon down you probably deserve more time. But you know what, Yeah, well we'll do it. Next time I come on, we'll we'll talk about it more. So, thank you, thank you both for having me on. This was really fun, really cool to have this platform to talk about these picks. And yeah, well we'll see how it goes. I look forward to doing this again soon.
00:30:55
Speaker 1: Thanks George.
00:30:56
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00:31:56
Speaker 1: Welcome back in to Snake's territory as we knew the show. With a few final notes here at the end, just a few things to hit on. First of all, Jack, Tommy Troy unfortunately has landed on the injured list. This is news that we just got in the past forty eight hours or so. He is going to the ten day injured list with a sprained right aca joint. This of course came as a result of banging into the center field wall on Saturday in Los Angeles. And this isn't great, Jack. I know Tommy Troy was not necessarily clicking on all cylinders at the plate, but he was an important part of this team's outfield depth.
00:32:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is really rough, you know, I mean it fits the most mild form. Look, this is sprained it right a sea joint. Is he dislocated it at least temporarily? You know, maybe it just popped right back in that I'm not sure, but you know, if it's the smallest grade or most easiest Grade one two that's still at least a couple of weeks. So, I mean, look, you're not going to see Tommy Troy before August one, almost thousand percent certain on that. The question, and we'll find out from Tori when we see him during workouts Thursday night or by Friday afternoon will be you know, are we looking at a grade three or four where you're talking about over a month missing, you know, and I don't think it's a type of injury that's going to likely require surgery, but you know, we'll find out about that soon. So my guess is that the most optimistic is he's going to be out two weeks to anywhere to six or eight. So we'll just have to find out. So don't expect to see Tommy Troy for a while, which creates some issues for them. I mean, they they got to replace him. We don't know who that's going to be just yet. Again, we might not know that until Thursday night or even Friday during the day. You have basically four players in the minor league that are on the forty man IL forty man roster. Lou James Gruverer Tyler Locklear, Adrian del Castillo and Jose Fernandez, and they need an infielder. I mean they're going to have to add an infielder. They don't need seven outfielders six outfielders. So my guess is probably going to be Locklier. I think it's his turn to get a shot. I mean he's been hot lately. Maybe he's been beating up on some week pitching. But bottom lines, as he was PCL Player of the Week. You know they traded for him, So don't be surprised if they bring him in because you can play Tim Tower anywhere. They need more coverage in the outfield. They want to rotate still the first base. If they can play Tim at third base, if Nola needs a day off, you still have Vargus to back up a short stop at the second base. So my guess is probably going to be Lockleier. But you never know. Fernandez, Groover, they could also be guys that get called them. Fernandez has been hot in July, he's hitting three seventy one for the month. And Groover, you know, I mean he had a shot. Now whether or not they would bring him right back, which they can because of an injury, but you know, maybe it's somebody else's turn, so we have to see. Now there's the last thing on this is there is an open spot on the forty man roster, So if they did want to add somebody like Christian Robinson, theoretically they could, but I just don't think the odds of that.
00:35:18
Speaker 2: Are very high.
00:35:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't seem like it. Robinson has a seven ninety seven ops this season in Reno, which is decent, but considering the ballpark environment and so forth, not necessarily jumping off the page. So be interesting to see what the Diamondbacks do. Their unfortunate news for Tommy Troy. Hopefully he's able to get back soon. Also on the injury front, Jack there was a picture floating around on social media of Heraldo Perdomo with his hand wristd area wrapped up, and people were slightly concerned about this, like is Perdomo going to open the second half on the injured list. We got a report from Steve Gilbert on this yesterday. He said that Perdomo received a cortizone injection in his left wrist to battle some inflammation that he's experienced in that area, and it is not a serious injury. According to Mike Haysen, Perdomo is still expected to play on Friday against the Cardinals, so crisis averted there. Jack sounds like Perdomo is going to be just fine.
00:36:23
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:36:23
Speaker 3: I had a lot of people nervous, but you know the fact that it was a wrap not a cast was encouraging to astute observers, And it turns out that's the case. So usually courtizone shots you need three four days to rebound from, so that timing works out. Like you said, he's expected to play on Friday, you know, hopefully there's nothing else going on there. I assume it was from the hit by pitch against the Dodgers. I've also seen some awkward swings, so hard to say exactly what caused it when we talked to him. Well, we'll find out.
00:36:53
Speaker 1: Another piece of news that we got here in the last couple of days is that Pavid Smith is in fact in the organization. He has cleared waivers and has been outrighted to triple a reno. So Smith is still in the organization. I know. I think you and I touched on this on the show at one point and suggested that another team probably would claim peven when when if he was designated for assignment. So this came as a little bit of a surprise to me, Jack, But I guess also just reflects that the Diamondbacks are not the only team that had some doubts about Peven Smith, that maybe his perception around the league is also not that of you know, a league average type hitter that technically he's been over his career.
00:37:39
Speaker 3: Or the other take on that is, the Diamondbacks were the only team in baseball that felt that Peven Smith can hit.
00:37:46
Speaker 1: Also possible this is true, so Peven is still in the organization. I mean, theoretically he could he could come back up to the big leagues at some point. I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, certainly not right now. I think Tyler Locklear would would certainly get a shot in the big leagues before Smith would. Maybe the DBACS would would bring Groover back as well before they would do that. So I don't think a Paven Smith returned to the big leagues is imminent, but doesn't hurt to have him in the organization. Still, as far as guys that you could have as available depth, you could, you could do a lot worse than him, so, so Smith stays in the organization. One other storyline, I guess is there anything else on peven Jack before we.
00:38:31
Speaker 3: Well, I've thought that our good friend Diamondback stabs an info highlighted in his Twitter account a blurb from the from an article on MLB Trade Rumors. I'm not sure if you happen to have that handy by any chance. If not, I will find it. Yeah, but I thought that that's important information.
00:38:53
Speaker 1: Let me see if I can drag it in here we are. I'll go ahead and read this out. This is from MLB Trade Rumors. Some good information on Pavent Smith's situation. It says Smith has the right to elect free agency, but isn't likely to do so. Players with at least three years of service time have the right to reject outright assignments in favor of the open market, but if they have less than five years of service, they have to forfeit their remaining salary commitments and exercising that right. Smith is in that three to five window and is making two point twenty five million dollars this year. That leaves about nine hundred thousand dollars still to be paid out, assuming he doesn't want to leave that on the table. Smith will report to Reno, So yeah, helpful contacts there. It seems like just from a financial standpoint, it makes more sense for Pavin to return to the organization and stay in Reno than to pursue something on the open market.
00:39:44
Speaker 3: Yeah for sure. I mean, no one's spitting away nine hundred k. I mean, you know, he could gamble that no team wanted to pick up the remaining amount of his MLB salary, and you know, he would get signed as a free agent at league minimum, you know, for the remaining two and a half months of the two plus months of the season. So then you're looking at about four hundred thousand, so you know, and that's if he got signed by a major league organization to a major league contract, So you know, the best case scenarios, he would lose five hundred k. So nobody's spitting away that kind of money. So that makes total sense.
00:40:20
Speaker 1: The last thing we wanted to hit on on this episode is that Mike Hazen apparently had a discussion with the team before the All Star break festivities began. Sounds like this was sort of in contrast to last year where Hazen had of course, a big conversation with the team once the team was officially selling and Hazen was starting to make those moves. This time around, it happens before all of those decisions are made and Hazen, it sounds like Jack, according to the reporting we've gotten, he just wanted to make it really clear to the team the opportunity that's in front of them, the importance of coming out and playing well to start the second half, and really to force his hand to go out there and to add to this roster. And it sounds like players were also encouraged to come to him with any any questions or concerns or whatnot. He's been just kind of very upfront and honest about where the team is and he wanted players to be very clear on that before they enter the second half.
00:41:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the way Steve you know, wrote it, players were encouraged to speak to him privately if they had any concerns about his message or wanted to share their feelings about it. So, you know, his message was, Hey, you know, you guys got to do this now and turned me into a buyer. You know, it's up to you, guys, It's in your hands. What I'm going to do next. So I mean that puts a lot of pressure on them too. As we've seen over and over and over with the Arizona Diamondbacks, when there are low expectations, they do well. When they're a high dias they do poorly. Or is that just regression to the mean? Jesse, I don't know, help me out here.
00:42:06
Speaker 1: Who's to say? Nobody knows? But yeah, definitely a change of course here for Hazen trying to get in front of this. His exact quote was, I didn't want to wait to hold back some of the things I wanted to say to them that maybe I should have said last year on July first. So this is him kind of looking at the way things turned out last year and wanting to wanting to change course there. Granted, yeah, we did hear Corbyn Carroll talk about how the team was pressing, you know, going into the trade deadline a season ago, and some part of me is like, I don't know if the GM, you know, giving this sort of talk in front of everyone is going to prevent that. I wonder if it might make that an issue, But you know, what, do I know? These are these are real human beings and I'm not in I wasn't in that meeting. I wasn't in that room to see everyone's faces. Maybe they view this as being very motivating and energizing going into the second half, and that sets the stage four. This weekend, Jack Diamondbacks have three very important games against the Saint Louis Cardinals at home. Of course, ten of their first thirteen games coming out of the break are against teams that they are directly competing with in the wildcard race, so it is hard to overstate the importance of the games this weekend the games coming up after that. We don't have pitching matchups as of right now, but hopefully we'll get that here before too long.
00:43:32
Speaker 3: Absolutely, there are workouts at Chase Field Thursday night, and we will get a chance to talk to Tory, so you know, we'll come be and we'll see him again on Friday afternoon. So when we do our live show on Friday evening postgame at Chase Field, we'll have lots of updates and information for you guys, as well as the game. We can here we go.
00:43:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, next show will be live from Chase Field after Friday night's game. I'll be out there as well. Jack and I will be together in person, which is always fun, so be sure to join us on YouTube then, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hit the bell icon for notifications so you never missed an episode of the show. Also really helps us out if you would drop a like on this video. If you haven't already, you can find us on Twitter as well. I am at Jesse and Friedman. Jack is at Shoe Wizard fifty nine. The show is at Snake's Territory, and our special guest today Jordan Schusterman. You can find him at Jay Underscore. Shusterman Underscore a great follow. Shouts out to him once again for hopping on really really great time there. Thank you again to all of you for being with us on this episode. We really appreciate it, and we'll be back once again tomorrow night, Friday Night with a live postgame show. We hope to see you then.
