A Sea Of Red

We are 52 days away from the MLB draft. MLB released the top 200 draft prospects. There are several guys on the list that we saw this year. Zach Neto was number 25. In my opinion he was the best player we saw this year despite Gavin Cross the outfielder from VT being ranked higher at #9.
Unsurprisingly there are no LU players in the top 200. I'm sure we will have a few guys go in later rounds like we do most years. Looking at our commits for next year I'm not anticipating losing any of those guys to the draft but you never know.
Campbell actually has 2 guys in the top 50 with Neto at 25 and the pitcher Thomas Harrington at 43.

I really wanted to hear others opinions about the best players we saw. I really feel like it was Neto but would like to know what everything else thinks.

My memory is bad so I'll stick to recent players, but Hatcher, the leadoff guy from KSU has to be in the conversation, at least offensively. Batting at .400 and hit a home run every time up against us (or so it seems). He has hit for the cycle twice this season and I think was near one against us one game.

What about the pitcher from Florida in the opener? Guy was filthy.

JK37 wrote: ↑May 26th, 2022, 12:50 pm What about the pitcher from Florida in the opener? Guy was filthy.

That’s a good call. He dominated for sure.

MLB released the new updated top 250 draft prospects. The last list they released was the top 200. Again, unsurprisingly, there are no LU players on the list. None of the 6 commits on perfect game are on there or Wheatley that was discussed in another thread.
Of course that doesn’t mean we won’t lose anyone to the draft but it does likely increases the odds that we will be able to keep everyone committed.
On a similar note I watched a good bit of the Guardians Twins game last night and Kirilloff was 3-4 including a 2-run homer. Sure would’ve been nice if he found his way to Lynchburg. Anyway nice to see him being healthy and playing well.

Eric Green's 18 year old son Elijah is listed as a sure top five pick.

https://www.mlb.com/news/elijah-green-guide

The top of this draft is really interesting with him, Druw Jones (Andruw's son), and Jackson Holliday (Matt's son) as the top 3 prospects. I'd love for Washington to be able to get one of these 3 with the 5th pick but who knows if any of them will last that long. They have been tied to Parada a catcher from GT a lot. I'm not sure I understand drafting since they already have a great young catcher in Ruiz.

Barko had TJ surgery. He could still get drafted buy interesting situation to watch. Tucker toman is a top 2 round pick as well. Jims son.

Dylan Cumming named pitcher of the week in the Appy League.
https://wset.com/sports/minor-league-ba ... week-honor

Green goes 5th to Nationals. Toman goes 77th to Blue Jays.

Fluharty went in the 5th round to the Blue Jays.

Congrats to Mason!! Given Scott Jackson is a Campbell alum, I wonder what he thinks of 2 Campbell players getting drafted # 13 and # 36.

Joe Adametz goes in the 14th round to the Tigers.

The draft is now over. Fluharty and Adametz were the only guys from Liberty taken. I was hoping someone would take Aaron Anderson but of course there is always a chance him and others could be signed as undrafted free agents.
I also couldn’t find that any of our commits were drafted so I’m assuming we should be able to get all of those guys to Lynchburg.

Age hurts Orndorff Gulakowski and AA. Look up average age of your local low A team. Prob 19 at best. Young mans game.

jinxy wrote: ↑July 19th, 2022, 7:29 pm Age hurts Orndorff Gulakowski and AA. Look up average age of your local low A team. Prob 19 at best. Young mans game.

In some ways i guess it will but they will be expected to outperform a lot of those 19 year olds. Typically college players are placed lower than their skill level would suggest to get them used to the grind and focus on fundamentals that they might not have gotten at the college level. I

I am also disappointed, however, we made our third straight regional (1st time in school history at D1 level) which is huge. Culture and tradition continue to grow under Coach Jackson.

We return a ton of pitching next year including but not limited to Joe Adametz, Garrett Horn, Max Alba, Mason Fluharty, etc...

Excited for the future because as far as I can tell Coach Jackson loves being at Liberty, he's a great coach, & coach will be able to recruit better in the future move to Conference USA.

I was definitely wrong on some personnel predictions but excited about the young/other guys on the pitching staff. Overall Liberty baseball stock is a buy

Max Alba signs with Tigers.

Zach Neto who absolutely torched us repeatedly for Campbell last year is making his MLB debut at short for the Angels today after only 44 games in the minors. He really stood out to me last year as I pointed out in the first comment on this thread but that’s extremely fast especially since he didn’t play at a power 5 school.

I have no data to back it up but it seems like the number of college players that are flying through the minors are more common than it used to be. I remember Michael wacha getting drafted out of Texas A&M in 2012 and was starting for the Cardinals less than a year later. At the time it certainly wasn't unprecedented but it was rare enough to get a fair amount of media attention and that was one of the top pitchers in the country out of the top conference. That's a little different than a shortstop out of a mid major school that was viewed as mediocre defensively by scouts. Typically it's defense first short stops that are called up quickly to be used as utility players.

With the draft being reduced from 50 rounds to 40 and now to 20 rounds over the last 15 years combined with a massive amount of money being pumped into baseball facilities across the country over that time the talent level in college baseball has never been higher. The switch to BBCOR bats and the low seam baseball that are used in the minors also makes the adjustment much easier once drafted. I know personally they used the high seam baseballs in my first year of college baseball before switching in my second year and I really struggled to adjust with the low seam baseball since I relied so much on off speed pitches and couldn't get the same amount of movement.

Will Wagner is number 15 on the Astros top 30 prospects list that came out today. If everything goes well there’s a chance he could make his debut this year. He’s listed as a 2B/3B. Not sure where he fits in on the major league roster other than a utility infielder with Bregman and Altuve.