Baseball America says Nats winners in 2010 draft

[Lintyfresh85]

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/draft/news/2010/2610539.html

First team listed...

WINNERS

• Nationals: Washington has drafted and signed premium talent each of the last two years with the No. 1 overall selection. Despite dealing with hyped players in Stephen Strasburg and now Bryce Harper, the Nats didn't change the game with their contracts. Strasburg set draft bonus and contract records, but within reason; Harper got the largest guarantee for a position player, by $400,000 over a contract signed nine years ago. Neither contract was outrageous, and both got done. The Nationals also added pitching depth by going over slot to sign players in the second (Sammy Solis, $1 million), fourth (A.J. Cole, $2 million) and 12th (Robbie Ray, $799,000) rounds.

[sportsfan882]

Can the Nats finally develop a HS pitcher? We will see with Ray and Cole for sure.

[Lintyfresh85]

Peacock seems to be doing fine.

Though, I'm worried they'll convince him that strikeouts are the devil.

[sportsfan882]

Peacock seems to be doing fine.

Though, I'm worried they'll convince him that strikeouts are the devil.

He might be the only one. So much more failures than successes thus far.

Hell, we haven't even put a Washington Nationals HS draftee at all in the Majors yet. That's bad.

[Kevrock]

Hey, we won something!

[Lintyfresh85]

He might be the only one. So much more failures than successes thus far.

Hell, we haven't even put a Washington Nationals HS draftee at all in the Majors yet. That's bad.

Not really.

The team's been here since 2005.

The first draft they would have had was near the end of the 2005 season.

HS kids take a long time to develop.

[NJ Ave]

Well, in 2005 our first HS pitcher taken was in the 15th round. We did take Willems and Gibson in the first 5 rounds in 2006, and Smoker in 2007.

The guys from 2007 are still only 21, so while I agree with the proposition that we haven't done real well with HS pitchers there's far too few data points to say the failure was on development rather than scouting. As far as I know, Willems didn't have the stuff or the head we thought he had, and Gibson and Smoker can't break 90, can they?

I always thought our problem was with Jimbo's scouting profiles (i.e. paying too much attention to fastballs as opposed to overall makeup and secondary pitches, or focusing on athletics and projection over in-game plate discipline and power) rather than development. It's hard to develop players who actually aren't that good to begin with.