The Diamondbacks scouting department are in full swing preparing for this year's draft, which takes place on Thursday. It's just like the week before Christmas! Ok, it's probably a little harder to get excited about the upcoming draft this season, what with the Diamondbacks having the 26th pick in the first round. It's our lowest pick since 2002, when we went 27th, and ended up with...er, Sergio Santos. If that's the kind of player we can look forward to, it's understandable that Arizona fans are not quite rampaging through the streets in wild anticipation.

That said, it's still always of interest, and there are players selected outside the first round, who can still make an impact. You need look no further than second-base for the Diamondbacks; Orlando Hudson was selected with the 1,280th pick of the 1997 draft, by the Toronto Blue Jays in their 43rd-round choice. And, of course, Brandon Webb went to us in the eighth-round of the 2000 draft, behind such stellar prospects as...oh, what the heck, here are the results of the opening cycles for Arizona that year, together with where they are now.

1. No pick
2. #69 Michael Schultz [Hiroshima Carp]
   
3. #99 Bill White [Texas AAA]
   
4. #129 Josh Kroeger [Cubs AAA]
   
5. #159 Brad Cresse [no longer playing]
   
6. #189 Robert Barber [no longer playing]
   
7. #219 Tim Olson [no longer playing]
   
8. #249 Brandon Webb ['nuff said]

Of the six players chosen ahead of him, four did make it to the show, but none are currently active on a major-league roster, had 100 at-bats or even pitched ten innings in the big leagues. So, you can over-focus on the first round, even though we won't know for several years which, if any, of the lower picks will pan out. But that's where the money and the glamor can be found. The consensus has the #1 pick this year being either Tim Beckham, a high-school shortstop out of Georgia, or Pedro Alvarez, a 3rd-baseman who plays for Vanderbilt. Both men will, of course, be long gone before the count winds its way down to Arizona.

Over at Baseball America, Jim Callis predicted the first round a couple of weeks back. He had us selecting Gerrit Cole, describing the pitcher as "a high school version of Max Scherzer." Both are fireballing arms advised by the Scott Boras, though the risk involved in choosing such a pick has significantly reduced since the days of, say, Stephem Drew and his last-minute contract. Now, if you fail to sign your first-round pick, you'll get an almost-identical compensation pick the following year. I amn't sure if there are rules against teams deliberately punting their pick in a weak year, in hopes of landing a better player the following season.

John Sickel's mock draft at Minor-League Ball had us picking SS Anthony Hewitt, though Callis recently described him as the most-overhyped prospect, maybe worth a supplemental pick at best. Actually. Arizona does have one of those as well, getting a bonus choice between the first and second rounds, at #43, as compensation for the Twins signing Hernandez 2.0 as a free-agent. He was a Type B free-agent; you get more for players ranked as Type A, and if we lose Hudson and Brandon Lyon after this year, I am hopeful that both will be so regarded, leading to a real bonanza for Arizona in the 2009 draft. We could possibly have five picks in the top fifty, depending on how things shake out.

It's always nice to have these bonus babies, though our track record in the supplemental round has been less than stellar to date. We got Mr. Jenny Finch, Casey Daigle, with the #31 pick back in 1999, and that's the only Diamondbacks' player you've ever heard of, who came from those slots. In 2005 and 2006, we got Matt Torra and Brooks Brown,  who are both now pitching in Double-A Mobile, with ERAs of 2.45 and 3.77 respective. Last year, we had two: Wes Roemer and Ed Easley. Roemer has a 5.12 ERA at High-A Visalia, while Easley works behind the plate there, and has a .267 average.

It'll be interesting to see whether the Diamondbacks go for more position players this year. Maybe someone like David Cooper, whom the Major League Jerk mock draft has us taking, calling him "One of the better pure power hitters in the class." On the other hand, the past couple of seasons we have concentrated heavily on pitchers. 2007 saw five of our first seven choices being hurlers, and it was even more arm-heavy in 2006, where they went for six of the first seven, and eleven of thirteen. J-Up was the last time we used a first-round pick on a position player, back in 2005. However, Dana Eveland, Greg Smith and Brett Anderson, all part of the Haren trade, cleared out the ranks of southpaw pitching significantly, and it may be that the bias towards pitching will continue.

Greg Pappas thinks so, predicting us to choose Kyle Lobstein, a left-handed pitcher and an Arizona kid, out of Coconino High in Flagstaff. Keith Law over on ESPN Insider concurs, albeit with a different pitcher: Tim Melville That seems unlikely to me, simply because high-school pitchers are basically the baseball equivalent of Schrodinger's Cat: until you open up the box and look inside, you've no idea what you are going to get. That's probably true of the draft in general, but when you look at the current Diamondbacks roster, the importance of the event becomes clear. Between our starting lineup and the rotation, the majority (five position players and two starting pitchers) are a direct product of selections in the draft by Arizona.

All thoughts on the draft are welcome over the days to come, and details of our draft picks will follow on Thursday.