The 2015 Draft - Day 2 Roundup

3              Taylor Clarke                      RHP        College of Charleston    SC

4              Breckin Williams               RHP        Missouri               MO

5              Ryan Burr                            RHP        Arizona State     AZ

6              Tyler Mark                          RHP        Concordia (Calif.)             CA

7              Francis Christy                   C             Palomar (Calif.) JC            CA

8              Kal Simmons                      SS           Kennesaw State                     GA

9              Pierce Romero                  RHP        Santa Barbara (Calif.) CC

10           Joey Armstrong                  OF          Nevada-Las Vegas           NV

The first thing that probably pops out to many is that after 10 rounds, the Diamondbacks have yet to select a high school talent. Secondly, five of the day's picks were pitchers. Of those pitchers, one is a starter (Clarke), three (Burr, Mark, Romero) are late-inning relievers, and one (Williams) is currently a late-inning reliever with the athleticism and pitch mix that he could potentially be converted to a starter. Since he does not possess elite closer stuff, that is likely the path he takes.

Of the players drafted today, Clarke would currently rank 14-16 and Burr 22-24 in my organizational rankings. It is somewhat difficult to peg them right now as a great number of the players ahead of them will be moving up and off the list this season.

After all the excitement yesterday involved with selecting Dansby Swanson, today was a fairly uninspiring day in the draft. Clarke is a very solid and safe pick at 3-1, but there were other pitchers also returning from injury that have substantially higher ceilings still available. In a vacuum, Clarke at 3-1 looks just fine. However, following him up with four relief pitchers in the next seven picks, the vacuum starts to fill quickly and day two begins to look more and more like a day of bonus pool savings.

According to Scouting Director, Deric Ladnier, Clarke was the team's guy at pick #76, despite his being ranked #118 by Baseball America. While this is not quite the stretch the numbers make it look, the rest of the picks in the draft do reach deeper and deeper, with the final two picks not being a member of the BA top 500.

The team was pleased to be able to pick Francis Christy the junior college catcher with their seventh pick, anticipating that there was a good chance he (as well as Simons at 8) would be gone before the Diamondbacks had the chance to take him with their picks.

Christy is a 6' 2" 205 lbs. backstop with decent but not spectacular defense and good pop from the left side. He'll need to work on his footwork and transfer to improve his stock as a catcher, but the tools and size are there.

It has also been intimated that the Diamondbacks could take some more catchers in tomorrow's rounds, so we'll have to see how everything shakes out.

Tomorrow's 11-1 pick to open Day 3 of the draft is going to be a big one for the organization. It will be the pick where the Diamondbacks get to make use of the bonus allotment savings from today's picks. Counting the speculated savings from yesterday's picks, the Diamondbacks should have in excess of $4 million to use to try luring one of the elite high school talents in the draft away from college; perhaps right-handed pitcher, Donny Everett, a Vanderbilt commit, or Justin Hooper a left-handed pitcher who is a UCLA commit.