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Draft plan has a catch

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By MARC LANCASTER | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 6, 2009

NEW YORK - The few Major League Baseball mock drafts that exist have in recent weeks seemed to favor the Rays selecting a catcher with their first-round pick.

There's no doubt catcher is a position of organizational need. Triple-A receiver John Jaso is known more for his bat than his defensive skills, and the Rays' stud prospects in the minors are mostly pitchers, along with shortstop Tim Beckham and outfielders such as Desmond Jennings and Rashad Eldridge.

So you've seen names such as Tony Sanchez of Boston College and Arizona high-schooler Tommy Joseph connected to the Rays with the 30th overall pick, and that might end up being the way Tampa Bay goes with its first selection Tuesday night. But it will happen only if said catcher is judged the best player on the Rays' board at the time, according to the team's decision-makers.

Because the lag between when a player is drafted and when he reaches the majors usually is longer than in other professional sports, the Rays don't see drafting to fill an immediate need as a philosophy that makes sense.

"I think we'll always be beholden to the take-the-best-player-available mentality because even if it creates a surplus at some point, we're confident we can take it to market and make a trade to address a weakness," executive vice president Andrew Friedman said. "So we're not going to bypass value or talent to address a need because so much can change in the interim period that we certainly don't think we're smart enough to play the futures game that far out."

If that happens to be a shortstop, a year after they selected Beckham first overall, so be it. In fact, ESPN.com's Keith Law has the Rays taking California high school shortstop Jiovanni Mier in his latest mock draft.

That would fit with the Rays' guiding principle when it comes to draft picks: They prefer to take catchers, shortstops, second basemen and center fielders - up-the-middle positions often held by the best athletes or all-around players on their high school or college teams.

"I don't think we try to emphasize anything other than, philosophically, we like middle-of-the-diamond players and we like athletes," Rays scouting director R.J. Harrison said. "If you have a chance to select a guy like David Price and you're in that position, you take that pitcher, but there's more opportunity, I think, to have a chance to get good pitching throughout the draft. But when the dust settles, it may be that the guy we think is the best guy available is a pitcher."

Despite their surplus of high-end pitchers in the minors, you can bet the Rays will look to the draft to keep stocking up in that department. As Harrison said, though, they might focus on collecting arms later on - a strategy that has worked in the past, as James Shields was a 16th-round pick and Andy Sonnanstine a 13th-round selection.

Whatever ends up happening in the first round, it's a virtual certainty whoever the Rays pick won't put on a Tampa Bay uniform nearly as quickly as Price and Evan Longoria have the past couple of years. They're not working in that type of talent stratosphere down at the end of the first round.

Ultimately, they'll be looking for a guy they project as a major-leaguer, and even among first-round picks that is far from a guarantee. If that guy helps add a little depth behind the plate, all the better.

"If there's a catcher there that we think is the right guy to take, we'd take that catcher," Harrison said. "But I think that if you get to the point where you take a catcher or any position because you think that's a weakness in the organization and you walk by a player that you think has a chance to be a better major-league player, philosophically, that's not the way we operate."

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