With the No. 5 overall pick in Major League Baseball’s draft Monday night, the it’s-all-about-the-future Braves would seem in position to add another important piece to their organizational model.
There simply has to be something redeeming about 2016’s 68-win season.
But this isn’t football’s draft — no matter how baseball has tried to gin up interest by televising its first round and pubbing up its prospects. A top-five pick in the NFL draft is a player who needs to be a starter — soon. Baseball is so much more gradual.
“Baseball is different in that it’s a long-play game where you are just trying to get good players into the system,” Braves General Manager John Coppolella said. “A lot of the best players in baseball took three or four years to get there.
“You don’t want to cut any corners. You don’t want to go with the guy who is going to get there quick if he offers a lot less up-side and impact.”
It has been that philosophy that has led the Braves to take high schoolers over junior college or college players with their first three picks last year and their first four the year prior. The trend could continue as they have four of the first 80 picks in this draft, which concludes Wednesday.
The strength of the draft lies “in the college first basemen and high school outfielders,” said the Braves scouting director, Brian Bridges.
Could that mean the Braves may break from their pitching-centric approach and take an everyday fellow with that first pick? The Baseball America mock draft foretells as much, predicting the selection of California high school infielder Royce Lewis.
So, you’re saying there’s a chance it won’t be a pitcher?
“There is a possibility that could happen, for sure,” Bridges said.
“No comment on that,” Coppolella said with a smile. “We all love offense. You take the best player on the board. If it happens to be a pitcher, it happens to be a pitcher.”
Whoever it may be, best to recognize that for all the work invested — Bridges and his staff have been holed up in a hotel near SunTrust Park for the last 10 days — that this science is quite inexact.
“In our business, the hope factor comes into play,” Bridges said. “You hope the guys you do draft that high stay healthy and have wonderful careers. You have to understand, too, and be real with yourself that might not happen.
“There is a lot of uncertainty. We’re not out-smarting anybody else. Every draft room has smart people in it. Sometimes the guy you want might go right ahead of you and he might be the guy. You can’t do anything about it.”
Of the players taken first by the Braves in the last 10 drafts (seven of them pitchers), only one (reliever Jason Hursh) was on the team’s Major League roster for Sunday’s game against the Mets. Obviously there is little telling where the next one might land.
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