i love rice baseball and would really like the rays to pick him he might be available in the 4th round maybe, he was picked by cleveland last year in the 6th rd and didnt sign

he is their closer but would be perfect for our bullpen, i also like danny espinosa from long beach (shortstop U) and really hope the rays draft pedro #1 and move him to right field

And a few HS pitchers that are high risk, high reward type. We could always use a Kazmir/Kershaw clone. :D

ONLY because of the xplanation I got for the Young/ Garza deal.

I was told that no matter orgzanizational depth, pitchers will always have FAR more value than hitters.

Young nearly won the ROY as a 21 year old, and he STILL had the value of a 1st overall pick.

Garza was thought of in about the same way you would think of any top 25 overall pitcher.

yet I was told that even as a team with pitching coming out our ears, and without any depth in the OF, it is ALWAYS smart to get the pitching. So we traded a guy that still had the value of a #1 pick, for a guy that still had the value of a 25th pick, but since one was a pitcher it really didnt even matter where our organizational depth was we HAD to get the pitcher because pitching has 10x more value.

So if Im to believe taht to be true, I will never understand taking a hitter in the draft

Pitchers are not considered always more valuable than hitters. In fact, one reason many analysts think Minnesota got the best of the deal is that they think Young was the best player dealt.

The argument for why the Rays should have made the deal was not that Garza was more valuable than Young all by himself but that he fit the Rays’ particular needs more at the time and that there was more to the deal than just those two. I think it highly unlikely the Rays would have dealt Young straight up for Garza.

There have been many deals in baseball history that were essentially hitters for pitchers (although again, the Rays deal was not simply that), and sometimes the team receiving the hitter made out quite well. (Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas; Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio)

There is no evidence from past draft history that teams value pitchers more highly, let alone 10x more highly, than hitters. In fact, pitchers are considered a far more risky pick in most cases. In 2007, 6 of the top 10 and 17 of the 30 first rounders were pitchers and in 2006 pitchers dominated even more, but in 2005, only 1 pitcher was selected in the top 10 and the first picks from 2003-05 were not pitchers.

Looking at the 2003 draft (because there has been time to get some sense of who worked out), among the 1st round hitters who have made the majors are: Delmon, Weeks, Markakis, Stewart, Milledge, Aaron Hill, Conor Jackson, Brandon Wood, Daric Barton, Quentin & Brian Anderson. The pitchers include Maholm, Danks, Chad Cordero, Aardsma and Billingsley.

And while there have been some flops among hitters (Eric Duncan, Lubanski, Ryan Harvey), pitching flops include the #3 pick Sleeth as well as Jeff Allison and Brad Sullivan.

I think there is evidence that there are good reasons to select a hitter over a pitcher in the draft in many cases.

I would love to see the Rays take Clayton Shunick From N.C. State. He’s a hard throwing pitchers with plus stuff but as you can see from his record he has not gotten the run support he needed. Here are his numbers:

Player ERA W-L APP GS IP H R ER BB SO B/Avg

23 Clayton Shunick.. 2.12 7-5 14 12 89.1 69 23 21 21 100 .207