2011 Draft Eligibles: Goldpanners of Fairbanks

Cabral, Meaux and Newman lead a class of likely Goldpanner draft picks.

Ryan Cabral could be a nice pick-up for a pro team
in the 2011 MLB draft.

The Goldpanners have an interesting list of draft eligible players this year. I think that 2010 was a stronger year in the top-prospect department than 2009; however, most of the more recent season's big name Goldpanners seem to be juniors. The result is a lot of players who will probably get drafted in 2011, and definitely beyond, but it's difficult for me to find an upper tier of players who I can predict will be drafted in, say, the first ten rounds or so in the upcoming spring. Regardless, I'll go out on a limb and suggest a few possibilities:

Ryan Cabral: Cabral is one guy who not only stood out to me, but as a senior won't be pushed down to the middle of the pack due to a lack of signability. Cabral moved from the pen to the starting rotation when he came up to Alaska and really took advantage of his lively fastball with pro-caliber velocity to pick apart the ABL's batters. He went 5-0 with a 2.47 ERA overall, and was the Panners' workhorse as he pitched consistently well over a team-best 54.2 IP. His efforts landed him a first-team All-ABL selection.

Jesse Meaux: Meaux was selected by the Philadelphia Phillies in the 44th round as a junior last year. Obviously he made what should turn out to be a smart choice and went back to school instead of signing, as I imagine that re-entering the draft as a senior will only increase his draft stock. The rightie Meaux is a bit of a soft thrower, but he's got great control and does a good job of locating his pitches. His hard work paid off this last spring as he moved from the mid-week starter job into the weekend mix.

2010 Draft Signing Deadline Wrap

A look at who signed...or more importantly, who didn't.

So it looks like nobody signed! That's anti-climactic. Or it would be, except for the fact that a lot of schools were probably sweating bullets all night wondering if some of their top players were going to get snatched up. If there are no contracts that have yet to come out in the media, here's where everyone will end up:

- James Paxton will likely finish out the season with the independent Grand Prairie Air Hogs and sign with Seattle sometime over the off-season.
- Kevin Jacob will return to Georgia Tech for his senior year, and possibly go as high as the first round in 2011.
- Francis Larson could hang up the baseball spikes and pursue his master's degree in philosophy.
- Bryan Harper will transfer to the University of South Carolina.
- Ryan Woolley has a year of eligibility left due to a redshirt season and will return to Alabama Birmingham.
- Dustin Emmons will return to UC Riverside.
- Kyle Richter will be a freshman at USC. He will be draft eligible again in 2013.
- Jesse Meaux will return to UC Santa Barbara.
- Troy Scott will return to the University of Washington.
- Zach Arneson will return to Cal State Bakersfield

This list is based on the best info I could scrape up. If anyone else has any better information, please let me know and I will post it here.

5/22/10 Odds & Ends

Jesse Meaux: Primetime Performer
Photo Credit: Goldpanners.com

Well, we made it through another week. And that brings us another week closer to the start of the season! I got some good stuff posted up this week, including one very important article just last night...the Top 10 Pro Prospects list. It was kinda hard to rank these guys, and I played with some different cutoffs to see if something felt more natural or if I could make the distribution of the teams a little more equitable, but when it was all said and done, Top 10 just seemed to work the best. But hey, let's not beat a dead horse here, what else happened this week?

- Jesse Meaux (Panners, 2008-09) was picked by College Baseball 360 as a Primetime Performer for the week of May 10-16. The deed that earned him this selection was a one-run complete game shutout for the UC Santa Barbara Guachos, his second collegiate complete game. He invoked four double-plays to get himself through the 8-hit performance largely unscathed. Do you think it's a coincidence that guys named Jesse are so awesome? Jesse Meaux, Jesse Sikorski, and yours truly of course. Yeah, probably not a coincidence.

- The Glacier Pilots are going to be having a season kick-off BBQ and raffle tomorrow night! The shin-dig gets started at 4:00 PM, it's going to be at the Moose Lodge at 4211 Arctic in Anchorage, and the tickets are $100. That hundred gets you admission for two, an entry into the big cash prize raffle with a $10,000 grand prize, and two general admission season passes ($150 value). So if you've got some cash burning a hole in your pocket and want to support a good cause, swing by the Moose Lodge.