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.

Live blogging the 2010 MLB Draft

Kevin Jacob, drafted by New York Yankees.
Photo courtesy of AnchorageBucs.com

It's day one of the 2010 MLB draft, and I will be doing what I like to call "more-or-less-live blogging" it. Obviously my primary concern will be former ABL players who are drafted, and I'll do a little analyzing as we go along. I just got into the house and missed picks 1-5, but no ABLers yet. I would be surprised if there weren't a few to go off the board here soon, so here we go!

3:39 PM Day 1: No ABL draft picks yet. Gone through picks 1 through 6. Just waiting for the name James Paxton to be called! I'll make the post as soon as it's official, or if someone else (Kevin Jacob? Logan Darnell?) comes up before him.

4:11 PM: Still waiting. I have to confess that this is the first time I've ever watched the draft live. I have to wonder, is it really necessary for teams to be "on the clock" this long in the first round? I mean, if I were a Major League GM, I would start preparing by making a list of my top draft choices and my very first pick would be the highest ranked player left on my list. It wouldn't take a lot of phone calls and hand-wringing or whatever the heck these clowns are doing. But obviously I'm not a Major League GM so I don't know.

6:42 PM: The first/comp A rounds are complete and none of our top draft picks are anywhere to be seen. I checked a few of the big prospect watchers' draft boards and our guys have slid completely off the first-round radar, and the MLB teams seem to agree with their analysis. I wonder when the last time we went through a first round without any ABL players was? In any event, draft day is only one day out of a player's career, and although I expected to have at least one guy out of our league, and as many as three, drafted by now, the second round should be a lot more action-packed. Stay tuned as we pick up the coverage tomorrow.

2010 Draft Eligibles: Anchorage Bucs

Perpetual Buc Christian Bergman is one of
the top prospects of the Bucs' 2010 draft class.
Photo credit: AnchorageBucs.com

With the 2010 MLB Amateur Draft looming large on the horizon, I've been taking some time to put together a list of ABL draft prospects, including a top prospects ranking. I've just begun that process, but the first part of it is compiling the complete list of draft eligibles. Today I've finished up the list of Anchorage Bucs draft eligibles, so let's have a look at who's on the list.

The standout of this class is 2009 Buc and Georgia Tech closer Kevin Jacob. Jacob is about as polished a prospect as they get, short of Strasburg status, with a three-pitch repretoire including a fastball that settles in about 97 and is flirting with triple-digits. He's got a big stout frame and absolutely dominated the league last year. Jacob will go early in the draft, possibly as early as the first round.

Also big on the list is Christian Bergman out of UC Irvine, who Bucs fans should be very familiar with by now. He pitched for the motley crew over a four-year stretch from 2006, fresh out of high school, until 2009. Bergman was passed over in the 2009 draft, but there's no doubt in my mind that he will get picked up this year relatively early on.

Finally, watch out for Kellen Kiilsgaard. He doesn't have the draft buzz that Bergman and Jacob have, but he's a legitimate prospect with a lot of tools and considerable upside. He'll be draft eligible this year, though as a junior he could get passed over or pushed back to the later rounds due to signability.