L.A. Times: Once a future star, Darren Dreifort is left with scars

This probably will come as no surprise to anyone who closely followed the star-crossed professional career of the former Dodgers right-hander. A seemingly can’t-miss prospect, he wound up spending as much time rehabbing injuries as he did dueling batters during 11 major league seasons.

A hip procedure last Wednesday in Beverly Hills was his 22nd surgery—his 20th since he left Wichita State after being the second player taken in the 1993 amateur draft behind only a slugging high school shortstop from Miami named Alex Rodriguez.

A dark cloud has followed Dreifort, 37, into retirement. He has endured eight surgeries since his last game Aug. 16, 2004, when he suffered a season-ending knee injury at a time when he already was scheduled for three other postseason operations.

Divorced, he lives in Pacific Palisades after moving from La Canada to be nearer his three young sons, ages 7, 5 and 3, who live most of the week with their mother in Santa Monica.

Life hasn’t played out as he’d hoped—or major league scouts envisioned—but Dreifort says he’s OK with it.

“I’ve been able to do what I wanted to do,” he says over coffee during an interview at a Starbucks near his home. “I wanted to play major league baseball and I wanted to raise my kids. I wish I could raise my kids full time, but that’s the way it goes.”

A call from the College Baseball Hall of Fame, which inducted its first class of honorees in 2006, caught Dreifort by surprise.

Among nine others being enshrined this week are former World Series star Joe Carter, who preceded Dreifort at Wichita State, and former Mississippi State slugger Rafael Palmeiro.

Roar restored: Mitchell sparks LSU to sixth College World Series title

The championship trophy appeared behind the Rosenblatt Stadium backstop with LSU still needing three outs to claim it, but with a seven-run lead the bold Tigers fans in the first few rows starting snapping photos of the soon-to-be Baton Rouge-bound hardware.

Then, the fans readied their cameras again, as Louis Coleman struck out the side and the LSU pitcher who, like his senior teammates missed the university’s graduation ceremony because of a baseball conflict, led the team in a time-honored commencement tradition.

Only instead of a mortarboard, Coleman chucked his glove some 20-feet high before his catcher, Micah Gibbs, tackled him in front of the mound and the less traditional graduation tradition of a mosh pit ensued. And Coleman’s glove quickly became an afterthought as the Tigers celebrated their sixth national championship, besting Texas 11-4 Wednesday night to take the College World Series final two games to one.

“I don’t care,” the jubilant SEC Pitcher of the Year said. “I hope I lost it.”

As always, the offensive catalyst for LSU was junior right-fielder Jared Mitchell, the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player. After taking a changeup on the inner half of the plate for a strike early in his first-inning at bat, Mitchell hoped he’d see the pitch again. It came on a 2-2 count, and after a ferocious cut, the ball landed well beyond the right-field fence, seemingly halfway to the zoo across the street, giving the Tigers a 3-0 lead.

The mostly LSU partisan bleachers roared for an unorthodox mid-inning curtain call, but Mitchell was happy to acknowledge the fans’ insatiable appetite for recognition with a wave of his cap. The fans realized that, win or lose, this likely would be the last time Mitchell, a first-round pick of the White Sox, would put on a Tigers uniform.

And thus the PINGs of Omaha fell silent, until next year....

Keith Law: Harper looking for a challenge

If Bryce wants to take this step, and all indications are that he is ready to do so, why would his father stand in his son’s way?

In fact, much of the hue and cry over Harper’s plan to leave high school two years early is rubbish. If Harper is eligible for the 2010 draft after his first year of junior college—and he should be, although Ron indicated he has yet to receive a “100 percent answer” on that question from MLB—he’ll be 17 years and almost eight months old on draft day. That would make him just two months younger than Mike Trout and Randal Grichuk were June 9, when they were selected in the first round of the 2009 draft. The Marlins’ third-round pick, Da’Shon Cooper, is one year to the day older than Harper. None of their fathers were criticized for allowing their sons to enter pro ball at such a young age.

Inevitably, there’s also a backlash in the scouting community, among the same scouts who dropped what they were doing at the 2008 Area Code Games to watch every one of Harper’s at-bats. On Tuesday, when one scout learned I was writing a piece about Harper, he said “Don’t feed the machine,” referring to the tremendous hype that already surrounds the player.

It’s perfectly natural for a talented player like Bryce Harper to want to be challenged further when he has already shown he has mastered his current level. It’s not the place for anyone, including MLB or the media, to deny him the chance to succeed or fail at a higher level of play. The smart money is on him succeeding.

A Day in the Life of the Red Sox Draft

Interesting behind the scenes look at the Red Sox draft, free of chair-throwing.

Before the 2005 draft, Epstein wrote a simple message on the draft board as a reminder of the team’s intentions: Impact. Dominate.

The words were meant to serve as a reminder of a shift in draft philosophy. The Sox had focused in 2003 and 2004 on quickly rebuilding the upper levels of their farm system by drafting college players who were safe bets but who might not have the ceiling of a superstar. But by 2005, the team had accomplished that mission, and so wanted to use its picks—including five first-round selections—to find players with elite potential.

This year, however, there was no need to convey a message that is now an accepted component of the organization’s thinking.

“We’ve been together as a group for so long that I think that it’s been absorbed into our culture, how we scout and pick,” said McLeod. “We don’t need to put it up there.”

Baseball barrage is no bother

Ever have baseball-sized hail pelt your yard?

How about just baseballs?

Mark and Judy Chamberlain have. To them, College World Series time means it’s time to cover the tomatoes.

Their house sits conveniently behind the left-field fence at Bellevue East’s Roddy Field — the place where many College World Series teams practice during their Omaha stay.

And don’t think the players taking BP at Roddy don’t notice the home’s proximity.

“Swing for the houses? I think that should be our motto, maybe,” said LSU second baseman DJ LeMahieu.

Thankfully, the people there don’t have a giant dog that is referred to only as “the beast”.

NCAA College World Series Finals discussion

Number 1 Texas vs. Number 3 LSU

June 22-24 (game 3 if necessary)

All games at 7 PM on ESPN

Times-Picayune: LSU will play Texas at 6 p.m. on Monday

LSU and Texas, two of college baseballs powerhouses, collide beginning Monday at 6 p.m. in the College World Series championship round.

Both teams will go with their ace pitchers. Righthander Chance Ruffin (10-2, 3.27 earned run average) will start for Texas and righthander Louis Coleman (14-2, 2.68) for LSU in the first game of a best two-of-three series. All games will begin at 6 p.m.

Texas owns six NCAA baseball championships and LSU five, second and third behind USC’s 12 titles. LSU is actually tied with Arizona State for third.

Tobias: Inning By Inning: A Portrait Of A Coach (Documentary Review)

By some wonderful cosmic coincidence, Augie Garrido, the winningest baseball coach in Division 1 NCAA history, happens to manage the University Of Texas Longhorns in Austin, the hometown team of director Richard Linklater. Linklater prizes eccentrics and philosophers with a Zen-like perspective on the world around them, and Garrido could easily be a character in movies like Slacker or Waking Life, waxing poetic about his unique approach to the game.

NYT: Rosenheck: Backing Up an Agent’s Pitch (RR)

Dan R’s latest..Keeping Score for Stephen Strasburg.

But while ranking college pitchers is fairly straightforward, converting their statistics to major league equivalents is much more challenging. No two programs have the same schedule, and only a handful of players have gone straight from college to the majors, meaning there is little data against which to make a direct comparison.

To overcome these obstacles, analysts are forced to resort to the quantitative equivalent of duct tape and super glue to estimate the quality of college competition. Most statistical indicators say nothing about the overall level of play in a league: if both the pitchers and hitters at one level are better than those in another, their performances will cancel out. But a few figures avoid this effect, such as error rate (which measures the quality of the fielders) and the frequency of hit batsmen (which measures pitchers’ control). These numbers, taken together, can provide a quick approximation of a league’s strength. They suggest that Strasburg faced opposition roughly comparable to that of a middling Class A minor league squad.

Using those sketchy parameters, Boras’s assertion that Strasburg is a major league-ready talent is more than just a negotiating ploy. According to Clay Davenport of Baseball Prospectus, had Strasburg been pitching for Washington instead of San Diego State this year, he would have compiled a 3.54 E.R.A. (which would rank 18th among qualifiers in the National League) and struck out 9.3 batters per nine innings (good for ninth). By contrast, Prior’s college numbers were consistent with a 3.89 major league E.R.A., and Weaver’s with a 4.51.

MLB.com: Bloodlines run deep during Draft

Here’s the full yearly look at MLB.com of draftees with Baseball connections. In addition, the Angels drafted the youngest (adopted) son of Muhammad Ali, and the Orioles picked up the younger brother of Ravens QB Joe Flacco.

College World Series Primer on SI.com

Self-Explanatory

WaTimes: The promised land - O’Connor makes good on vow to lead UVa to CWS

The sales pitch Virginia baseball coach Brian O’Connor used when he assembled his first recruiting class wasn’t loaded with gimmicks, nor was it particularly long.

Nevertheless, his simple promise that within four years the Cavaliers would end their season in Omaha, Neb., brimmed with ambition and authenticity.

“The way he said it convinced me,” said fifth-year senior Robert Poutier, the lone member of that class still in the program. “He had me on the spot. Who knew it would take five years, but I’m not going to hold that against him. We always had the opportunity. It seems this year it’s all worked out for us.”

Better than anyone could have imagined. After five years of opening weekend disappointments, the Cavaliers (48-13-1) charged through a loaded regional before rallying from a one-game deficit to oust super regional host Mississippi to secure the school’s first trip to the College World Series.

I really like the UVa uniforms.

The Hardball Times: Colin Wyers: Abolish the minor leagues

The Fallout

But what would we lose along the way? Well, for starters, we probably lose the low minors. Right now, you can take a family of four to a game and get a meal and a few souvenirs for under $55. Minor league teams can charge so little for their product because their largest expenses are subsidized by their parent clubs. If that subsidy dwindled, so would the minor leagues.

Next to go? Training academies in Latin America. If the draft is abolished, teams would likely focus on domestic training academies instead. In other words, it’ll do to players from the Dominican, Venezuela and elsewhere what MLB did to Puerto Rico when it included them in the draft. Puerto Rican baseball has suffered for it, and so have Puerto Rican baseball players.

And Major League free agents will suffer, as they have to compete against a larger pool of players in the free agency market.

Maybe these things are desirable, but they are real consequences and cannot simply be ignored.

Rob Neyer: Let’s do away with the draft

The real problem is that nobody really knows what would happen if the draft were abolished. One could, with a great deal of rigorous research and analysis, make some educated guesses, I think. Sounds like a pretty good project for a sharp graduate student, or for one of those platoons of eggheads the Red Sox keep in a closet and occasionally throw a pizza to. But I haven’t seen that research. Have you? Humans are conservative by nature, and baseball men are really conservative. They like the draft, in part, because it’s what they know.

And second, Pinto’s making a moral argument. He’s not alone. A lot of people think that when you essentially force someone to play for a particular team, you’re depriving him of a fundamental liberty. I suppose that if the five biggest Web sites conducted a draft and I got stuck writing for a site I didn’t like for a salary I felt unjust, I would have a pretty big beef.

Gee. When I put it like that to myself ...

mlb.com: Nationals agree to terms with Drew Storen

The Nationals have agreed to terms with right-hander Drew Storen, their first-round pick of the 2009 First Year Player Draft, on Wednesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

An official announcement is expected to be made sometime on Wednesday afternoon. 

Many believed that Storen would sign quickly because he has a chance to be in the big leagues this year. His advisor is Brodie Van Wagenen, the same person who represents Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman and left-hander Jack McGeary. The deadline for the Nationals to sign Storen was Aug. 17. 

Rob Neyer: Draft unfair … but lucrative

Look, here’s the way it works: The player (and his agent) can ask for whatever they like, and the teams can offer whatever they like. If the player doesn’t like what he’s being offered, he can delay his professional career for one, two or three years while playing high school, college, or independent baseball. Eventually, though, he’ll again be subject to the draft, and the whims of whichever team chooses to draft him.

Is that fair? No, not particularly. But the system is what it is, and the players and their agents make a great deal of money while working within that system (a system that, by the way, has been collectively bargained by the owners and the players). Scott Boras wonders what Stephen Strasburg would do, if he had been born in Tibet. Well, that’s a cute little rhetorical trick, but if Strasburg had been born in Tibet he probably wouldn’t throw 101 miles an hour and he probably wouldn’t have become a future multimillionaire while pitching for San Diego State.

I’m sorry, but I simply don’t have any tears to spare for a young man who’s soon going to be worth $15 million instead of the $50 million he so obviously deserves.

Wall Street Journal: America’s Best Baseball Schools

To ascertain which schools have done the best in recent years at producing players who make an impact in the majors, The Wall Street Journal analyzed each draft from 1996 through 2008. Each school that has produced at least four major-league players from those drafts was ranked by adding its total “runs above replacement” for hitters and pitchers. This statistic measures how much better (or worse) a player is compared to a theoretical, average replacement.

The findings: Southern California, which owns 12 College World Series championships but has struggled in recent years, ranks No. 1 overall, although some of its best players—including pitcher Mark Prior and hitters Jacque Jones and Morgan Ensberg—have contributed little in recent years. Miami has generated little pitching in recent years but produced several sluggers, including Pat Burrell, Aubrey Huff and Ryan Braun.

Other top college programs have had several players make the major leagues, but haven’t seen them become stars. Texas, the alma mater of 354-game-winner Roger Clemens, doesn’t crack the top 10, nor does Long Beach State, despite the recent exploits of Jered Weaver and Evan Longoria. Stanford has had more than 70 players reach the majors all-time, but all of the Cardinal’s current players combined have been outproduced by former Rice standout Lance Berkman, a five-time All-Star first baseman with the Houston Astros.

California schools make up four of the top five—USC, No. 2 Cal State Fullerton, No. 4 UCLA and No. 5 Pepperdine, with Miami in between. But more than anything, the analysis shows how difficult it is for even top colleges to produce top-flight major-league players. Mr. Pujols has single-handedly been more valuable statistically than the offensive alumni of every college during the past dozen years, save Miami and UCLA.

Wait, did they just say that Pujols is more valuable then ENTIRE COLLEGES!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!

Beyond the Boxscore: Kalkman: Interview With John Sickels & Open Draft Day Discussion Post

As the young men move out into the battle zone of the ML Draft...Sky pilots an interview with Sickels.

BtB: Are there any prospects where there might be a divide between scouts and statheads?

John Sickels: They line up more than you’d think. Scouts have been higher on Cameron Maybin than a lot of statheads, who have worried about his strikeouts and low line drive tendency cutting into his power production. That would be one example. Statheads like Jaff Decker more than traditional scouts do, though even traditionalists respect his bat. They just worry about where he will fit defensively. Pre-season, some statheads (including me) were really worried about Mike Stanton’s strikeout rate, while scouts focused more on his physical projection and his youth. Stanton has really improved his plate discipline this year and looks to be a favorite of both camps now. Again, the differences aren’t as strong as they were 15 or even five years ago.

BtB:How will Pitch f/x (and soon Hit f/x) affect the accuracy, and cost, of scouting?

John Sickels: Honestly, I haven’t thought a lot about this yet. It’s been in the majors so far, and frankly when a player gets to the majors and graduates out of rookie status, I start to lose interest in them since I focus mostly on the minors and prospects. When a rookie gets to the show, I’ll look at his Pitch f/x stuff, though if he still has rookie status the data set is usually limited. What I really want is Pitch f/x for the minors. Then we can answer that question.

MSNBC/Boswell: Strasburg’s signing bonus won’t make history

This deal is going to get done at about $15 million, give or take less money than the Nats just ate in Daniel Cabrera’s $2.6 million contract. Chill.

...

“It’s a different type of draft (than the NFL or NBA) because the lists among the 30 baseball teams are very, very different,” said Nationals interim general manager Mike Rizzo, who had a successful relationship with Boras and his clients in his days in Arizona’s front office. “There’s very little consensus.”

What’s the hardest job in sports? It’s not hitting a baseball. It’s figuring out who can hit a baseball. Or throw one. Nobody hits .300 at the scouting game. And that is the central reason that neither Boras-Strasburg, nor any other agent-player tandem, will ever be able to make a convincing argument for awarding a vast contract to an amateur. The odds are too great that it’s wasted money. And, in the case of pitchers, the odds are even worse. Hurlers get hurt far more and return to 100-percent strength much less.

Of all the pitchers ever picked No. 1 overall since 1965, here are the best: Andy Benes, Mike Moore, Floyd Bannister and Tim Belcher, all 150-150 types.

L.A. Times: Nationals will draft Stephen Strasburg; after that, it’s anybody’s guess

Hold-out

Tanner Scheppers, who played at Dana Hills High, was Fresno State’s best pitcher last season until he was injured before the Bulldogs made their national-championship-winning run at the College World Series. After undergoing shoulder surgery, he was a second-round draft choice of the Pittsburgh Pirates. However, he failed to sign and, after choosing to make his comeback with the Independent League St. Paul (Minn.) Saints, is expected to go early in the first round.

No guarantees

Here are the last five No. 1 overall picks and where they are now:

2008: Timothy Beckham, a shortstop from Griffin, Ga., received a $6.15-million signing bonus from the Tampa Bay Rays and went on to hit .246 in rookie ball.

2007: David Price, a left-handed pitcher from Vanderbilt, is in the Rays’ starting rotation.

2006: Luke Hochevar is a starting pitcher for the Kansas City Royals.

2005: Justin Upton plays right field for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

2004: Matthew Bush, a shortstop and pitcher, was chosen by the San Diego Padres out of San Diego Mission Bay High. Traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in February, he was released on April 1 after the latest in a series of off-the-field incidents.

Deadspin: Craggs: Why Scott Boras Isn’t As Evil As You Think He Is

Baseball’s draft dates back to 1965; it was designed explicitly to suppress the rising bonuses on the open market. That year, the first pick in the league’s very first draft was Rick Monday, who received a $104,000 signing bonus, or nearly half as much as Rick Reichardt pried out of the Dodgers the year before. In 1982, the first pick was Shawon Dunston, who got $135,000. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that, five years earlier, Marvin Miller delivered free agency to baseball and pulled the game out of the Pleistocene Era.

Free agency may have been a great liberalizing force on the majors, but it did little for the ballplayers riding buses in the Texas League and nothing whatsoever for the amateurs on the verge of professional baseball. Minor leaguers, lacking union representation, have always floated in a weird limbo where their fate is determined by two parties — Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association — who at best have only an oblique interest in their well-being. The result is that the job of ensuring that minor leaguers got fair value for their services fell, for better or worse, to the agents, a wingtipped fleet of César Chávezes. That someone like Scott Boras came along was an inevitable outcome of baseball’s misshapen evolution.

ESPN: Hefty pricetag on Strasburg’s talent

Major League Baseball officials rarely agree with Scott Boras on the appropriate price for his elite draft picks, but they can’t criticize him for a lack of historical perspective.

Boras was new to the business in 1982 when he hooked up with a talented college pitcher named Tim Belcher. That was the same year a promising shortstop from the Dominican Republic made his debut with the Philadelphia Phillies. The kid would eventually become known as “the ageless Julio Franco.”

So when Boras calls San Diego State pitcher Stephen Strasburg “the best amateur pitcher I’ve seen in my 27 years in the draft,” it’s noteworthy despite the obvious self-interest factor. You don’t need a Baseball America subscription to know that Stephen Strasburg is being advised by, well, Scott Boras.

“Brien Taylor was the best high school pitcher I’ve ever seen, and Darren Dreifort was the best college pitcher as far as stuff that I’ve ever seen,” Boras said. “But Stephen Strasburg has better stuff, a better breaking ball and better command. This guy throws 101 [mph] at times, and 98 was the optimum for those [other] guys.”

Strasburg’s talent is so striking, says Boras, that franchises with no prayer of drafting him are watching him pitch just for the experience.

“Most of the scouting directors are younger than me, but the ones who have been around are saying the same thing: ‘Oh my God, this is something special,’” said the 56-year-old Boras. “They’re sending scouts to watch him pitch when they know they can’t draft him, just so they can see him and use him as the ceiling.”

Don’t count on Fort Worth Paschal star following father’s path

Coming out of Fort Worth Southwest High School in 1978, Brian Milner had it all. He was a standout in football and baseball and earned a scholarship to play both sports at Arizona State.

But the Toronto Blue Jays used their seventh-round pick to take Milner, a catcher, and offered him a $150,000 signing bonus. Milner, of course, couldn’t refuse that type of money back then and gave up college to begin his professional baseball career.

...

Milner finds himself in a similar situation this year, as his son, Hoby, is projected as a fifth- to sixth-round talent in this year’s Major League Baseball Amateur Draft, which starts Tuesday. The Milners will be one of hundreds of families that face the same decision — go to school or start a professional career.

Hoby, who went to Fort Worth Paschal, is a left-handed pitcher who can also hit. Even with a wiry 6-foot-2, 160-pound frame, his fastball reaches the low 90s along with a curveball and changeup.

NY Times (Schwarz): Pitching’s Bright Stars Sometimes Flame Out

Scouts have generally called Strasburg the best amateur pitching prospect they have seen. This is the rough equivalent of being rated the world’s No. 1 hydrogen dirigible. For all the promise Strasburg has shown, having names like McDonald, Prior and Taylor in one’s family tree would leave any pitcher digging for adoption papers.

Twenty years ago, Louisiana State’s Ben McDonald was roundly hailed as the best college pitching prospect ever; he won 78 major league games before retiring at 30 with a bum shoulder. No one took McDonald’s consensus best-ever tag until 2001, when Mark Prior of the University of Southern California was such a steely-eyed, bazooka-armed, strike-throwing machine that he was nicknamed Robopitcher. Prior won 18 games for the Chicago Cubs two years later before an avalanche of injuries left him pitching’s Venus de Milo.

Three high school pitchers during this period also were electric enough to prompt best-ever hyperbole: Todd Van Poppel in 1990, Brien Taylor in 1991 and Matt White in 1996. Van Poppel won just 40 games in a meandering career, and Taylor and White descended into the moat of the minor leagues, never to be heard from again.

Strasburg, who turns 21 next month, is in fact the sixth once-in-a-lifetime pitcher of his own short lifetime. But this has barely distracted the raving scouts, whose job is to look forward, not back. This time, they mean it. Really.

ESPN: Sorry, but this slot machine is broken

Well, Stephen Strasburg will be happy to serve as a one-man sport-changing earthquake. And our prediction is, that’s exactly what he’ll become.

Once he finishes collecting whatever preposterous bonus the Washington Nationals eventually give him, the landscape will be different. And the shock waves should drive the baseball draft toward a place it should have gone years ago.

Toward a cap on draft-pick bonuses.

Toward some sort of formal slotting system that predetermines how much money top draft choices will collect.

And/or, at the very least, toward a concept too many people have long been afraid of—trading draft picks.

“It’s time for us to be like every other sport,” said an official of one club who was nervous about having his name revealed. “One, we should be able to trade picks like all the other sports do. It would create more excitement around our draft. And if you’re the Nationals and you don’t want to spend $50 million, this is a guy you could trade and get four great players back and rebuild your franchise.

Florida State 37, Ohio State 6

Link goes to box score.

Pity to Andrew Armstrong, who gave up 11 runs in 1/3 inning and Stephen Cardullo went 7-9 with 5 RBI.

Score was 20-0 after 3, and 32-0 after 5.

Austin American-Statesman: Texas outlasts Boston College in 25 innings

The longest game in NCAA history (postseason or not).

Baseball with no dirt!

Welcome from Louisville, home of the Kentucky Derby, Louisville Slugger and the University of Louisville, who are hosting their first-ever NCAA Regional baseball tournament.

Jim Patterson stadium is a first class facility with first class staff and a very unique characteristic in that it is one of only five baseball stadiums in the nation to use FieldTurf as their playing surface.

The only place on the field that is dirt is the pitchers mound. Imagine that! The only guy on the field that can get dirty is the pitcher!

Abomination or great technology (or both), it seems to be the exact opposite of those Japanese fields that are basically all dirt.

Virginia beats Strasburg, San Diego State 5-1

San Diego State ace Stephen Strasburg lost for the first time this season as Robert Morey pitched six shutout innings and Steven Proscia hit a two-run homer in Virginia’s 5-1 victory in an NCAA regional Friday night.

Strasburg (13-1), the probable No. 1 overall pick in the draft next month, struck out 15 in seven innings. But San Diego State’s first tournament appearance in 18 years was spoiled by Morey (3-0), who allowed five hits and struck out nine for Virginia (44-12-1). The Cavaliers have won six straight.
........
Phil Gosselin took the first pitch he saw against Strasburg with one out in the first inning and smacked it over the 380-foot sign in left-center field to give the Cavaliers a quick 1-0 lead over the Aztecs (40-22).

John Sickles: Top Lefties in 2009 Draft

Andy Oliver, Oklahoma State: STRENGTHS: 90-95 MPH fastball, good slider, has flashed a changeup, good control, excellent sophomore season last year, strong and durable. WEAKNESSES: Lost his plus curveball this year; needs to refine changeup and slider, weaker-than-expected performance this spring, Scott Boras client.

James Paxton, Kentucky: STRENGTHS: 92-96 MPH fastball, sharp curveball, good control, high strikeout rates in college ball, big and strong, from Canada so he has a fresher arm than most college guys. WEAKNESSES: Why does he have an ERA over 5.00? Vulnerable to home runs this year; needs a better changeup; Canadian background also means he needs more polish.

Matt Purke, Texas HS: STRENGTHS: 90-95 MPH fastball, good slider, good control, still physically projectable and could throw harder as he matures. WEAKNESSES: Strong interest in college ball at TCU raises his price tag; mechanics are not as smooth as Matzek’s, general high school pitcher risk.