June 6, 2006
2006 Amateur Draft
By
Zeldink
Posted at 2:01 pm
With their first round pick in today's draft, the Reds picked Robert Stubbs, a college outfielder from Texas Austin University.
MLB.com's DraftCaster describes Stubbs as having gold glove defensive skills already. He also has “a power and speed combination that is tempered by his strikeout rate.”
That sounds very familiar. However, I'm not unhappy about this. The Reds over the years, for whatever reason, have had wonderful success at creating productive outfielders. There's no reason they should use their best draft picks in an attempt to find pitching at the expense of playing to that strength.
Cincinnati took Sean Watson with their second round pick.
Watson is a right-handed pitcher from the University of Tennessee. Watson has a good fastball and nasty knuckle-curve.
Like Ryan Wagner a few years ago, Watson’s a college closer. Hopefully, the Reds take better care of Watson than Wagner.
In the third round, the Reds selected Christopher Valaika, a right-handed shortstop from UC Santa Barbara.
Valaika has returned well from a torn ACL he suffered last year and is a solid infielder with some pop.
Between him and Stubbs, I like the emphasis on defense. The Reds sorely lack that.
The Reds took Justin Reed, a center fielder from Hillcrest Christian High School in Mississippi, for their fourth round draft pick.
Reed has a football scholarship to Mississippi, but the announcers on MLB.com’s audio coverage of the draft said he really wanted to play baseball.
Reed is athletic and fast and has shown improvement offensively and defensively.
Thanks for posting this, Zeldink. What would I do without you guys?
you probably couldn’t survive without me.
The Reds went with tools in this draft. Lots of speed, lots of potential power, and lots of velocity from the pitchers. Good plan.
No problem.