Previewing The 2021 First-Year Player Draft

Entering the 2021 season, the Orioles farm system was ranked as the fifth-best in all of Major League Baseball by MLB.com with five prospects ranked in the Top 100. General Manager Mike Elias and his team are looking to build on that success with the fifth overall pick in this year’s First-Year Player Draft.

Although the 2021 First-Year Player Draft has thrown some new challenges at Elias and his team, including still catching up after the COVID-19 pandemic shortened or eliminated many summer league opportunities in 2020, they are confident they will bring the best players to Birdland.

“In terms of preparation it is a little bit different than in years past,” said Brad Ciolek, supervisor of domestic scouting operations. “This process typically starts in the summer, when we start looking at these guys, the high school players we call the summer circuit, going into their senior year. And we typically have a lot of time to evaluate the college players with the Cape Cod League and various other summer leagues. With the pandemic, we did not get out in full force in comparison to what we typically would have been able to do. But we made sure out of the gate we hit the road hard.”

This draft is highlighted by a number of high school shortstops and top college pitchers – each come with their own set of risks and challenges. When it comes to high school players, Ciolek emphasized the importance of looking at more than the evaluations of who he is as a player. When it comes to investing in the Orioles future, the front office wants to make sure they have the maturity to handle the day-to-day aspects of Major League Baseball.

“It’s very difficult,” said Ciolek. “The first and most important thing is if we are going to invest in a young man that we are convinced in the maturity aspect and that they are able to handle the day-to-day ins and outs of pro baseball. And that they will be able to handle the failure. These guys have not played at this level of competition. There are going to be bumps in the road; there are going to be some setbacks, and we have to make sure they are tough enough to handle those setbacks. At the end of the day, if our scouts feel very comfortable with it and our front office feels very comfortable with it, we aren’t afraid to go after those guys.”

Gunnar Henderson, the Orioles second pick in the 2019 First-Year Player draft, is the perfect example. Henderson was drafted out of Morgan Academy in Selma, Ala. and has quickly climbed the ranks of the O’s minor league system.

When it comes to college pitchers, the decision is no easier, but comes with a different set of challenges.

“College pitching is showing you the ‘now’ stuff that you can imagine plugging into the Major Leagues very quickly, so there is always a temptation there,” said Elias. “If you do hit on the right one, they do make it to the Major Leagues very quickly, like in a year or two. But you have to pick the right one. The flip side with college pitching is they have experienced a lot of wear and tear having pitched a lot of years in college. There’s more injury risks with pitchers than position players generally. So they tend to be a risky demographic. We look at their deliveries and analyze their deliveries and their medical history and we try to get it right. Pitchers on the whole are very risky, but everyone needs pitching. So you try to do the best you can.”

When it comes to drafting, no matter the position or age, Elias says it does not matter who is already in your system or on your roster. Along with middle infielders and pitchers, there are a couple high profile catchers in the draft who the Orioles are not counting out.

“There are a couple high school catchers in the draft, but there is also a very high profile college catcher that might go right around our pick,” said Elias. “First of all, with the baseball draft, you don’t tend to worry about positional need because the players usually don’t arrive in the Major Leagues for two to three years, and you don’t know what your Major League roster is going to look like in two to three years. Even though you have a player now that can change. Usually the advice in baseball is to take the best player available, regardless of what’s in your system. You need more than one catcher on your roster. And we are in the American League, we have the DH spot, we have first base... There are avenues to having more than one catcher on your team, and it might be a really good problem to have.”

While the Orioles have the opportunity to take one of the best players in the draft with the fifth overall pick, that is not all they are focused on. Elias and his team know there is a lot of talent in the later rounds, as well.

“You look at our team right now, John Means was an 11th round pick, Trey Mancini was an eighth round pick,” said Elias. “There are great players in baseball that go later in the draft. It’s a very fascinating process late in the draft. Most teams have some type of model or system that tries to synthesis all the info we have, the stats, the scouting reports, so that when one scout has a player in the 12th round on his list, and a scout in Florida has a player in the 12th round on his list and no one has seen either of them, we try to pick in as semi-scientific way as possible.”

One of the hardest parts of last year’s draft was that the front office and scouts could not be together. But this year, they will all be back in Baltimore, vaccinated and healthy, working together to bring the best players home to Baltimore.

“This year it’s going to be exciting because we are all going to be back together in Baltimore,” said Ciolek. “Our scouts will be there, our analysts will be there, baseball ops will be there. It is going to be a little bit different. We have to wait and see what happens and what dominos fall for us, and ultimately we are going to do the best that we can to take the best player available and work within the confines of our bonus pool after that. It will be a little different than picking one and two, we will have to see how the chips falls before us, but we will be ready either way.”