Max Fried, LHP, Harvard-Westlake HS - SSI pre-draft $0.02
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=== What's Lame About 'Im ===
It makes me want to hurl when a prep player's own coach - the man who has watched him on and off the field, now - says stuff like this:
"Max goes through spurts when he wants to do everything on his own," Harvard-Westlake coach Matt LaCour said. "He's at his best when he's pitching to contact and getting guys out early in the count. He's shown when he's at his best, he's going to strike out guys. He just doesn't need to strike out every guy.
"That's something with extended time on the mound, he'll learn. He will try to overthrow at times, but mechanically, he's in a good spot. I wouldn't identify that as something people need to be worried about in the future."
I would hope that this is just the coach venting his personal biases, like Jim Lefebvre trying to turn Jay Buhner into a contact hitter. But if there was any traction to this, it would be a pretty serious indictment of Fried.
Young men who are going to be IN the majors, much less stars there, should leave their prep environments shellshocked. (Lemme repeat again that Fried's coach may just be stepping up to the mic and trying to sound uber-savvy with the world watching.)
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Clayton Kershaw is who Fried needs to be, if he's worth a 1-1 (or 1-3) pick, and in Kershaw's day there was nobody saying that Kershaw should be pitching to contact. Kershaw threw an all-strikeout perfect game, threw curve balls that started behind LH hitters and broke in for called strikes, just left the entire gallery stunned silent every game.
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Bill James pointed out, 25 years ago, that ML organizations shoot themselves in the feet by taking high school pitchers ANYWHERE in the first round. It's not that you can't project them. Even if Fried is the real deal, how far is he from ever helping the big team? Fried is 3, 4 years from being James Paxton, and once he hits his 1-in-4 dice roll and is James Paxton in AA/AAA .... THEN you'll have the present quibbling and hem'ing and haw'ing over his getting to the big club.
It's just a long, long ways to travel for an 18-year-old pitcher and too many nasties in Fangorn Forest who can ambush him and throw him in the stew pot.
This is the dominating, over-arc'ing theme here. Max Fried is a HIGH SCHOOL PITCHER, amigos, and if he isn't Beckett or Kershaw then ... #1 overall pick? mmmmmmnah.
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=== Dr. D's Vibe ===
Fried looks like 80% of Clayton Kershaw to me, and six teams passed on Kershaw in his draft. (Gordon will be quick to point out who those six guys were... ) Even if Clayton Kershaw himself -- the 18-year-old version -- were in this draft, Dr. D would be taking Gausman or Zimmer or even Zunino. Kershaw beat his 75% chance to get injured, but that doesn't mean the next kid would.
If Jay-Z were to come out and say no, kiddies, you're wrong, Max Fried actually does project to 97 MPH just like Kershaw did, then fine. Instant-message me ASAP if that's what they wind up saying. I'll pick myself back up off the floor and proceed to Level 201 Kershaw/Fried comp scans.
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... what's likely, in our context, would be "Woo hoo! Another Kershaw! Check back in three-four years," and that being the case you've got a teenage pitcher hoping to survive the unnatural motion of throwing baseballs at 93 miles an hour. Clayton Kershaw plowed through the minors in basically one full season, and started contributing to the Dodgers at age 20. If that's what the Mariners were going to do, that would be a different conversation.
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BABVA,
Jeff