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And see where the pieces stack up.
2005 - Are Zunino or Glausman 1-1 guys in a draft with Justin Upton, Alex Gordon, Tulo, Braun, Zimmerman, Maybin, Romero, McCutcheon... That draft was STACKED. Maybe it's not a fair comparison, but you'd be hoping they could be like Jay Bruce.
2006 - The "I'm smarter than you about pitchers" draft. One real hitter, a bunch of over-rated arms who could throw hard (see Appel, Glausman in place of Hochevar and Miller), and some gems among the lesser top-tier arms. What do you mean we didn't draft Lincecum? No way are the college arms this year rated as highly as they were that year, though Zunino would get some run to be a top-5 pick.
2007 - Top-tier players in every category. Amazing college arm, HS arm, college bat and HS bat. Everyone else is a non-factor so far, but there are still HS kids working on their first real time in the bigs now. Could this be the case with Glausman, Giolito, Zunino (instead of Wieters) and Buxton? Absolutely. This is a draft where Zunino and Glausman would fit in, except neither is better than Price or Wieters was believed to be at the time, nor Moustakas. They're still not 1-1 players, and any of those three guys would go 1-1 in this draft. Vitters might too, but that's not an endorsement of Vitters or the raw talent of this class.
2008 - Here you go. A muddled draft order, a great college catcher and raw HS hitter but no clear 1-1. This draft had a lot of depth to it (or it was viewed that way at the time) and a lot of serious power hitters, most at 1B. This class had way more college hitters in it than the 2012 class does, but the lack of pitching would make room for Appel or Glausman near the top.
2009 - Strasburg and Ackley are head and shoulders over everybody, but Zunino and Glausman could fight for #3, right? Zunino actually feels very much like Tony Sanchez (#4) to me. Feel free to lose your lunch over that comp any time, because if that was our #3 this year we'd feel pretty gypped.
Seriously, in what draft do you go "Zunino is better than everyone else"? If you say that about this draft, then that speaks to the uncertainly of this class.
I would absolutely aim for "Jay Bruce / Billy Butler / Carlos Quentin" types. Does that mean we should go for an arm instead and hope for them to jump plateaus?
If we do, then I hope it's Giolito so that we take our time with him and do it right, instead of rushing one of the college arms through the system - I don't believe any of them are up for that.
There will be impact players from this draft, but I'm leery of only looking at the Top-5-rated players and limiting our choices to them, because it feels very much like a talent plateau this year and not a steep peak. Maybe I'm not giving Appel or Glausman their due as top-flight arms, or Zunino the same credit I gave Posey, but it's how I feel. Buxton vs. Dahl vs. Almora is more preference than staggering talent discrepancy. Appel and Glausman would go some place after 10 last year, some time around Jungmann, certainly after Archie Bradley at 7.
Stop squinting and trying to find a HOFer in the fun-house mirror and just get a quality player. Dreaming of Zunino being Posey (or Alomar, or Santiago) instead of Sanchez could be disastrous, IMO.
~G