Red Reposter - 6/9/2009

Major League Baseball's Amateur Draft starts today, and for the first time it will be televised.  Here's a bit of a rundown:

• Follow along with lots of details at MLB.com. The first round will also be televised on the big TV, if you've got MLB Network, that is.

• The Reds have the 8th, 43rd, 57th, 88th, 119th, 149th, and 179th pick. Baseball Analysts has a lengthy discussion about many of the main prospects in the draft.

• Then again, why go all the way over to other sites when you can just re-read all of Thundering Turtle's awesome previews.
• Tom Groeschen takes a look at the difficult job of being an amateur scout.  It's a big day for them today.
  

• BtB interviews John Sickels about the draft

  John Sickels: I would say the mental side. I think finding new ways to assess a player’s mental and emotional makeup, both currently and in the future, is the "next frontier." Some people are doing neurobiological work the "brain types" of competitive athletes, while others are taking a more psychological approach. A lot of teams use standardized personality tests, and of course scouts have been assessing and analyzing player personalities for 100 years. I think that is where the next breakthroughs in player analysis will be, though what exactly that breakthrough will involve, I don’t know.

• We'll have a draft thread up later on today, for those that want to chat about it while it happens.

Other, non-draft related stuff:

• Both John Fay and Hal McCoy think this is a huge road trip for the Reds.  Fay thinks that "even without Votto, anything less than a 4-2 trip will be a disappointment."  McCoy thinks the Reds shouldn't even consider losing to the Nationals:

  Losing a sweep to the Nationals would be reprehensible. Losing two games would be terrible. Losing one would be inexcusable.

• Reds Asst. GM Bob Miller chatted with fans a few days ago.  He gave a good explanation to why Bill Bray is not on the 60-day DL, for those that were wondering about it (hat tip to jsl413):

  Bray is actually on the minor league disabled list and not the Major League disabled list. To put him on the 60-day at the Major League level we would have to recall him and place him on the Major League DL. Then he would get Major League service, which would make him a free agent a year earlier, which wouldn't make sense. Bill is out for the rest of this year and we hope he'll be ready for Spring Training next year.

• The Reds had the second slowest speed off the bat for batted balls in April.  You can learn that and so much more from the new Hit FX data that MLB is starting to generate. The sabermetric world is just starting to get their hands dirty with this data, but it will be interesting to see what we can learn from it.

• Joe Posnanski talked to Bill James about walks, and then wrote everything down.

  Bill: In reality, the batter has more to do with when a walk occurs than does the pitcher. Walks are a very complex phenomenon -- much more complex than power. They involve ...
  
  1) Selectivity or patience. ...that is, trying to get the pitch you want.
  
  2) The desire to get on base by walk.
  
  3) Fear of the hitter.
  
  4) Batting eye (ability to read the pitch).
  
  5) (Maybe the largest element) Bat control.

• Sporting News Power Rankings are out for this week.  The Reds come in at 14th, dropping 3 spots.