Casey Kelly, Josh Fields, Jason Castro
Casey Kelly
Casey Kelly may be the most overall athletically gifted athlete in the draft. Casey Kelly could be:
a) Drafted as a shortstop,
b) Drafted as a pitcher,
c) The new star quarterback for the Tennessee Volunteers (if that means nothing to you, they’re one of the top football programs in the nation; does the name Peyton Manning mean anything to you?)
That’s a whole lot of awesomeness coming from one guy. There are huge red flags here, as attempting to drag a guy away from the Tennessee Volunteers is not an easy thing to do, but Kelly says it’s possible as long as he’s drafted as a shortstop, so that’s what I’ll focus on.
Kelly is roughly 6′3″ and approaching 200 lbs (likely still growing), so you’d expect that he’d be a big-bat shortstop who’s expected to move to 3B eventually. The opposite is true. Kelly has good range, good hands, and (obviously) a plus arm. He should have no problem playing shortstop for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately, the bat is not quite there. The hope is that with his athleticism and his size, he’ll develop into a fearsome hitter, but that hasn’t happened yet. Despite the high ceiling, with his bat not yet developed and a high possibility that he won’t sign, Kelly will be a very difficult player to draft.
Josh Fields
Fields is the first of two closers expected to be taken high.
When it comes to highly-touted college closers, there’s not much mystery there. They strike out a lot of guys, walk their fair share, and usually throw two ~plus pitches rather hard. That’s Fields in a nutshell. As best as I can tell, for his career Fields has a 3.90 ERA, 23 saves, 150 K and 47 BB in 115.1 IP for his career.
Fields has a mid-90s fastball with some downward movement and a fantastic power curve. Really, you know what you’re getting. If you draft Fields you expect him to come up fast and start striking out major league hitters soon.
Jason Castro
Castro is another member of what is shaping up to be a pretty good catching class. Castro did nothing in his first two years, but has had an interesting 2008. The lefty-hitting catcher has hit .367/.429/.603 with 19 walks and 27 Ks in 231 PA. That line just about says it all. He makes good contact, won’t walk much, and has pretty good pop for a catcher. He won’t be Mike Piazza but he should be a solid hitting catcher.
His defense is similar to his offense - good. He has good athleticism, can block the ball in the dirt and has a decent arm. He should definitely be a catcher long-term.
Castro is what he is. He won’t compete for MVPs, but he has a good shot at being a good starting MLB catcher, and that is certainly a valuable commodity.
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