Bleacher Bums Forum

Interesting to wonder how that will play for the draft.  With teenagers, obviously there is a lot of scouting projection involved, both for whether the guy will end up throwing hard, and for whether he'll have control.  But this draft was interesting in that we took Blackburn in the first and then Underwood shortly thereafter in the second.  Blackburn came with and has since been reported as a very polished control-type pitcher, but with very fringy stuff.  Underwood seemed to come with more stuff and much less control.  My guess is there was probably a healthy balance of projection and scouting in both picks.  They projected that Underwood could throw harder more consistently, and that Underwood might someday be able to pitch with control.  They knew that Blackburn showed good control, but projected that he'd be able to throw with good velocity and good stuff.  There were reports that Blackburn had been throwing a lot of 90's in the late spring, and was flashing 92-93 maybe even 94 in some tryout camps.  Perhaps the Cubs scouted/projected that that was real, and that he'd be able to sustain that and perhaps become more consistent with that, or get even faster, in due time.  The summer and fall reports suggested otherwise, of course, suggesting that he consistently lived in the upper/mid 80's instead.  Perhaps that's all exactly what they expected, but my guess is they were probably disappointed by what they saw.  Probably just a scouting mistake there.  Or, perhaps that's just a brief sample for a teenager, and in a year or two or three he will be maturing physically and working regularly in the 90-93 range, and occasionally touching 95 or 96?  If so, maybe he'll end up being all that they hoped for when they drafted him after all.  But an interesting case, I think, where the stuff that Blackburn was flashing in Mesa was certainly less stuff-wise than what Hendry would have spent a sandwich pick on  back when he was draft boss.