and still do. I thought he was overdrafted by at least 10 spots. Just inexplicable to take him over Aaron Hicks or even Brett Wallace, though I wasn’t a fan of taking Wallace there because the depth chart is clogged with first basemen and he’s not a great defender at third.

It’s still too early to get a read on Weeks’ skills as a player— I’ve learned from Sean Doolittle not to make judgments on anyone based on one partial season— but virtually starting off your pro career with a severe hip injury is not the way to win my affections. If not for that, he’d probably be in that next group somewhere.

and a lot closer to a finished product than Dixon, who managed the difficult feat of actually striking out more often than Brown did (proportionally) this season.

Add that to the fact that he’s produced above the rookie level, and he has to go in front of those guys. Yeah, he was pants (as the British would say) in Hawaii, but that can’t weigh that heavily.

but that’s like saying there were people who were physically capable of being 4 inches taller than they were. Which is true— the average individual height has increased a LOT in the last century, mostly due to better nutrition.

Short of someone travelling back in time to 1900 and giving those guys lessons when they were kids on biomechanics and healthy eating, no, I don’t think there was any way they were going to throw high-90s.

It was about 1/20th what Weeks got ftr. Leyja wasn’t a Dixon or Coleman getting bought out of college. He was a guy without options that the colleges did not want.

If the A’s hadn’t picked Weeks he would have gone in the next few picks. Weeks’ combination of tools and performance record far surpasses any remaining A’s prospect (granting that Hunter and Dixon may have him strictly on tools, of course, those two have better tools than most of the A’s MLB roster…sfw).

Christian doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near the conversation at the moment, although I would rank him, and Dusty Coleman above Leyja