Welcome to your first draft as White Sox director of amateur scouting, Mike Shirley.
Not only will Shirley, who was promoted in September to replace Nick Hostetler as the man in charge of the Sox scouting department, be at the helm of his first draft in that capacity, he’ll navigate one through uncharted territory. This year’s draft on June 10 is limited to five rounds due to the coronavirus pandemic that caused the cancellation of high school and college schedules everywhere.
Because of social distancing restrictions and limited travel, scouts have been kept off the road. On the plus side, Shirley said personal interaction with players was at an all-time high, giving scouts a better grasp of player makeup than ever before.
But talent will rule the day, and the Sox, with the 11th pick, figure to get a good one to follow first baseman Andrew Vaughn and second baseman Nick Madrigal of the last two drafts. Switch-hitting catcher Patrick Bailey of North Carolina State is probably the most popular player linked to the Sox, who have a history of taking college players with high picks.
“It’s been different due to the fact that obviously the world stopped about the middle of March in terms of baseball and our ability to be boots on the ground,” Shirley said Tuesday.
“Being a new director in my first draft, maybe I was more giddy than most people during my fall and summer work. We felt like we had prepared extremely well heading into this spring. So in a lot of ways we didn’t get what we needed, but we are prepared to make five rounds. It’s different having five rounds but we feel really good about this draft.”
Shirley, on a conference call with media, touched on a number of subjects:
Q. How do you make up for not much scouting?
“I’ve got great at Zoom calls. We have been in Zoom meetings probably seven hours per day for the last three weeks. We have a video service by the name of Synergy that we’ve used extremely well. Synergy gives us the capacity to look at every college game that has been played over the last three cycles. That’s ‘18, ‘19, ‘20. So for college players you’re able to go back and watch a college player get through that playing activity, all the way through his college career. The high school players are a little bit different ... but we’ve spent so much of our summer last year on the high school player. For the most part, I want to say about 60-65% of the high school players, maybe a little bit more, we did actually see play this spring, especially in the warmer climates of Florida and California and Texas.”
Q. Do you feel for those kids who won’t get drafted due to the new setup?
A. I feel terrible for this 2020 high school baseball class. There’s so many kids who got their season taken away from them and it’s really sad. ... there are high school players that are clearly in our mix that we’ve been able to evaluate, interview, and get to know and feel comfortable with where we have them. This is the most access we have had to college players since I’ve been scouting. With the shutdown, these kids are off campus, they’re not playing. In terms of doing the deep dives on the individual player and his makeup, we’ve had more access to the college player than we’ve ever had.”
Q. The challenge of only five rounds
A. Obviously, you want to get five right. The thing that’s most interesting about this draft is it’s a deep draft. You feel good about the selections you’re going to get. It’s a heavy pitching draft and it’s a depth of college pitching draft. And there are high school pitchers that we really like. So the bulk of what we think the depth of this thing will be in five rounds, the pitching is definitely out front and we’ve just worked our tails off to make sure we have our board up to pick 142 because that’s where our fifth-round selection is. We are prepared for any scenario that rolls off the board.
Q. Will you take the best player available or address a need?
A. I think we’ve looked at this thing from every angle possible. We are down to 15 players that we like (for our first pick at 11). We have those players in order and we are ready to target and strike those players. We targeted about 24 players when spring training was still going on and we’ve narrowed that down to about 15 players that we do like.”
Q. Undrafted players, who had been eligible to earn as much as $125,000 in signing bonuses, are now limited to $20,000 bonuses. How do you approach targeting those players?
A. We’re all trying to wade through that. We’re prepared for this scenario — what does the player want to do for himself? Obviously, the NCAA ruled that these college players are going to be given their eligibility back, you have an incoming class of freshmen, you have a lot of high-profile programs that are going to have a deep inventory of players available to them. I think the college player himself who could be caught in this situation, they’re still figuring out what’s best for them. We have a list of players we’ve been active with that we hope after the draft is over, if they’re available and they want to sign, we hope they want to be White Sox.
Q. White Sox have done a lot with above slot offers for late round picks. How does not having that avenue restrict your strategy?
A. We feel like it’s a deep draft. We feel like the college pitching, the high school pitching, the pitching portion of this draft will allow us to be heavily involved with players that we like. And there are some position players we really like as well. So the targets you like from the offensive standpoint added to the pitching depth makes us feel good about the five selections we’re going to get. And some of the 20K guys. We’re in a scenario that’s never been presented, we have no playbook for it.
Q. Will the picks be yours to make or a group effort?
A. I work for a team and that’s what I always wanted to work for. I’m a team guy and we’re all working hard at this. [General manager] Rick [Hahn] ... is not putting constraints on me. Obviously as we move from June 2 to 10 the teeth of this starts to tighten a little. We have 15 targets and at the end of the day based on who I think is going to be gone do I think it’s down to four or five players. We’re excited about all four or five. They come from all aspects of the draft. High school, college, pitcher, hitter. We’re looking to get our bus moving in the right direction or continue moving in the direction we’re all excited about. We’re excited about where the White Sox are. There is so much exhilaration about where this organization is and to continue to add to this and make this thing right.
Q. What are the logistics going to be like as far as communication, etc. on draft day?
A. MLB is still finalizing it. There’s a chance there will be a small group of us, very small — less than five — in Chicago but there is a great chance this thing could be totally remote. The Zoom thing everybody is so comfortable with that platform now, we’ll probably have three Zoom calls going keeping people connected to this process. We generally meet with a group of 20 to 30 of us in the draft room up there. We’ll have to handle this delicately but we’re prepared. We’ve done a great job getting the entire staff comfortable with it.
Q. Thoughts on projected first round shortstop Ed Howard of Mount Carmel?
A. Ed Howard has been tremendous. We feel like we have a great relationship with that kid and he has been nothing but a tremendous citizen and someone Chicago should be very proud of. He set himself apart last summer. We’ve been scouting that guy for a while now. So, I think what he’s done for himself personally is only going to make himself valuable regardless if you had a chance to see him or not. But don’t forget Ed Howard was a substantial of this 2020 Draft with what he had done in his past because he’s been a good player. You got a chance to see that at 12 [with Jackie Robinson West Little League team]. You know what this kid looks like. You know what he’s capable of doing. He’s done well for himself. I like Ed Howard, the kid, a lot. I like his family. I wish him the best. I really do. He’s a player we continue to talk about. We like Ed Howard.
