With the team’s final pick of the opening night of the MLB Draft, the Minnesota Twins selected catcher Ryan Jeffers from UNC-Wilmington. Jeffers, a junior, has hit an insane .320/.472/.660 in his three-year career, including more than half of his hits (52.6 percent) going for extra bases.
Jeffers was not listed in MLB.com’s top-200 draft-eligible prospects list, and was No. 295 on the list compiled by Baseball America.
The guys at BA remarked about his consistent numbers, but aren’t sure about his ability to stick behind the plate due to an average arm back there. He’s not much of a runner and there’s a question of how his bat will transfer over to using wood full-time.
Those questions seem to be centered around the fact that Jeffers hit just .218/.333/.391 for the Wilmington Sharks in the Coastal Plain League in the summer of 2016, and just .248/.368/.333 for the Upper Valley Nighthawks of the New England Collegiate League last summer.
Johnson said with the way aluminum bats are nowadays, they don’t worry too much about wood-bat league numbers.
“Today’s aluminum bat in the college game is different than a long time ago,” Johnson said. “The minus-5 era that I played in (was one) where everybody had power. These bats are pretty close to the wood bat now. It has been equalized to a degree.
“We like to see some summer performance. A lot of guys have had great summers in the Cape that didn’t turn out to be great players. We kind of hang on to our visuals of the evaluations, bat speed, other things beyond stats. I think you are looking more for plate discipline and some of those statistics more than gauging raw power. Going back to your question, they play about the same.”
It’s very possible this is a pick to save some pool money, as the Twins came into the draft with the fifth-lowest amount of money to spend on the top-10 rounds ($5.9332 million).
Jeffers is a graduate of Sanderson High School in Raleigh, N.C. where he was a three-time All-Conference selection. He was named to this year’s Greenville All-Regional team, and he has also seen time at DH and in the outfield in college.
“We thought he was one of the better catchers left on the board,” Twins scouting director Sean Johnson said. “(We got) a lot of (Mitch) Garver comps. Reminds us of him as the same stage. A big physical catcher.
“We liked a lot of his pitching metrics that we had on him and his ability to catch and throw. A borderline 6 arm, plus arm. He’s had a nice offensive career there at UNC-Wilmington. Obviously, it addresses a need in our system. That wasn’t the goal going into it. It just worked out that way. Great makeup. (There’s a) lot to like there.”
Johnson also added that they’ve heard good things about Jeffers’ ability to frame/receive pitches.
Here’s some info on Jeffers from Eric Longenhagen, the resident draft guru at Fangraphs and one of the draft analysts I trust most at this time of year:
Here are a couple other draft voices I hold in high regard:
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