Detroit Tigers Paired with SS Cornelius Randolph in Baseball America MLB Mock Draft
By Matt Snyder
Baseball America released their fifth MLB mock draft today, selecting high school shortstop Cornelius Randolph for the Detroit Tigers with the 22nd pick. Here’s what they have to say about the player and the selection.
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"Detroit doesn’t mind tough signs. Randolph might be one but he’s a similar player in some ways to Nick Castellanos, who has turned out nicely for the Tigers. Randolph, like Castellanos, needs defensive work to stay even at third base and may wind up in left field, but he has tremendous hitting feel and good power potential to go with it."
As always, readers are encouraged to go back and read the entire post and familiarize themselves with players being selected around the Tigers’ spot.
Castellanos is currently struggling at the plate for the Tigers in his second full season of MLB action, but, at 23 years of age, he’s still seen as a player that should develop into an above average hitter going forward.
High school players always need to spend several years in the minor leagues before they’re ready to make the jump to the majors, so, if all goes well, we should expect someone like Randolph to go through the system level by level and arrive in the major leagues in five or six seasons. For Randolph specifically, that would mean hitting the big leagues at the time Nick Castellanos hits free agency (but that’s getting way ahead of ourselves).
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It sounds like Randolph would be expected to play third base in the minor leagues even though he was a shortstop in high school (again, like Castellanos), but that’s the case for almost every major league third and second basemen.
Given their history with such selections, most mock drafts seem to link the Tigers with pitching prospects in the first round, but I like to see that B.A. has broken that mold here. Given the relative injury risks of hitters and pitchers (pitchers being much greater risks), it would be nice to see Detroit go with a position player for the second consecutive year (they selected center fielder Derek Hill in the first round in 2014).
Here’s a video of Randolph from the folks at FanGraphs.