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Someone remind me, What was our reasoning on burning a first round pick on Kozma?

it's the prime example of why you should draft for value and not to fill a void at the MLB level... and the front office learned a lesson from that, see Brett Wallace and Shelby Miller. in Kozma's defense, he'll likely reach the bigs in some capacity. There's many 1st rounders out there who don't end up doing that

I'm not so sure about that...if he does, it will be an extreme Joey Cora-like utility player capacity. Dude simply can't hit.

Kyle Conley, OF, St. Louis Cardinals

Conley was drafted in the seventh round in 2009, out of the University of Washington. A big basher in college, his draft stock was hurt somewhat by mediocre defensive skills and a high strikeout rate. He murdered the ball for a month in the New York-Penn League (posting a ridiculous +80 percent OPS), but the strike zone got away from him during a two week trial in the Midwest League, granted the sample is small enough that we can't draw major conclusions just yet. Conley looks the part of a right fielder with strength and power, but scouts worry that more experienced pitchers will find the holes in his swing. I suspect that this will be an issue, though it might not get fully exposed until he reaches Double-A. Grade C.

Allen Craig, OF-1B-3B, St. Louis Cardinals
Bats: R Throws: R HT: 6-2 WT: 190 DOB: July 18, 1984

Allen Craig is the winner of the 2010 Josh Willingham This Guy Can XXXing Hit Award. Given the injuries that plagued the past two winners last year (Kellen Kulbacki and Max Ramirez), perhaps Craig might not be too happy about this, but I'm hoping the fact that Craig has never had a serious injury will help protect him. In any event, this award is presented annually to a guy who can xxxing hit, but who has positional problems and/or mediocre tools and/or no place to play with his current organization. Craig is actually not a bad athlete, but has never settled into one defensive position. The Cardinals decided last year that he's not going to be adequate at third base, so he played mostly left field last year in Triple-A and did OK. He doesn't have great speed or arm strength, but he catches what he gets to. His best position is probably first base, but barring a catastrophe for Albert Pujols that isn't going to help Craig in St. Louis. Wherever they find room for him, Craig should produce offensively. He's not a walk machine, but he does work counts decently and makes contact, keeping his strikeout rates reasonably low for a power hitter. He has power to all fields, makes adjustments from at-bat to at-bat, and has proven he can hit for average against high level pitching. MLEs have never especially liked him, but having seen him play both in college, Double-A, and Triple-A, I think the MLEs under-sell his bat. If given proper adjustment time, I think he can hit .280-.300 at his peak, with 20-25 homer power. I don't know what the Cardinals are going to do with him, but I like him. Grade B-.

Maybe I don't really understand how they come to decisions about league-wide minor league rankings, but when looking at that list, the only reason I can figure they dropped us at 29 is because we don't have a prospect with an "A" grade.

RE: Kozma and can't hit...

I still think it's way too early to start making pronouncements like that about him. You have to keep in mind that he was a high school player and they're going to take 4-5 years to develop and sometimes more. The fact that he's already at AA says something, imo. We can't forget the impact that defense can have for a club as well. Ryan was a 3.2 WAR player this year with a 740 OPS at age 29. Kozma has been young for his league and very consistently posted good hitting stats his second half season through a league....

Johnson City, 07 - .264 .350 .396 .746
(played a handful of games at other stops)

QC, 08, first half -- .284 .363 .398 .760
PB, 08, second half -- .130 .231 .182 .413

PB, 09, first half -- .315 .381 .384 .765
AA, 09, second half -- .216 .288 .312 .600

He's been a player who has been aggressively promoted to be challenged and it took him half a season to settle in. We'll see what he does in AA this season, but generally speaking, he's hitting as well as Ryan was at the same levels and was a great deal younger than Ryan at those levels. We know his glove will play at the majors.

Anyway, I'm not trying to justify his draft pick, but he's getting rated wrongly across the board, imo. If he turns into a .750 OPS SS with GG quality defense you have a 3-4 WAR player... You know who else has been (roughly) a 4 win SS over his career (with a few highs and lows mixed in)? Derek Jeter.