MLB Draft 2014, Day Two: Giants load up on college bats

This morning, the Giants did not have a prospect named Samuel Coonrod. Now they do. Welcome to the second day of the 2014 MLB Draft.

After selecting Tyler Beede and Aramis Garcia with their first two picks on Thursday, the Giants went with a mix of position players and pitchers, sticking with college players with Cape Cod (read: wood bat) success, as is their wont. Here's a list of who they drafted from rounds 3 through 10 on Friday ...

3rd round: Dylan Davis, OF, Oregon State
4th round: Logan Webb, RHP, Rocklin HS
5th round: Samuel Coonrod, RHP, Southern Illinois-Carbindale
6th round: Skyler Ewing, 1B, Rice
7th round: Seth Harrison, CF, Louisiana-Lafayette
8th round: Austin Slater, CF, Stanford
9th round: Stetson Woods, RHP, Liberty HS (CA)
10th round: Mathew Gage, LHP, Siena College

... and here's as much information as I can glean from the Internet ...

Dylan Davis, OF, Oregon State

Davis apparently went to the same high school as Beaver-mate Michael Conforto, which is kind of neat. Davis was the #93 prospect according to Baseball America, who had this to say:

The 6-foot, 215-pounder would be a reliever on the mound and has a chance to be an everyday player in the Josh Willingham mold as a hitter, with right-field arm strength. He needs polish defensively and has limited range due to his below-average speed. Davis has strength to his swing and produces excellent bat speed, and his raw power helped him win the Cape Cod League home run derby in 2012.

Chris Crawford liked him better than Conforto before the season, writing:

Patience has been an issue for him, but he’s got good feel for hitting and there isn’t a lot of swing and miss in his game. He’s a good athlete with above-average speed, and should be able to handle right field at the professional level.

Keith Law had Davis at #74 on his big board, giving him possible future greats of 55 for his hitting, 60 for his power, and 70 for his arm, which is all dandy for a third-round pick. Law finished his scouting report with ...

With a chance to hit 25-to-30 homers and hit for average, however, a team is more likely to put him in the outfield with pitching as a last resort.

MLB.com:

The Cape Cod League's slugging percentage leader last summer at .567, Davis has the power and arm strength to profile as a big league right fielder. He can get home run-conscious at times, but his swing and approach are sound enough that he could hit for a solid average. Though he's a below-average runner, he covers enough ground in right field. Davis has only thrown sparingly, both at Oregon State and on the Cape, but that was an enough work to intrigue scouts with his fastball, which peaks at 97 mph and has some sink.

Logan Webb, RHP, Rocklin HS

Before MLB.com was so on top of the draft -- because the Internet sure loves a draft -- they would have video of, I don't know, 50 of the best prospects up. And it was always, always terrifying when the Giants picked someone who didn't even have a video early in the first couple rounds. He doesn't even haaaave a video, what are you doing? I wish I could remember some of them, because I'll bet they're pretty funny in retrospect.

Logan Webb, fourth-rounder, doesn't have a video. Not on MLB.com and not on YouTube. You can watch him throw a sweet touchdown against Granite Bay, but nothing with baseball that I can find. Baseball America does offer this, ranking him #214:

Webb’s fastball at times sat in the 94-96 mph range this spring, but he shouldered some heavy workloads, including a 145-pitch start followed by a relief outing three days later where he rarely got out of the 80s.

Good job, coach. I'll trust the Giants saw him early and often, and they're pretty good at finding interesting arms in these early rounds.

Samuel Coonrod, RHP, Southern Illinois-Carbindale

I mean, the hats. Think of the hats the Giants could sell. Just think of the hats, dammit. Only raccoon hats, though. Don't need to go full coon-rod hats.

Coonrod is an interesting pick, as MLB.com describes thusly:

Pro teams have been waiting to get their hands on Coonrod's live arm since he hit 98 mph as a freshman at Southern Illinois. They've also spent three years trying to figure him out, because his results haven't matched his upside.

Baseball America had him at #136, writing:

He has arm strength and arm speed, giving him one of the best fastballs in the college class, sitting in the 93-97 mph range at his best and around 92-93 for most of the spring. Coonrod shows some feel for his changeup, while his hard slider is less consistent.

His MLB.com video:

And, if you so choose, here's a guy talking about Coonrod's mechanics. I do not agree or disagree with the analysis, but figured it wasn't something you see with a lot of these picks.

Skyler Ewing, 1B, Rice

Ewing was announced as a first baseman, though he was a catcher at times with Rice. He's built kind of like Evan Gattis, and he looks like he has, if not light-tower power, then the kind of power that can reach one of the platforms on the way up to the light tower. BA had him at #168.

A team could jump up and take Ewing as high as the fourth round if it believes in his ability to catch. He’s built like a catcher at 6-foot-1, 220 pounds and has the strength to handle it, but he hasn’t played back there consistently. He caught four games early in the 2013 season before shifting to first base, where he’s an adequate defender, and had seven games behind the plate this spring.

All of these reports from BA and ESPN are just snippets because you have to pay to read the whole thing. You should pay to read the whole thing.

Here's MLB.com on Ewing:

He can crush the best of fastballs and while he still can struggle against offspeed pitches, he's making adjustments. Ewing hasn't caught regularly for the Owls, so it's hard to know whether he'll be able to stick behind the plate in pro ball.

Seth Harrison, CF, Louisiana-Lafayette

Another no-video player, Harrison didn't even make BA's top 500. Mysterious! I like it. Makes me think the Giants are smarter than everyone else. Just because regular folks don't know about Torche, that doesn't mean they aren't better than people who sell more albums. The Giants saw Harrison in a small club, and, well, you should have been there.

Harrison looks like Jesse Pinkman doing Call of Duty cosplay here. That's all I got. It's amazing how little information there is on baseball players compared to college football players.

Austin Slater, CF, Stanford

Reminder that hitters from Stanford do okay in the majors about as often as pitchers from College of San Mateo do okay in the majors, and that's only slight hyperbole. The Giants took Brian Ragira in the fourth round last year, and he's currently struggling mightily in San Jose.

Slater from MLB.com:

At the plate, he makes consistent hard contact and has good power to the gaps, though he sometimes gets himself into trouble by selling out for power. In the outfield, he gets good jumps and has a solid arm. He could be adequate in center, as a last resort or be above-average in a corner. Slater’s lack of a position may make him fly under the radar a bit, even if his ceiling is that of a productive fourth outfielder.

And from BA, where he was ranked #139 on their big board:

Slater has intriguing size and athleticism at 6-foot-2, 205 pounds with above-average speed. He played third base in summer ball the last two years in the New England and Cape Cod leagues, and could move back to the infield in pro ball, with his solid-average arm strength making third base or perhaps second base options.

Interesting! Also interesting: He was drafted by the Dodgers in 2011 but didn't sign. Let's see ... Stanford or the Dodgers ... a top-tier education and college experience, or $10,000 and the chance to get yelled at by Tommy Lasorda? Tick tock, tick, tock.

A link to his MLB.com video. If I had known the Giants were going to draft him, I would have paid more attention today when I was watching Tyler Beede labor tremendously. Maybe Beede is that good, but he just ran into Slater, who was even better. Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket.

Stetson Woods, RHP, Liberty HS (CA)

Woods is 6'8", so ... yeah, sure.

I'm in. Work your magic, Giants. That looks like the kind of pitcher who shouldn't last until #268, much less the kind of prospect who wouldn't show up on a top-500 (which he doesn't) or not have a scouting report on MLB.com (which he doesn't). But what do I know?

I know that this is funny:

But that's about it. That is literally all I know about baseball. It's probably enough.

Mathew Gage, LHP, Siena College

True story: There are two players with a first name of "Gage" in the BA top-500. I didn't even know that was a thing. But there was no Mathew Gage on the list, and there's no video or report of him on MLB.com. There is this video from his college, though, in which he describes having his mind blown by simply getting assigned to a Cape Cod team:

The delivery looks funky and low-effort, but I'm guessing he didn't exactly want to throw through a brick wall for the interview.

You'll have opinions on at least one of these players soon. You will not want the Giants to trade one of them for Alex Gordon in three years because you think they'll have too much upside. Maybe you'll be right! Welcome to the second day of the draft, where some fourth- or fifth-round Brandons can help a team win for the next several years.