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A Look at the Marlins 2012 Draft

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Well, with the minor league baseball season over for about a week, there isn’t much for me to talk about as the minor league baseball writer. So I decided to do a piece about the Marlins top picks in this past draft. The Marlins top 5 picks in the draft were Andrew Heaney, Avery Romero, Kolby Copeland, Austin Dean, and Anthony Gomez.

Andrew Heaney is a starting pitcher out of Oklahoma State University. He was drafted in the first round with the 9th overall pick.In 15 starts in his last season at college, Heaney was 8-2 with a 1.60 ERA. He had six complete games, including three shutouts, and 140 strikeouts in 118.1 innings. His opponents batting average against was .180 as he was named a Golden Spikes Award semifinalist. (The award is given to the best non-professional baseball player, High School or College). Between rookie league and low class A with the Marlins organization this year, he was 1-2 with a 4.33 ERA, with an average of 10 strikeouts per 9 innings.

Avery Romero is a shortstop, drafted in the 3rd round out of Menendez High School, St. Augustine, Florida. ESPN gave him a scout grade of 86, and ranked him 67th in the ESPN100. He hit .246 this year between the Gulf-Coast League (rookie league) and New York Penn League (short season). This included a .381 average in 7 games for the Jamestown Jammers.

Kolby Copeland is a left handed hitting center fielder who was drafted in between the 3rd and 4th rounds (for those who don’t know, there are sandwich picks between some rounds in the MLB draft). Out of Parkway HS, Bossier City, Louisiana he was taken with the 127th overall pick. The 3rd ranked player in the state of Louisiana, Copeland hit .280 this year between the Gulf Coast Marlins and Jamestown Jammers.

Austin Dean is another outfielder from Klein Collins HS, Spring, Texas. The Marlins used the 137th overall pick in the 4th round to take him. He hit .387 as a highschool senior. This year with the GCL Marlins, he hit .223 with 2 homers and 15 RBI in 47 games.

Anthony Gomez is a shortstop that the Marlins used a 6th round pick, 197th overall to draft. He attended Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, which is known for its strong baseball program. He had the 4th most hits in school history. In his last year at Vandy, he hit .353 with 57 RBI in 63 games with a .404 on base percentage. In Jamestown he hit .269 with 2 big flies and 28 RBI to go with 6 stolen bases in 51 games. He was later promoted to Greensboro.

Later round player to watch: Nick Wittgren. Nick Wittgren is a pitcher drafted out of Purdue University. He was taken in the 9th round, 287th overall by the Marlins. He is Purdue’s all-time saves leader, and led the Big Ten conference in saves for 2 straight years, becoming the first pitcher in program history with two seasons of 10 or more saves (the college season is much shorter). His favorite athlete is Justin Verlander, and he is mowing down hitters just like his idol. In Jamestown this past year, he had a remarkable 1.46 ERA with 11 saves. He gave up less hits than innings pitched, and had a 34 to 4 strikeout to walk rate in 24 innings. That is 12.41 strikeouts per 9 innings. He was promoted to Greensboro later in the year where he continued to dominate with 13 strikeouts to just 1 walk in 6 innings, recording 2 saves. This could turn out to be a great late pick.

Overall, Heaney and Wittgren looked great, and Copeland looked pretty good. The other guys appear to need a little work however.