This story was excerpted from Christina De Nicola's Marlins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
ARLINGTON -- It’s time for the Marlins’ new director of amateur scouting Frankie Piliere to step to the plate at tonight’s MLB Draft.
When is it?
Day 1 begins at 7 ET tonight, airing live on MLB Network, ESPN and MLB’s digital platforms. Every pick on Monday (Day 2) and Tuesday (Day 3) can be seen starting at 2 p.m. ET on MLB.TV, MLB.com and the MLB app.
When are their first picks?
The Marlins will have three picks on Day 1: 16th overall (Round 1), 56th (Round 2) and 70th (Competitive Balance Round B).
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How much do they have to spend?
Miami’s bonus pool is $10,438,500. The assigned slot value of the club's first pick is $4,704,700. MLB Pipeline’s most recent mock Draft predicts the organization will choose Florida State third baseman Cam Smith (No. 14 Draft prospect) with its first pick.
Piliere spoke with MLB.com to discuss his thoughts on the Draft.
What do you hope to accomplish in this Draft?
I think above all, to deepen the system. I feel pretty good that this is a deep Draft class. There's a lot of talent here. Everyone likes to say Draft classes are weak or strong. They're usually just talking about the top. There's a lot of opportunities deep in the Draft to really add some depth to our system, and I think that's really the goal is to strengthen our system in any way possible.
Can you still get impact players at the big league level in this Draft?
Absolutely. Especially at the top, when you're in the Top 100 picks of the Draft, and honestly, even deeper than that, you can stumble into it. But if you keep taking quality players that you believe in, this is something [president of baseball operations] Peter [Bendix] and I have talked about a lot. There's upside in more types of players than I think people realize. You go back to there are players that are taken in the fifth, sixth round that end up being three-win players in the big leagues. It comes from everywhere. And if you keep taking quality, especially at the top of the Draft, and you stick to a process, you get upside.
What’s the dynamic of this Draft?
I think the strength is definitely the college crop, particularly the bats. We're going to see a lot of college bats go off the board early is my guess. It's mainly, one: that it's strong; but two, the high school crop at the top is a little bit different this year. It's not quite as many layups that are going to go in the Top 10. So that creates just a little ripple effect of people running towards the college crop, and it's a good group. There's a lot of talent there.
What are some of the things you’ll take into consideration for a pick?
All the facets you could possibly think of. It's performance, getting to know the player, a lot of player looks, scouting reports on these guys. We spent a lot of time, and it takes over the course of years, really. …
For somebody we're considering in the first round, that's five, six, seven different looks if we can get on the player. We're trying to build an aggregate of an opinion. It's not just one person who goes in and says, “This guy's good.” We're trying to pull as many different points of expertise as we can, whether that’s scouts going to the ballpark, analytical voices or just getting to know the player, because that could be an important part of the process of their development journey also. So we're using everything at our disposal.
Is there a type of hitter or pitcher you’re looking for?
Especially at the top of the Draft, we're looking at players who can make an impact at the end of the day -- whether that's somebody who hits the ball really hard or whether that's somebody who makes a lot of contact. For a pitcher, that can really come in any form, and that's something we've really harped on a lot is we won't have a type. We will take the most impactful player and the person who we think is going to make the biggest impact on the Marlins.
How important is it to set the tone with this first Draft?
We spend all our spring and summer prior collecting information. Then we kind of shift into decision-making mode, and really set the tone for how we want to have these discussions and how we want to order players. I think it will be really important in this first year, because our information is good, we’ve done a thorough job, and then you've got to get it over the finish line and talk about players in the right way. Because you can make mistakes at the end if you let momentum and emotion get the best of you.
I might feel strongly about a player. In thinking about a player, I'll often think of, “What's the worst-case scenario? What's the best-case scenario? And what's sort of the mean of what could happen here? But what are the things we are sure of? Are we sure he's going to be at least this good of a hitter? On the top end, what could he be?” It's not as simple as just putting one in the middle of the page. It's kind of considering the bandwidth of outcomes.