Before I launch into players the Mariners may look at, let me remind you that the draft can be extremely unpredictable. The stock of these high school and college baseball players, many of whom are still teenagers, can rise and fall quickly over the course of their spring baseball seasons.

Last year at this time, it was generally agreed that the first overall pick would be Stanford pitcher Mark Appel and the second pick would be high school pitcher Lucas Giolito. However, inconsistency from Appel coupled with questions in signability led to him falling to eighth in the draft and he subsequently decided go back to college instead of signing. Giolito hurt his UCL in high school and fell to sixteenth overall. There is a propensity for this kind of volatility in every year of the draft. (more…)