Mariners draft: Who might be coming to Everett?

Let’s get a little local.

We’re in the midst of Major League Baseball’s amateur draft, with the first two days and 10 rounds into the books. And the draft is a big event for the city of Everett as it will have a profound impact on who plays for the AquaSox this summer.

This year it’s harder to predict who from the draft may end up playing in Everett. Typically, college players have a good chance at starting out at Everett, as the short-season single-A Northwest League gets underway shortly after the draft concludes. Opening day this year is next Friday. However, the Mariners have a new general manager (Jerry Dipoto) and new farm director (Andy McKay) this year, so we don’t have any historical data on how they plan to assign their top draft picks.

Seattle’s previous two general managers, Bill Bavasi and Jack Zduriencik, had different approaches to assigning draft picks, particularly with their first-round selections. Bavasi rarely had a first rounder appear in Everett. If the player was from college he usually started out at a higher level than the Northwest League. If he was a high school player he’d start out at rookie ball, then skip over the Northwest League the next season. I think during the Bavasi years the longest a first rounder ever spent in Everett was four days.

But things were different under Zduriencik. Zduriencik, if he picked a college player in the first round, would usually start him in Everett and leave him there for a significant amount of time. That’s how we got the Mike Zunino show for a month in 2012, then saw an outstanding month from D.J. Peterson the following year. Even a high school player like 2014 first rounder Alex Jackson got time in Everett, spending all of last season with the Sox.

So what will the plan be with this year’s first rounder, Kyle Lewis? We don’t know yet, but we can be hopeful Dipoto and McKay will start him out in Everett, too. By most accounts the Mariners got quite the steal when Lewis, an outfielder from Mercer University, fell to them at No. 11. Lewis has size (6-foot-4, 205 pounds), power (20 homers in 61 games), discipline (66 walks), and he batted .395. While there’s some doubts about the level of competition he faced at Mercer, he also was a standout in the Cape Cod League, which assuages some of those concerns. It’s also questionable whether he sticks in center field, but his bat profiles just fine at a corner spot. He was third in MLB.com’s top 200 draft rankings and fourth in Baseball America’s top 500.

With any luck we’ll get the first look at Lewis this summer with the Sox.

Indeed, we might get a look at almost all of Seattle’s top picks this summer. Among the first 10 players the Mariners selected, nine of them were drafted out of college. Last year seven of Seattle’s top 10 picks were college players, and all seven spent the entire summer in Everett.

So here’s the college players selected by the Mariners in the first 10 rounds who we may start seeing in Everett in a week (includes position, college, Baseball America rank, MLB.com rank):

First round (11th overall): Kyle Lewis, OF, Mercer, 4, 3

Third round (87th overall): Bryson Brigman, SS, San Diego, 79, 64

Fourth round (117th overall): Thomas Burrows, LHP, Alabama, 253, 129

Fifth round (147th overall): Donovan Walton, SS, Oklahoma State, NR, NR

Sixth round (177th overall): Brandon Miller, RHP, Millersville, 328, 188

Seventh round (207th overall): Matt Festa, RHP, East Stroudsburg, NR, NR

Eighth round (237th overall): Nick Zammarelli, 3B, Elon, NR, NR

Ninth round (267th overall): Jason Goldstein, C, Illinois, NR, NR

Tenth round (297th overall): David Greer, 3B, Arizona State, 274, NR

Walton, Festa and Goldstein are seniors, so they were likely taken because they’ll sign for under slot, thus freeing up more money to sign the earlier picks. But as pitcher Ryan Yarbrough proved two years ago, just because a player was selected mainly because he was cheap doesn’t mean he can’t become a legitimate prospect.

The one high schooler the Mariners took in the first 10 rounds was third baseman Joe Rizzo, taken in the second round (50th overall). Rizzo was ranked 40th by both MLB.com and Baseball America. He’s someone who, if he signs with the Mariners, would be more likely to play for Everett in 2017.