MLB Draft Preview

The Major League Baseball draft is comprised of approximately 367 rounds, takes about three months to complete and only probably five percent of those drafted will ever sip the low-fat latte of The Show. Yummy. There have been superstars drafted at the top (Alex Rodriguez), in the late rounds as family favors (Mike Piazza), and busts from number one (Brien Taylor) to one thousand, but in the long, storied history of baseball there are two words that have never, EVER, been uttered at the MLB draft: Rod Barajas.

This year, the early rounds of the draft move from their previous location of "nowhere" — they were conducted via conference call — to the Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando, Fla., (Goofy!) where team representatives will smile and hope their franchise gets to pick the MLB version of Greg Oden or Kevin Durant (It appears to be David Price or Matt Wieters). This move is long overdue by MLB, even if no one really knows who's involved; the NFL Draft is ESPN's biggest program-filler event of the year, and despite the relatively low exposure of college baseball now, there's no reason the Boys at Bristol couldn't turn it into a freaking circus like it has everything else. Look at it this way: EA Sports has a college baseball video game (MVP Baseball kicked the bucket after 2005), which has got to count for something — they're the industry leader for sports games, and maybe they're helping to build a new brand to rival MLB with NCAA baseball. If it works, expect the 2007 one-day television event on ESPN2 to become a week-long clusterfuck in 10 years, with Trey Wingo telling you everything you didn't want to know about high school pitcher Doc Gooden IV's AP Chemistry scores or college standout Jason Varitek Jr.'s criminal record. Or the other way around, we're not picky.

On the bright side, it could lead more Americans to start playing baseball again.

We're not really qualified to tell you what's going on, so we'll take Deadspin's lead and hand it over to the boys at Rays Index, or you can check out the Baseball Prospectus coverage, but you'll need a subscription for most of that. We do know one thing: the rules don't allow it, but our first pick would be Rod Barajas — who signed with the D'Backs as a free agent in 1996 — just to get his name in the ledger. Try and stop us.

The MLB Draft doesn't deserve a Barajas number.