The Sharp & The Fish: Round Two
A series where we pick out the best and worst picks in each round
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Round Two Options
Here’s ADP ranks 16-30, this is what we’re calling “round two”.
SHARP: Kyle Tucker
If you could have handpicked the best landing spot for him to most boost his fantasy value, I think you’d have gone for the Dodgers. It’s not Coors Field, but it’s a hitter’s park, and the elite lineup around him just poor on counting stats and fantasy value.
It’s going to be a massive year for Kyle Tucker. I’m not sure how long he’ll last as a second-rounder, but the most recent draft I’ve seen (after the signing), he went 15th. So he’s still going to bleed into the second round, at least into the first couple of picks of it. And I’d be hopping all over that. That’s a first-round player in the second round.
FISH: Nick Kurtz
Maybe you thought I’d go with Cal Raleigh on the grounds that picking him in the second round would be a violation of Commandment #8. But no, I’m much more personally offended by the person rocking the Nick Kurtz pick in round two.
But both are fish picks for similar reasons. With Raleigh, it’s the ultimate buy-high. It’s the buy-highiest buy-high I’ve ever seen. There’s a much too high chance of a 35-homer, .225 batting average season with five steals for me to take him in the second round, even if he is the clearly runaway best option at the position.
Let’s get to Kurtz, though. The true fish pick. The kid had a .419 wOBA last year. That was the 27th-best wOBA of the last ten MLB seasons. And that’s a good thing, shout out to Nick Kurtz - good job, man!
I think you know what I’m going to say next, THE STRIKEOUT RATE! I looked at this 2015-2025 data (ten seasons because nobody qualified in 2020) to find the list of players who went for a .400+ wOBA with a 30%+ strikeout rate. There were two hits. Two! 2017 Aaron Judge and 2025 Nick Kurtz.
Is Nick Kurtz as good as Aaron Judge? I think it would be silly to say that, less than 500 PAs into his career. And even if he is, Judge’s other two wOBAs in his high strikeout rate days were .391 and .380. So even in the best-case scenario, we’d expect a potential 40-point drop in his wOBA.
Could he drop the K%? Yes! Judge did it, and typically we see pretty steady improvement in K% from these phenom prospects as they get a couple of years into their career. I just think it’s unlikely to get down into the mid-20s this year. It could happen, but my guess would be a 28-31% K% for Kurtz this year.
And there’s one other issue: he was really bad against lefties. In 153 PAs:
→ .197/.261/.423, .685 OPS, 35.3% K%, 7.8% BB%, 83 wRC+
The league is onto him now. He’s clearly the main guy to focus on in the A’s lineup, so I think opponents will go out of their way to have him face a lefty or two in every game.
Again, we can project and expect improvements in strikeout rate and against lefties, but he has a long ways to go before I think he’s ready to be a top-30 draft pick.