Draft day

Are you going to watch the draft tomorrow on ESPN2?


I know people love the NFL Draft (I'm not one of them), but the baseball draft is really inside stuff.


I talked the Reds scouting director today. They like the high school third baseman from Houston, Kevin Ahrens. But, when you pick 15th, someone they like better could fall to them. Chris Buckley, the Reds' scouting guy, doesn't have a strong high school vs. college leaning, although the three top picks last year were all college payers.


Here's a draft story from the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel that says a lot about why where the Reds are where they are:

By Mike Berardino
Staff writer
He was going to be a Red.

Derek Jeter was sure of that.

That's what the scouts were telling him. That's what he kept hearing onthe eve of the 1992 baseball draft.

"I was supposed to go to Cincinnati," Jeter says, 13 seasons into a Hall of Fame career.

Then along came draft day, and with the fifth overall pick the Redsinexplicably switched gears. They took Fort Lauderdale's Chad Mottola, a power-hitting outfielder from St. Thomas Aquinas High and the University of Central Florida.

Picking one spot later, the rebuilding Yankees quickly snatched upJeter, the spindly high school shortstop from Kalamazoo, Mich., and therest is history. "Chad probably did me a favor," Jeter says. "I would have been stuckbehind Barry Larkin for a long time. I thank Chad."

While Jeter has won four World Series rings with the Yankees, Mottolahas bounced around to eight different organizations, including a briefstint with the Marlins in 2001.

Still playing at age 35, Mottola is primarily a designated hitter with Triple-A Syracuse in the Blue Jays' system. His career major league totals: 59 games, 25 hits, four homers and a. 200 batting average.