Keith Law's (Insider-Only) Day 1 recap has a suspicious amount of love for the Astros' picks. Law, in essence, says if McCullers (a) signs and (b) is a starter, then the Astros got two of the top 10-15 players in the draft.
Luhnow is quite confident that he'll be able to sign McCullers.
Jerome Solomon gives credit to the front office for thinking big.
This new regime, which took over when Jim Crane’s purchase was approved in November, isn’t afraid to think big. It also took some big ones, thinkers that is, to draft high school pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. with the 41st pick. And it’ll take big bucks to sign him. We knew the franchise was talking big. Now we see, at least for now, it will put some action to those words. That is a needed change for this organization, which lost a franchise-record 106 games last year.
The Astros have already been in touch with McCullers:
"We're excited I got drafted and we know we have negotiations to go through and things like that. I talked to Houston very briefly and they said they would be in touch the next couple of days. Maybe they will be a little more aggressive with the negotiations because the signing deadline is a month earlier. We're just taking in right now but it's business."
Around the 20th pick last night, the Astros' draft board got beat up. Bobby Heck, on McCullers' availability:
"I think we were pleasantly surprised he was there. Our board took a beating. Once we got to the 20th or 25th pick, our board got nuked pretty good but we still had a quality guy there, so we were excited. To take a guy who arguably has an 80 fastball and a guy that has 70-80 power, it's a pretty good way to start your draft."
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
