1st Pick - 16th Overall - RHP - Hayden Simpson

223. Hayden Simpson:


4-2 from: - http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/draft/?p=2050 - Hayden Simpson, rhp, Southern Arkansas - "He's putting together about as good of a college career as you can. I think he's 28-1 or 29-1 in college now. I'm not sure what year he lost a game, I know it wasn't this one. I haven't seen him a second time, but I saw his first start of the year and. . . they left him in a little longer than you'd like to see—I think he threw 115 pitches in his first start—but he was sitting 92-94 and touching 96 for the first couple innings. It fell off a little bit but he can spin a curveball too. He's not a big guy—I would say he's about 5-11, 175—but he's got a good arm and his numbers are backing it up. His delivery gets out of whack every once in a while and he struggles throwing strikes, but he can usually put it back together. His stuff is just overpowering at that level. I think he's striking out 13 or 14 per nine and guys aren't making solid contact off of him at all. I think he's a bullpen guy. That first outing, he fell back down to 90-92 late in the game. He never dipped below 90 on my gun and he reached back a couple times when he saw the finish line. I know his second start of the year, his velocity did fall a little bit—I think he was 88-93, working much more with an average fastball, so I'm interested to see him when I get back in there a second time and see how he's holding up over the course of the year. I heard last year he finished the season as strong as he started it, but it seems this year there's a little bit more variation in the velocity."