No Surprise: Strasburg Goes First, Now Draft Begins
DOWNTOWN — A draft that will have several turns and maybe a few plot twists by the time the St. Louis Cardinals pick at No. 19 began with the most predictable pick in years: Washington takes Stephen Strasburg first overall and will now apply for a federal bailout to sign the tremendous righthander.
Last year the Nationals took Aaron Crow with first their pick, and couldn’t sign him.
Crow, a former Mizzou All-American, is only one of many wild cards in this draft. Dustin Ackley, a first baseman/center fielder from North Carolina, is the best college position player available in the draft and he went second overall to Seattle. That ends the easy calls. Keith Law is reporting that Pittsburgh already has a deal in place with Boston College catcher Tony Sanchez if they take him at No. 4. So the draft starts to veer around the map from there.
The Cardinals have eyes for high school lefty Matthew Purke (Klein HS, Spring, Texas) and outfielder Randal Grichuk (Rosenberg, Texas) among others mentioned in the blog yesterday, like Rex Brothers (Lipscomb).
We’re stationed at Busch Stadium and will be live blogging through tonight’s draft here at Bird Land.
-30-
Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
Why shouldn’t the Cards take the Henry Ford approach to drafting? Take the best player available that throws left-handed and starts games. Don’t they already have too many players not playing their best position and holes that can’t seem to be filled?
I’m really hoping Crow will fall. Probably not, but he would quiet a lot of people. We need to develop the pitching, I’m all for high-risk, high-reward at this point