Nationals Farm Authority

For a frame of reference, here are the 27 unsigned players from the Nationals 2009 draft (I’ve excluded 19th rd RHP Frank Corolla). I’ve also taken advantage of Baseball America’s latest bit of intel with the advisers for the first ten rounds:

Batters	Level	Rd	School	Adviser
Perez, Roberto SS	HS	8	Oklahoma St	MDR Sports Mgmt (Melvin Roman)
Davis, Corey 1B	HS	15	Florida CC at Jax
Stroman, Marcus SS	HS	18	Duke
De Santiago, Nicholas CA	HS	33	Texas
Morris, Jacob OF	HS	35	Arizona State
Elander, Joshua CA	HS	37	Texas Christian
Opel, Dane OF	HS	41	Missouri
Rattarree, Michael SS	HS	45	Rice
Rudolph, Darius 2B	JUCO	47	Snead St (AL)
Dygert, Zachary CA	COL jr	48	Ball St
Sermo, Jose OF	HS	49	UNKNOWN
Hines, Alvin OF	HS	50	Samford (FB)

Pitchers	Level	Rd	School	Adviser
Strasburg, Stephen RHP	COL jr	1	San Diego St	Scott Boras Corp. (Scott Boras)
Morris, A.J. RHP	COL jr	4	Kansas St	Hendricks Brothers (Matt Laird)
Pena, Miguel LHP	HS	5	San Jacinto JuCo	Icon (Rob Martin)
Weaver, Dean RHP	COL jr	7	Georgia	Career Sports (Victor Menocal)
Applebee, Paul LHP	COL jr	10	Cal-Riverside	None
Karns, Nathan RHP	COL jr	12	Texas Tech
Ridings, Matt RHP	COL jr	25	Western Kentucky
Miller, Joshua LHP	HS	36	UNKNOWN
Manno, Christopher LHP	COL jr	38	Duke
Martin, Kyle RHP	HS	39	Texas A&M
Hughes, Joseph RHP	HS	40	East Carolina
Cropper, Daniel RHP	COL jr	42	UNC Wilmington
Walla, Cohl RHP	HS	43	Texas
Milner, Hoby LHP	HS	44	Texas
Greene, Seth RHP	HS	46	VMI

As you can easily see, high schoolers comprise the largest population of total unsigned players (17 of them). From the bats, only two of the twelve unsigned picks are from either JuCo (Rudolph) or college (Dygert). However, from the pitching side eight of the unsigned players are from college (all juniors) while seven are from high school. For the high schoolers, I’ve also tried to identify their college of choice, missing information on only Sermo & Miller.

If I were to hazard a guess, I’d imagine we will see the Nationals sign six of the outstanding college arms with the possible exceptions of 38th rd pick Chris Manno and 42nd rd pick Dan Cropper who might opt to return to college for their senior seasons. I’m still puzzled with the lone JuCo guy has not signed but it’s a later round pick and would seem to be organizational depth if they got him signed.

As for the high schoolers, it would seem that the Nationals should be able to get 5th rd pick Miguel Pena and 15th rd pick Corey Davis signed out of their JuCo/CC commitments. I’d hope they make every effort to buy 8th rd pick Roberto Perez out of his commitment to Oklahoma State, but after that, the Nationals enter a waiting game with the nice-to-have guys, most of have commitments to strong college programs (Arizona State, Texas, Texas A&M, and Rice to name a few).