summer wrap: we hardly knew ye

I know it’s officially autumn, but I feel that the summer has not been sufficiently wrapped. Two more installments before we can put a bow on it. Here’s the first. The next one will be up sooner rather than later, and then it’ll be on to a few months of randomness before some rosters pop up. Then we can officially start dreaming about next summer.

The 2008 draft was a banner one for the Cape League. Five of the top 10 picks were on the Cape less than a year before, many of them, like Aaron Crow and Jason Castro, emerging then as true stars.

When the 2009 draft rolls around, there may be even more Cape League fingerprints.

But they’re not going to be quite as bold.

It’s early to talk about the draft, and a lot will change between now and then, but some early previews are coming out, with the same names popping up in almost all of them.

They’re familiar names to Cape League fans, but in an interesting revelation about the summer of ’08, they’re not as familiar as names like Crow, Castro, Beckham and Posey.

Take the top 30 prospects list at Breaking Bats. There are 14 college players on the list, and 10 of them played in the Cape League. But only three of them played on the Cape this summer.

Take the mock draft at mymlbdraft.com. Six of the top 10 are former Cape Leaguers, a number that would surpass the 2008 draft. But of those six, only two played on the Cape in 2008, and one of them, Dustin Ackley, played only briefly. That leaves just Grant Green.

I guess the point is that while the Cape League will be as prominent as ever come June, it’s going to feel a little bit different. The current favorite to be the No. 1 pick, Stephen Strasburg, played in the NECBL after his freshman year, then opted for Team USA this summer. Several of the other top pitchers, like Alex White, Andy Oliver and Kyle Gibson all shined on the Cape in 2007, but White sat out the summer of ’08 while Oliver and Gibson pitched for Team USA.

In the prism of looking back at the Cape League summer, this means we were watching a talented crop of players, but a crop that may have been in a different stage than normal. There were more drafted college players than I can ever remember, and at the other end of the spectrum, there was a pretty strong freshman class headed by Brandon Workman and D.J. LeMahieu. In the middle were the sophomores, the ones who will be draft eligible in June. Judging from the way things are shaking out right now, they’re not as strong a class as the one we saw last year. Because one player’s talent level reflects another’s, I always find it tough to guage, but prospect lists and these early looks at the draft seem to reflect the same idea.

Is it some kind of trend? Maybe. It’ll be worth keeping an eye on the summer destinations of some of the league’s top freshmen. If a lot of them end up with Team USA next year, then we may see the trend continue.

But more likely, it was simply the way things went, and while it meant that we didn’t see quite as much of a draft class this summer, that’s not going to matter in June. When those Cape Leaguers get their names called, I’ll be excited, even if they’re not our most recent boys of summer.

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