{"id":5232,"date":"2011-10-24T11:23:24","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T16:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/?p=5232"},"modified":"2011-10-24T11:23:24","modified_gmt":"2011-10-24T16:23:24","slug":"2012-mlb-draft-preview-kenny-diekroeger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/archives\/5232","title":{"rendered":"2012 MLB Draft Preview: Kenny Diekroeger"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With the fall baseball season in full swing nationwide and the WWBA championships coming to a close in Jupiter, FL, it seems fitting to discuss a prospect who perhaps has the most to gain or lose out of anyone in the months leading up to the June draft.\u00a0 Stanford SS Kenny Diekroeger is arguably the best athlete in this year\u2019s college crop.\u00a0 He is basically a 60 across the board player in the \u201cathlete\u201d tools as well as with the glove.\u00a0 He has all of the tools necessary to be a key up-the-middle contributor with a very good chance to be average at short or plus at second.\u00a0 Diekroeger will have three years at Stanford under his belt come June and that combination of tools and experience should mean a very high selection in the draft, right?\u00a0 Not necessarily.<\/p>\n

Diekroeger posted a .293\/.364\/.356 slash line for the Cardinal in 2011 after .356\/.392\/.491 line as a freshman.\u00a0 Many have used the new bat regulations to explain this drop in production.\u00a0 I think there is more to it.\u00a0 Kenny\u2019s bat speed is easily at least plus, but he creates very little loft with his swing mechanics and produces entirely too many GB\u2019s because his hands drop as he loads.\u00a0 For most belt-high pitches and above (easily within the NCAA strike-zone) Kenny is a below-the-ball hitter.\u00a0 This is not necessarily an easy fix, and it could be a problem that he will fight the rest of his days on the diamond.\u00a0 It\u2019s not necessarily as though he will ever be a bad hitter with his current mechanics, but he cannot be elite with them either, and with a frame as large as the one he currently has, sliding to third or the outfield is a real possibility.\u00a0 An average or below hit tool on a 60 runner is not a first round player in many organizations\u2019 opinions, and Diekroeger has potentially millions to gain from improved bat track and mechanics this year.<\/p>\n

Diekroeger fails to transfer all of his weight and tends to close his lower half off as well.\u00a0 This is usually an easier fix than the bat track issues, but is much tougher to do when also attempting to correct upper body flaws.<\/p>\n

The PAC-12 is loaded with strong pitching this season, and Diekroeger will be able to prove (or not prove) that he is deserving of the top-10 talk that he was receiving after his freshman year as opposed to the late first round or early compensation round talk that he began receiving after his numbers softened up in 2011.\u00a0 Diekroeger might very well be the second infielder off of the board in 2012 behind ASU SS Deven Marrero, but he also could end up falling behind several prep kids too like Gavin Cecchini.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/center><\/p>\n

<\/object><\/center>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the fall baseball season in full swing nationwide and the WWBA championships coming to a close in Jupiter, FL, it seems fitting to discuss a prospect who perhaps has the most to gain or lose out of anyone in the months leading up to the June draft.\u00a0 Stanford SS Kenny Diekroeger is arguably the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2830,15,1300,6,9,11,13,10,14],"tags":[2610,2832,2833,2340,719,446,2831],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5232"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5232"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5242,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5232\/revisions\/5242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}