re: after losing so many to the MLB draft, what about next year?

The biggest losses are Katz, Jones and the bullpen. Rhymes is definitely a loss, but I feel we wont see much of a drop off there with the OF we are bringing in and the currently experienced guys as well. Eades is also definitely a loss, but like with Rhymes I think with who we have returning and possibly even a new guy can replace him fairly well.

With Katz we lose by far our big power threat. Im not sure we will have a guy hit double digit home runs next season losing him and Jones. The obvious threat there is Bregman, but I dont know if he will hit 10+ (very well could, very well could come up with 8 or 9 too). Jones also falls into the category of slick defense, that's going to be really tough to replace.

As far as the bullpen goes, we lose Cotton (44.0 IP), Bourgeois (32.0 IP), Bonvillian (45.2 IP), Berry (16.2 IP) and likely JR. draftees LaMarche (26.1 IP) and Rumbelow (31.2 IP). That's damn near the entire bullpen we typically use. This is by far going to be the toughest thing to try and replace and honestly, I definitely see a dropoff there next season. We're going to be relying on a lot of younger names next year more than likely.

As far as the draftees, Ibarra is coming back and there's a decent chance Ross does too. Katz, Rhymes and Cotton were gone either way being seniors. Eades, Jones, LaMarche and Rumbelow simply got drafted too high to stay IMO.

We got extremely fortunate with our recruiting class in the draft and should only lose Justin Williams and David Palladino when it could have been much, much worse (Nick Longhi, Jared Poche, and almost a handful of other names that were slated to be drafted in signable spots).

The worst part about this offseason will simply be trimming the roster down to size. Something we do every year, but with losing possibly less than expected to the MLB draft in our recruiting class, the lowest guys will likely be asked to go to Eunice or another JUCO.