Cubs zero in on pitching

The Chicago Cubs gave it the old college try Friday in the major-league amateur draft.

Without a pick until the third round and No. 104 overall, the Cubs went with eight players, seven college pitchers and one college catcher.

"I think it's pretty straight forward what our focus was this year," said Jason McLeod, the Cubs' senior vice president of scouting and player development. "We tried to identify pitching. We tried to identify power pitching, guys that have performed in college, guys who we think can come in and certainly make an impact on the organization, understanding where we were in the draft, where we were selecting."

With their first pick, No. 104 in the third round, the Cubs selected right-handed pitcher Tom Hatch out of Oklahoma St. University.

In Rounds 4-6, they took right-handers Tyson Miller out of California Baptist, Bailey Clark out of Duke and Chad Hockin out of Cal State Fullerton before they took catcher Michael Cruz out of Bethune-Cookman in Florida.

The Cubs finished by taking college pitchers Stephen Ridings (Haverford), Duncan Robinson (Dartmouth) and Dakota Mekkes (Michigan State).

This was a different kind of draft for the Cubs. In the previous four years, they drafted high - based on a poor major-league record - and went with position players, including Albert Almora, Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber and Ian Happ.

This year's first-rounder, Hatch, has overcome elbow problems. Hatch, 21, is in his redshirt sophomore season at Oklahoma State, going 7-2 with a 2.16 ERA in 16 starts, including 3 shutouts. He has allowed 2 home runs, walked 28 and struck out 102, becoming the 13th pitcher in OSU history to reach the 100-strikeout mark in a single season.

"We've had a history with him, scouting him since high school," McLeod said. "We're pretty confident with the medical information we received, along with the week-to-week performance that he's had this year, that it's something that certainly we have to be aware of, and we know that it's in his past, but we're confident in the selection that he's going to be healthy going forward.

"We always know that when you draft a player who's had a medical occurrence in his past that it's always a risk. But weighing all those factors, getting to know the player himself, the competitor that he is - I just saw him a couple weeks ago at the Big 12 tournament - the stuff coming out of his hand, how well he's commanding everything, and more so how this guy competes every week and how he performed every week, we felt very good to get him there at our first pick at No. 104."

The Cubs have developed position players quite well in recent years, and the circumstances surrounding this year's draft allowed them to go big with pitching.

"Very much," McLeod said, noting the Cubs lost upper-round picks for their free-agent signings of Jason Heyward and John Lackey. "That was an emphasis going into the year from our scouting meeting in January. From that time, we already lost the picks for Lackey and Heyward.

"That (pitching) was going to be the emphasis no matter what going into the year. We certainly did continue to scout the hitters.

"Once we knew exactly where we were going to be selecting, we spent and inordinate amount of time on those mid-rounds, where we thought would be in Rounds 3-6. I did see more players than I did any of the last four or five years, and a lot of it was pitching. That was our focus, and that was our focus the last week in lining our board up."