The Cardinals went in an unexpected (to me, at least), direction with their second pick in the draft. There were arms on the board I really thought they would take, but instead they went with Trejyn Fletcher, a high schooler from, of all places, Maine.
This is a very risky pick, largely because it feels like a similar process to the one which brought the Cards Nick Plummer. Plummer, you may recall, tore up the showcase circuit the summer before he was drafted, looking like easily the best high school hitter in his class, and if you saw him play at that point you probably thought you were looking at a top ten overall pick. Then he headed back to Michigan and their weird 1-1 count at-bats, played his draft spring, and didn’t look nearly as dynamic. At that point, the team willing to take Plummer the earliest was going to be the team most convinced of the short look they got over the summer, and most willing to justify the much less impressive looks they got all spring heading into the draft.
The process with Fletcher isn’t really analogous, I suppose; he’s a cold weather player who suddenly reclassified as a senior this spring to enter the draft a year early, leaving teams scrambling to get their full scouting departments into Maine to try and have a decision ready on this athlete who popped up. Where I think the cases are similar, however, is you’re taking briefer looks than would normally be expected, extrapolating them out, and using some extenuating circumstances to excuse the lack of track record. With Plummer it was the strange version of baseball they play in Michigan high schools; with Fletcher it was an extraordinarily rainy spring which limited the looks teams got after an already-late period of notice that this is a kid we have to pay attention to now, rather than a year from now.
Regardless of the risk, though, I’m actually a big fan of Tre Fletcher the player, and while I don’t know if he would have been the guy I went with at 56, I do think the Cardinals pulled themselves a remarkable physical talent.
Trejyn Fletcher, OF, Deering High School (ME)
6’2”, 190 lbs
Bats/Throws: Right/Right
DOB: 30 April 2001
So, what’s so great about this guy?
Trejyn Fletcher has taken one of the oddest paths to being a premium draft talent of any player in the draft this year. To begin with, the simple fact he hails from Maine makes him a slightly unusual player; the extreme Northeastern Atlantic Coast brings a real punch to the term ‘cold weather kid’. On top of that, he spent his first two years of high school at a prep school in upstate New York that literally looks like the Wash U campus, just scaled down slightly. Then, on top of that, he moved back to Maine this spring, attended high school in his hometown, and reclassified as a senior so he could leave school after only three years to enter the draft a year early. In short, it has been an unorthodox road for Fletcher to get drafted.
As remarkable as his path to the draft has been, though, it’s Fletcher’s athleticism which stands out as the most remarkable thing about him. This is a player with 60+ grades on three tools, and plenty of acumen for the others which require a little more time to develop. He would have been one of the very top high school players in the draft next year, most likely, only a little on the old side. Instead, he came out as age-appropriate, even slightly younger than average for the class, but with a little extra rawness to his game that certainly had to give some teams pause.
Fletcher has big time raw power, based on plus or better bat speed. The concern is whether he’ll hit enough to get to that power, as his swing and his overall offensive game are pretty raw right now. He carries his hands low at address, which I like, but he doesn’t always load them in the same way, and it’s a bit more of a reactive sort of swing, lacking some of the fine rhythm more polished hitters usually have. Probably my biggest concern with the swing is the fact Fletcher often opens up and steps in the bucket as the old timers say, much like Marcell Ozuna. Not a fan of that, and would really prefer to see him get his feet more online.
He’s at least a plus runner, maybe even a 65, and should be able to handle center field at a high level going forward. He’ll need lots of reps in the field, clearly, in order to turn that raw speed into range, but when you can run like Tre Fletcher you’re already most of the way there. He’s also got a huge throwing arm, and has pitched in the past, sitting around 91-93. So again, defensively we’re talking 60-65 grade speed with a 60+ arm from either right or center field.
It’s obviously going to be a concern how well Fletcher hits, and whether he can translate the tools into production once he gets into pro ball. There’s also the question of signability, as he is a Vanderbilt commit and, once assumes, will not come cheap. However, to me, the act of reclassifying to get into the draft earlier tells me something about how serious Tre Fletcher is about baseball. And while Vandy is obviously one of the very best college organisation in the country when it comes to the care and nurturing of baseball talents, I have to believe that you wouldn’t use a second round pick on a kid if you didn’t believe you could meet his price and bring him in with the promise of a pro development environment geared entirely toward making him a better player.
Trejyn Fletcher has one of the more unusual profiles of a draftee you’re ever going to see. At the same time, he plays a premium position, has plus power, plus speed, and a plus arm, and graduated from high school in three years in order to get the next phase of his baseball life started early. This is what a star looks like. You just have to do some polishing on this particular star to make it shine.
viaThe Prospect Pipeline: