Ravens hope to rival 2006's five selections

Baseball America Top-500 Prospect List
Baseball America Upper New England Draft Report
Perfect Game New Hampshire Draft Preview
MLB.com Draft Central 

RINDGE, N.H. (June 5, 2013) – With the program's sixth NCAA Regional title now in the rearview mirror, the Franklin Pierce University baseball team turns its sights ahead to the 2014 campaign and defending the East Regional crown. This week, the program will learn plenty about what pieces will return to Rindge in the fall, as it hopes to have a banner year in the 2013 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft, scheduled for Thursday through Saturday, June 6-8. The Ravens have three pitchers who could figure prominently in the Draft, and hope to challenge the program's all-time record of five selections, set in 2006.

The first 73 selections of the Draft, spanning the first two full rounds, as well as two smaller, and brand new, competitive balance rounds, will be televised live across the country on MLB Network and webcast live at MLB.com from MLB Network's Studio 42 in Secaucus, N.J. The first round begins at 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 6, and will be preceded by an hour of Draft preview coverage, which will air at 6 p.m. From there, the Draft continues through two more days of online-only coverage at MLB.com, with rounds 3-10 beginning at 1 p.m. on Friday, June 7, and rounds 11-40 beginning at 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 8. While the details of the first three rounds and the intertwined competitive balance and supplementary rounds have become complicated under MLB's new collective bargaining agreement -- the first round consists of 33 selections, though there are only 30 teams, and similar disparities exist in the second and third rounds -- beginning with round four, each team has one selection per round, in reverse order of their 2012 regular season record.

After being shutout of the Draft a year ago for the first time since before Justin Blood became the program's first draft pick in 2001, the Ravens are poised to challenge for the most successful Draft in team history this summer. The talented class is led by the top three arms on one of the nation's finest pitching staffs, as sophomore left-hander Steve Hathaway (Acton, Mass.), junior right-hander Trevor Graham (Sebastian, Fla.) and junior right-hander Kevin McGowan (Nashua, N.H.) could all come off the board before the draft reaches its halfway point.

The consensus of those who cover the draft professionally is that Hathaway will be the first Raven off the board (see links at top of story). Perfect Game sees him as the best prospect playing in the state of New Hampshire, while Baseball America lists him as the top prospect in Upper New England (Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont). Baseball America, which provides the sport's most thorough and renowned prospect coverage, also ranks Hathaway inside its national top-500 prospects, at 380th. Were the top-500 prospects selected in order, the 380th pick would come in the 13th round, though Perfect Game anticipates he could be selected as early as rounds 5-8.

Hathaway, who checks in at 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds, works in the low-to-mid-90s from the left side, and hard-throwing southpaws are always in high demand. Perfect Game also lauds his curveball, which comes in at 75-77 miles per hour and "flashes outstanding depth", and mentions that he effectively mixes in a changeup as his tertiary pitch. The red flags against Hathaway include his injury history -- he has missed significant time with both elbow and shoulder injuries -- and his age, as he turns 23 in September in a sport where prospects are generally drafted at 18 out of high school or 21 out of college. Without those concerns, Perfect Game suspects his raw talent would see him selected inside the first three or four rounds.

Graham hauled in an entire trophy case of hardware this spring as the Ravens ace, and seems poised to do exactly what he transferred to Rindge to accomplish: earn a draft selection and begin his professional career. Baseball America lists Graham as the sixth prospect in Upper New England, but also notes that he has three average pitches and can throw all of them for strikes. Graham earned East Region Pitcher of the Year honors from both the ABCA and Daktronics, was a consensus All-America selection, earned consensus All-East Region First Team honors, was the Northeast-10 Conference Pitcher of the Year, was an All-Northeast-10 First Team pick and was the only player in the country to be a finalist for both the Tino Martinez Award and the Josh Willingham Award, as presented by College Baseball Lineup. The biggest marks in Graham's favor will be his frame -- he checks in at 6-foot-2 and 210 pounds -- and his velocity, as he works in the low-to-mid-90s with a hard slider and a changeup to keep hitters off-balance. Working against him is the lack of innings of work over his two years at Florida Tech before transferring to Franklin Pierce. While it means his arm is fresh and injury concerns are minimal, he will be forced to play catch-up from a developmental standpoint against pitchers his age who were drafted out of high school and have been handling professional workloads over the past three seasons.

McGowan cuts an imposing figure on the mound, and his 6-foot-5, 215-pound frame with a powerful leg kick are the things scouts dream about. He added significant velocity to his fastball over the off-season between his sophomore and junior campaigns, transforming himself from a high-80s/low-90s pitcher -- a profile which is considered run-of-the-mill in the scouting world -- into a low-to-mid-90s power arm. The change caught the eye of the area's professional scouts, and as a result, McGowan received a healthy share of attention all spring with the Ravens. Baseball America puts him one spot in front of Graham, listing him as the fifth prospect in Upper New England. He has been mostly a fastball-changeup-slider pitcher for Franklin Pierce, as has become the norm for hard-throwing right-handers under Head Coach Jayson King, but also features a curveball which he can throw for strikes when the situation calls for it. His biggest positives are the aforementioned fastball velocity, a clean bill of health (he topped 70 innings in both 2012 and 2013), and his large frame, which would be expected to fill out impressively under a professional weight-training regimen. Negatives include that his strikeout stuff seems to come and go as it wishes; after striking out a batter per inning over his first two years with the Ravens, he averaged only 6.86 strikeouts per nine innings in 2013. While McGowan has never been especially prone to the walk, he will give up his share of hits, and it becomes tougher for him to work out of trouble when not striking hitters out.

Junior first baseman Zach Mathieu (Derry, N.H.) is the dark horse in the 2013 Draft class for the Ravens. The 2012 consensus East Region Player of the Year and a consensus All-East Region selection again in 2013, he has been Franklin Pierce's most potent offensive weapon over the last two seasons, and also possesses an impressive frame, as he checks in at 6-foot-7 and 265 pounds. Despite the size, he moves nimbly enough to acquit himself well at first base, and also possesses a strong arm as well. Mathieu's hitting prowess has garnered plenty of attention from area scouts over the past two years, but attempting to project his draft stock is mostly an exercise in futility. Listening to scouts talk about him and reading through pre-Draft publications, some believe he could be drafted in the first 20 rounds, while others think he won't be drafted at all. For what it's worth, Baseball America lists him as the ninth prospect in Upper New England. Positives include his raw power to all fields, his hitting approach and, like McGowan, a professionally-sized frame. Potential negatives include the length of his swing and playing a position where his size is the norm, and not the exception, at the next level; his professional prospects depend almost entirely on his ability to continue to both get on base regularly and hit for power.

While the remainder of Franklin Pierce's potential draftees are a mixed bag of players with tools that could get them drafted, yet don't demand that they will be drafted, it would be an oversight not to mention senior right-hander Ryan Thompson (Calgary, Alberta), the consensus East Region Pitcher of the Year in 2011, when he was selected by the New York Yankees in the 36th round (1,109 overall) but did not sign. While he now shares the same injury and age concerns as Hathaway, he did show flashes of his former brilliance in 2013 and continued to be on the radar of professional scouts throughout his career. The arm issues of the past two seasons may make Thompson a reclamation project at this point in his career, but if a team thinks he still possesses the one-two punch of his low-to-mid-90s fastball and hard slider, he could become a late-round pick or a senior sign as organizational depth. Baseball America has remained impressed with Thompson throughout the entirety of his collegiate career, and the publication still ranks him as the third prospect in Upper New England.

Others who have garnered attention of varying levels from scouts of various teams over the past two seasons include: senior shortstop Dan Kemp (Sturbridge, Mass.) (a 24th-round pick of the Boston Red Sox out of high school in 2009), senior right fielder Nick LaCroix (Grafton, Mass.) (a four-time All-Northeast-10 selection and three-time All-East Region pick), senior left-hander Vladimir Camacho (Jamaica Plain, Mass.), senior right-hander Matt Horan (Boston, Mass.) and junior right-hander Ryan Leach (Farmingdale, Maine). Any of the above is a plausible late-round pick, should a team be so inclined, or would be eligible to sign as a free-agent after the draft.

Franklin Pierce has had 21 draft selections in program history, beginning with Blood in 2001. Since that first selection, only Boston College (40) and Connecticut (37) have had more draftees among New England schools, regardless of division. Before last year's draft, Franklin Pierce had been the only New England school to have at least one player selected every year since 2001.

For more information on Franklin Pierce Athletics, please visit the official website of Franklin Pierce Athletics (http://athletics.franklinpierce.edu). Also be sure to follow the Ravens through the Department of Athletics' official Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/FranklinPierceRavens), its YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/franklinpiercesports) and its Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/FPUathletics). Fans wishing to purchase Franklin Pierce baseball apparel can do so at the Department of Athletics' online store (http://athletics.franklinpierce.edu/store).