Minor League Podcast: Scouting director Gary Rajsich talks about the 2017 Orioles’ draft class

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The Orioles’ 2017 draft is over, and now the process of signing the club’s 41 picks is underway.

On Wednesday, the club announced it had reached deals with 27 players from this draft class – an impressive number so quickly after the picks were made.

Among those the Orioles have inked are Xavier University left-hander Zac Lowther (competitive balance round, 74th pick overall) and Jacksonville University right-hander Michael Baumann (third round, 98th pick) as well as each of the club’s selection from the sixth through 15th rounds.

In this week’s podcast, Orioles scouting director Gary Rajsich joins our Adam Pohl to talk about the draft and detail some of the picks he made. That includes the club’s top two selections, high schoolers named Hall: lefty DL Hall (21st overall, pictured above) from Georgia and shortstop Adam Hall from Canada (60th overall).

Rajsich gives some interesting insight about the draft, including the expectations that he’ll sign 30-plus picks this year. He told Pohl, the voice of the Double-A Bowie Baysox, that he feels like the organization can ink all of its higher selections – and it only has four remaining of the Top 15.

In the second part of the podcast. Pohl talks with BaltimoreBaseball.com’s Dean Jones Jr. to get his feel on what the Orioles did in the draft and what areas of need they may have filled.

You can read Dean’s detailed piece on each member of the draft here.

And it’s definitely worth checking out the podcast to get even more information on the new members of the Orioles’ organization.

 

Dan Connolly

Dan Connolly has spent more than two decades as a print journalist in Pennsylvania and Maryland. The Baltimore native and Calvert Hall graduate first covered the Orioles as a beat writer for the York (Pennsylvania) Daily Record in 2001 before becoming The Baltimore Sun’s national baseball writer/Orioles reporter in 2005. He has won multiple state and national writing awards, including several from the Associated Press Sports Editors. In 2013 he was named Maryland Co-Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. And in 2015, he authored his first book, "100 Things Orioles Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die." He lives in York, with his wife, Karen, and three children, Alex, Annie, and Grace.

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