Tim Beckham Suspended 50 games for drug of abuse

James52411 said:

So glad the Rays picked this knucklehead instead of Buster Posey, who played a position they needed an upgrade at and was a legendary college player at an in-state school (FSU). The one unequivocal terrible blunder of this Rays regime.

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Wes said:

To be fair, Beckham was widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best player in the draft. This wasn't some Matt Bush type of pick.

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James52411 said:

True, but Posey made perfect sense for them in every way. Plus, I believe Posey was essentially a "can't miss" prospect. Insane stats in a great conference. Great tools and mechanics. Great makeup. Plus catchers are probably the rarest commodity in the game these days. If Posey ends up being solid defensively and giving you .275, 20 HR and 75 RBI, you have one of the better catchers in the game. If Beckham had been a super-prospect like ARod, Prior, Strasburg, Harper; etc., I'd have been okay with it. However, he was never regarded THAT highly. Plus Posey played college in-state and would have helped build a fan base. Posey was the obvious pick and they blew it. I think the Rays have the best front office in baseball, but this was a royal blunder.

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Wes said:

I followed that draft closely and there was no question about Beckham as a pick. Anything to suggest otherwise is revisionist history. He was the consensus best high school player at a premium position the entire year leading up to the draft. Four years later it looks terrible, as he hasn't panned out to the level of Posey, Hosmer or some of his other 2008 peers, but it isn't fair to say that they somehow made a ridiculous pick when the industry was all over Beckham. ESPN and Baseball Prospectus both had him as the best prospect in the draft. There were plenty of questions about whether or not Posey could stick at catcher, in fact there were many more questions about whether he'd stick than if Beckham would stick at short.

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James52411 said:

I don't doubt that "the industry" loved Beckham. Mistakes happen, particularly in evaluating young talent, and there is a degree of unpredictability. However, if the Rays are going to rightly get praised for their drafting and talent development then I'm going to kill them for this one. I watched a lot of Posey when he was in college, and I've never seen a player like him. I think the truth about the 2008 draft is that there were about 3-5 different guys that were fairly interchangable as to whom was the best prospect in the country. "The industry" settled on Beckham because of his athleticism, but I believed then Posey was the right pick for the Rays for the reasons I stated before. To my mind, picking Posey made perfect sense on all levels, but the Rays outsmarted themselves.

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Wes said:

Along with the point I'm making about not killing the Rays on Beckham, I don't credit them as much as some for Longoria and Price. Both guys were fairly easy picks. I see the stance on killing them for Beckham and praising them for Longoria and Price, but I guess I tend to temper that feeling when they basically went with the chalk pick.

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