Catching up with Jim Callis

Wednesday night I got the opportunity to catch with MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis to discuss the current draft, draft history, and the CWS.

On the Draft date coming after the College World Series:

“I don’t think it’s going to affect too much one way or the other. The good thing, and it rarely happened, but a team won’t draft a guy, and he ends up getting hurt. Teams have seen Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter sixteen times each. Watching them one or two times each isn’t going to swing the needle too much.”

Comparing Jordan Lawler to Bobby Witt:

“Witt has louder tools, he has more power, he’s more advanced because he grew up in the game as Bobby Witt’s son and got exposed to so much. I think Lawlar is a little bit more polished hitter than Bobby was at the same stage and maybe a half-step quicker. They’re similar.”

On who the Royals will draft:

“It seems like the Royals attitude, from what I get right now, is exactly what I would want it to be if I was a Royals fan. There are eight guys on the first tier, two of them are likely to get to us, and we’ll just take the best one. I think the Royals are going to get a better player than they should at number seven.”

You can listen to the rest of the interview below.