The Pulse: Arizona Sports readers put little stock in MLB Draft
Jun 7, 2014, 9:13 PM | Updated: 9:13 pm
Every day, ArizonaSports.com asks readers a question. It’s the Sanderson Ford Poll Question of the Day, and it can be found midway down the right side of our home page.
On Friday, we asked what our readers thought of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ first-round selection of Touki Toussaint in the 2014 First-Year Player Draft.
Toussaint was taken with the No. 16 selection in the draft, but it appears our readers barely got a whiff of the news, as a majority of them said they don’t invest time in Major League Baseball’s annual draft.
Two-hundred and forty-two people (54 percent) out of 450 voters responded, “Who? I don’t follow the MLB Draft.” Apparently, the draft just hasn’t caught on for MLB the way that the event has for the NFL and NBA and their fans.
For those willing to entertain the question, many of them (37 percent) said, “Great selection, he has a bright future!” And finally, 41 voters (9 percent) clicked on “Not bad, but they should have taken a hitter.”
Toussaint is a 17-year-old right-handed pitcher from Coral Springs Christian Academy in Florida. At 6-foot-2 and 198 pounds, Toussaint was rated by Baseball America as the country’s third-best high school pitcher, while MLB.com had him as the eighth-ranked prospect in the entire draft. Diamondbacks general manager Kevin Towers has called the young hurler “kind of a young Bob Gibson.”
On Friday, the right-hander said on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM that he is weighing a decision on whether to go to college — where he has been offered a scholarship to play at Vanderbilt — or join the pro ranks. Perhaps this is another reason why a handful of voters in our poll were underwhelmed by the D-backs’ first-round choice.
