Morning Rundown: 2023 Hank Aaron Awards, Pipleline mock draft, Roddery Munoz
A rundown of what's going on around the league.
Major League Baseball announced the 2023 Hank Aaron Award winners, with Ronald Acuna Jr. winning in the National League and Shohei Ohtani in the American League.
Both players also walked away with the MVP honors in their respective leagues.
Acuna batted .337/.416/.596 with 41 home runs and 73 stolen bases, playing in 159 of 162 games for the Atlanta Braves.
For Ohtani, he posted a 1.066 OPS, hitting 44 home runs and stealing 20 bases. He made his third straight All-Star game in 2023. He picked up his second straight 10-win season on the mound, going 10-5 with a 3.14 ERA in 23 starts. An injury will force him into his second Tommy John surgery of his career, and he signed a massive 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers in the offseason.
MLB Pipeline released their initial draft rankings for 2024 and posted their first Mock Draft, with the Pirates taking Konnor Griffin with the ninth pick. Griffin is the top-rated high school prospect on Pipeline, with a ‘60’ grade when it comes to power.
The Cleveland Guardians won the lottery and will pick first overall, with this mock draft having them select Wake Forest's first baseman, Nick Kurtz.
Division rival Cincinnati Reds jumped to second, and Pipeline has them taking West Virginia infielder JJ Wetherholt.
Once we kick into the new year, we will start upping our draft coverage with a weekly feature highlighting a player or doing monthly rankings.
I'm a little late on this, but Roddery Munoz was designated for assignment as a part of the Pirates’ roster moves to create space on the 40-man.
He was claimed off of waivers from the Washington Nationals earlier in the off-season. The 23-year-old began his professional career with the Atlanta Braves, making his major league debut earlier in the season.
Every Monday during the offseason, we will be doing a mailbag article. Please send in your questions to have them answered! Either comment below with ‘mailbag’ entered in the message or email us at bucsondeckqa@gmail.com. I look forward to answering what you guys have!
With the obligatory observation that it’s Jurassically early for mocks and rankings, but if the top 8 went that way, gimme Montgomery or Burns. I may or may not have chosen between these two for a Simpsons joke.
Our future 1b might come out of this draft, is early for mock up, but there’s an usual amount of 1b on top of the draft.