Nationals Draft Preview

Hey guys, I've appreciated the links I've gotten in this community before, so I thought I'd share an article I just posted.

I'm starting up my team-by-team draft previews at my blog, and I started with the team that picks #1 overall in the Washington Nationals. Scouting director Kris Kline is in his first year, so I picked out players from his region as West Coast crosschecker with Arizona and Washington, then focused on 2009's draft with Washington, when he was a national crosschecker.

Here's an excerpt from the writeup, which features small writeups on 23 players involved with Kline's work:

Kris Kline’s experience as a scout goes back two decades, and there aren’t many people who can claim that he isn’t qualified to be a scouting director. The interesting dynamic in Washington is that Kline is essentially part of a drafting team that starts with Mike Rizzo at the GM level. Rizzo was Kline’s boss in his years with Arizona, when Rizzo ran Arizona’s drafts as their scouting director. Kline followed Rizzo to Washington for the 2007 draft, when Rizzo became the head of baseball ops under Jim Bowden. Rizzo’s ascension to general manager ensures Kline’s job security, at least for a few years. It also means that drafting will be done in a team environment, especially considering the arrival of Roy Clark from Atlanta, another previous scouting director. Clark took over the scouting department in Atlanta from the legendary Paul Snyder, and he enters Washington as Vice President of Player Personnel, essentially Rizzo’s right-hand man for scouting. This triumvirate will mean excellent scouting and use of scouting resources this season, and despite Kline’s lack of experience at the scouting director level, I don’t expect a weak draft, even going beyond whoever they selected at number one overall. This Washington front office is set up to be very successful for the coming years if they use the combined scouting knowledge they have in the front office.

Direct link here.

What do you think? What will the Nationals do?