Minor Notes: Draft overload - picks, summaries, and analysis

Here are Thursday's minor league notes:

• It was an extremely busy week with the 2017 MLB Draft taking place this Monday through Wednesday. The Red Sox made 40 selections and you can find them all on our draft page. 
• On day one of the draft, the Red Sox selected Tanner Houck (pictured, right), a right-handed pitcher from the University of Missouri, and with their second round pick they took outfielder Cole Brannen, an outfielder out of The Westfield School in Perry, Georgia.
• SoxProspects.com Executive Editor Chris Hatfield and Director of Scouting Ian Cundall burned the midnight oil on Monday, staying up after the draft to record a podcast with their initial thoughts on the Red Sox first two picks, Houck and Brannen.
• The Red Sox were elated to land Houck, who they didn't think would still be on the board at 24, area scout Taylor Gold told The Boston Globe's Alex Speier. Gold goes on to say that Houck's progress with the slider this season means the Red Sox think he could have a future as a starter and will develop him as one. 
• Brannen worked extremely hard to achieve goals such as playing in the Under Armour All-American game and being drafted. It means that his decision to switch from shortstop to the outfield was all worth it as Wynston Wilcox wrote for The Telegraph last year.
• Day two saw the Red Sox add eight more selections in rounds three through ten and SoxProspects.com had writeups on all eight. They were, in order of round: Second baseman Brett Netzer, right-handers Jake Thompson, Alex Scherff, and Zach Schellenger, outfielder Tyler Esplin, first baseman Zach Sterry, second baseman Tanner Nishioka, and outfielder Jordan Wren.
• After only getting two college scholarship offers, Brett Netzer has worked his way up to being a highly touted prospect and draft pick. However, he told the Charlotte Observer's Pat James that it wasn't his goal to get drafted. It was his goal to make it to the major leagues.
• Alex Scherff made himself into an elite pitching prospect, but Baseball America's Hudson Belinsky writes that to do so he had to get his act together and lose 40 pounds.
• The Red Sox decided to draft Zach Sterry despite the fact that he suffered a broken hand this year that cut his season short, as George Sipple noted for the Detroit Free Press.
• Things come fast and furious on day three of the draft, with the Red Sox making a selection in each of rounds 11 through 40. Luckily, SoxProspects.com Senior Staff Writer James Dunne has information on all 30 day-three picks.
• Kutter Crawford finished the 2017 college season with a sub-2.00 ERA and MLB.com's Ian Browne wrote that it was due, at least in part, to the introduction of a cutter. He won't be the best Florida Gulf State Univerisity alumnus in the organization - that title belongs to Red Sox ace Chris Sale, who lives 20 minutes from campus and has spoken to Crawford several times.
• The Red Sox signed 12 players who were ranked by the national scouting sites Baseball America, Perfect Game USA, and/or MLB.com and how they ranked can be found here. Likewise, 12 former Red Sox picks were drafted in the 2017 draft including Oregon lefty David Peterson and Vanderbilt outfielder Jeren Kendall who were both taken in the first round this year. 
• The Red Sox now have to work on signing as many of those players as possible, with the deadline to sign players of Friday, July 7th at 5 pm. SoxProspects.com Editor-in-Chief Mike Andrews has a signing period preview to get you ready.
• The Boston Globe's Alex Speier has a pick-by-pick look at the draft, and in that piece, he notes that the Red Sox expect to reach quick agreements with all of their top 10 picks.

• Signability is clearly not an issue for second round pick Cole Brannen (pictured, left) after he told The 3rd Man In's Dan Zielinski III earlier this year that he is "110 percent going pro".
• In non-draft news, the Red Sox announced Thursday morning that lefty Brian Johnson was headed to the DL with a shoulder impingement and they were calling up right-handed reliever Austin Maddox. He was drafted in the 3rd round of the 2012 draft out of Florida. This year he has already pitched for both Portland and Pawtucket and combined between the two levels he has a 1.33 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 20 strikeouts, 11 walks, and 3 saves in 27 innings.
• Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal says that Red Sox President Dave Dombrowski won't keep taking a sledgehammer to the farm system after trading away many prospects in big deals since he joined the Sox. Dombrowski told WEEI that 'you can’t keep trading players all the time'.
• Third baseman Rafael Devers is one prospect Dombrowski won't trade away wrote the Boston Herald's Stephen Hewitt.

Photo Credit: Tanner Houck by D1 Baseball and Cole Brannen by 3rdManIn.com.

Will Woodward is a Senior Staff Writer for SoxProspects.com. Follow him on Twitter @SPWill.

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