Blue Jays select Griffin Conine with No. 52 overall pick
By Cam Lewis
5 years agoAfter going sort of off the board with their first-round pick, the Blue Jays did something they’re very familiar with in the second round. They drafted for bloodlines. The Jays used the No. 52 overall pick on Griffin Conine, son of two-time World Series winner Jeff Conine.
What do we need to know about Conine? He’s graded as Hit: 45 | Power: 55 | Run: 40 | Arm: 55 | Field: 50 | Overall: 50. He’s a decently well-rounded corner outfielder, but his calling card is the power in his bat. He mashed at Duke this year as a Junior, clubbing 18 homers with a slugging percentage of .611 in 60 games. That said, one weakness in Conine’s game are holes in his swing. He struck out 72 times in 216 at bats for Duke this year while walking only 41 times.
Jeff Conine appeared in two All-Star Games and won two World Series in a 17-year big league career after signing as a 58th-round pick. His son Griffin has similar upside but won’t have to wait nearly as long to hear his name called in June. After playing sparingly and going homerless as a Duke freshman in 2016, he broke out with 13 home runs last spring and led the Cape Cod League with nine last summer, when scouts named him the prestigious college circuit’s top prospect.Conine came into 2018 with a good chance to join Marcus Stroman as the only first-round choices ever out of Duke, but a rough first half to his junior season means that probably won’t happen. He rallied later in the spring and showed that he’s still one of the better power hitters available in the 2018 Draft, capable of driving the ball out to all fields thanks to his bat speed and the loft he generates with his left-handed swing. There already were concerns about his propensity to swing and miss, however, and they’ve been exacerbated this spring as he has tried to lift nearly every pitch he saw out of the park.With his power potential and solid arm strength, Conine fits the right-field profile. He can flash average run times but hasn’t showed that kind of speed this spring. Even with modest quickness, he’s a sound defender on the outfield corners.
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