After I wrote about the 2023 drafts for the OAPBA and AAAL APBA leagues, it didn’t take long for me to hear from John Briggs of the Roberto Clemente Memorial Baseball Association. Members of the RCMBA conducted their draft on February 4th.
Here is John’s recap:
The RCMBA held its 49th draft on February 4th. We had seven of our managers in Lancaster, Pa and the others on-line using a Rolz.org chatroom. The picture shows, left to right, John Briggs, Jim Kockler, Randy Prichard, Mark Gaudiano, Ed Morgans, Joe Reagan, Joe Jutzi. We’ve been gathering in Lancaster since the early mid eighties through 2020 and then the pandemic put a halt to that until this year. It’s not just a one day event either. We stay the entire weekend, usually just outside of Lancaster and the shopping malls in Strasburg. That way we all can say “No I’m not a good judge of major league talent but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express hotel last night”. Sometimes the wives come along a spend a day at the malls and sometime like this year it’s just the boys still being kids.
Our draft rules don’t allow future draft picks so it’s first time carded rookies and cast offs, failures, the light finally goes on and needs. Oh yeah there are mistakes too like Justin Verlander, rather than being carries on a roster as a no card, he was cut. Whoops. Those at Lancaster gathered in lobby with cards stacked in front of some. Computers right there with the cards. We were pretty sure who the first three picks would be and then it was guessing.
The draft kicked off with Canada’s pride and joy, Mark Featherstone selecting “Julio Rodriguez, eh”. Adley Rutschman and Bobby Witt followed. Harris, Henderson, Carroll, Contreras, Strider, Cruz, R Greene, Wright, Verlander, Nootbar, Pena and Melendez went in the 16 minute first round. About three and half hours later with the 185th pick, Ken Brand made Johan Oviedo Mr Irrelevant. Let the trading begin and before we left the next morning ten trades had been made.
You can see the entire draft at this link: http://www.rcmba.com/draft/2023draft.html
You can also see every draft we’ve held since 1991. Back then we used to have MLB affiliations for assigning first time carded so it’s pretty sad picking. Since 2000 we’ve eliminated that and all rookies have been in our drafts.
Thanks for the recap, John!
It’s worth mentioning that the top four players picked in the RCMBA’s 2023 draft are the same four picked in the AAAL’s draft (in slightly different order).
- Julio Rodriguez
- Adley Rutschman
- Bobby Witt
- Michael Harris
Witt’s and Harris’ order were switched in the AAAL’s draft.
I really appreciate the RCMBA since they are somewhat similar to our Illowa APBA League. They formed just one year before our league did in the mid-1970s. Also, while they conduct a “free agent” draft as opposed to our rookie draft, I find their draft results are somewhat similar to ours. We will see when the IAL drafts on February 17th!
Good luck in 2023, RCMBA!
