MLB draft: Winners and questions

Day 1 is in the books and we saw one huge surprise in the top 10, a few surprises in the teens, and then all kinds of wackiness from the 20th pick on. Here's a quick look at my favorite picks and drafts from the first day, and a few picks that didn't make sense from where I sit.

Picks I really liked

Houston Astros
The picks: Carlos Correa at No. 1, Lance McCullers Jr. at No. 41
Summary: Pre-draft deals are illegal in baseball under Rule 3 -- the team could lose not just the player but the pick, as well as the bonus pool money assigned to it -- but if Correa were to agree now to a deal below the assigned value for the first overall pick ($7.2 million), the Astros could spread the savings over subsequent selections, possibly giving most or all of that to sandwich-round pick Lance McCullers, Jr., a first-round talent with a strong commitment to Florida. It's a risk for Houston, but the payoff could be huge; if you believe McCullers, a 6-foot right-hander who reworked his delivery last winter so he could throw strikes, can be a starter, you could make a credible argument two of the top 10-15 players in this draft are now under the Astros' control.

I'm also hopeful that Correa becoming the highest-drafted player in Puerto Rican history, whether you're counting players born there or just those who went to high school there, will help provide a boost to the sport on an island that was once a fountain of baseball talent but has dried up over the past 20 years. This will be big news in Puerto Rico, and MLB should encourage it.

To see the rest of the winners and question marks from Round 1 of the 2012 MLB draft, plus to get access to all of Insider's MLB draft coverage, you must be an ESPN Insider.

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Keith Law

ESPN Insider

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• Senior baseball analyst for Insider
• Was special asst. to Blue Jays GM
• Wrote for Baseball Prospectus