We're putting Part I of BA's Draft Preview issue to bed. We're lining up the top 200 or so players by position, with 100 or so scouting reports, before the Part II blowout later this month and before the state-by-state scouting reports start going online in about 10 days. We've also got a four-man Deluxe Podcast that goes a bit more into some of the draft's bigger issues.

In the course of gathering all that information, we've got a few tidbits to share, from all our staffers covering the proceedings:

• James Paxton has started throwing for Grand Prairie in the independent American Association in two exhibition games. While there's one report of Paxton flashing his mid-90s stuff from his peak in 2009 at Kentucky, one scout told BA that he sat 88-90 mph and had quite a bit of rust to shake off. On Sunday, he retired the first seven batters in an exhibition against Shreveport-Bossier before tiring, and didn't make it out of the third inning. The regular season begins Friday against Pensacola.

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Ole Miss ace Drew Pomeranz is dealing with a mild strain in his pectoral muscle, which explains why his velocity dropped into the 87-90 mph range on Friday. Pomeranz felt some soreness after doing some light weight-lifting before the Mississippi State series a couple of weeks ago. The junior lefthander is expected to continue throwing this week and may or may not miss a start this weekend.

Here are the weekend stats for the nation's top college players, listed alphabetically by school, as collected by collegesplits.com. An asterisk denotes a player is a draft-eligible underclassman. You can follow College Splits on Twitter too, @collegesplits [...] Continue Reading »

Here at Baseball America headquarters, we're all busy making draft calls and have a bundle of great draft content going on the site this afternoon, but here are a few newsworthy items that have popped up recently. . .

• Alabama second baseman Ross Wilson is expected to miss anywhere from 10 days to two weeks after sustaining a hairline fracture in his left hand after being hit by a pitch on April 30.

• Jacksonville State outfielder Todd Cunningham played shortstop in the team's last game, April 28 against Alabama-Birmingham.

• Barstow (Calif.) High righthander Aaron Sanchez missed his team's last game with a pulled oblique muscle and will likely miss tomorrow's game as well.

Major League Baseball announced the official plans today for coverage of the 2010 Draft. This year's draft takes place June 7-9. For the second-consecutive year, the first day will be a prime time event with MLB Network again hosting the first day of the draft, beginning at 7 p.m. ET.

Prior to the start of the Draft on June 7, MLB Network will air a Draft preview show, also simulcast on MLB.com, with Greg Amsinger,  Harold Reynolds, John Hart, Peter Gammons, Jonathan Mayo and Baseball America executive editor Jim Callis at 6:00 p.m. ET.

Last year, the first night covered the first three rounds of the draft, but this year it will only cover the first round and supplemental first round. Teams will have five minutes to make their selection in the first round and then one minute per pick for the supplemental round.

The draft will resume at noon ET on both Tuesday, June 8 (for rounds 2-30) and Wednesday, June 9 (for rounds 31-50) via conference call from MLB headquarters in New York City.

Here are the weekend stats for the nation's top college players, listed alphabetically by school, as collected by collegesplits.com. An asterisk denotes a player is a draft-eligible underclassman. You can follow College Splits on Twitter too, @collegesplits [...] Continue Reading »

Aaron Fitt has a rundown of Friday's key notes on draft prospects on the College Blog.