Angels look for another solid draft

Reporting from Seattle — 

Tony Reagins is not expecting a Jered Weaver-type player, someone nearly ready for the big leagues, to fall into the Angels’ lap with the 18th pick of the baseball amateur draft, which begins Monday.

“Those kinds of animals,” the team’s general manager said, “are usually not available at No. 18.”

Neither local team picks early, and in the Dodgers’ case not even often — they pick No. 28 in the first round and not again until No. 78.

But with five of the top 40 picks — three in the first round — Reagins likes the Angels’ chances of choosing a player or two who, in three to five years, develops into the kind of impact major leaguer Weaver has become.

“You don’t usually get immediate results in the draft unless you have one of the top five picks,” Reagins said. “But we could strengthen our system in a very positive way.”

The Angels have 17 players on their major league roster — including three on the disabled list — who originally signed with them. But their farm system was thinned by five playoff appearances in six years, which pushed the Angels’ top picks to the back of the first round. And their aggressive pursuit of free agents — and the high picks they’ve had to relinquish for signing them — left the organization with only one first-round pick from 2005 to 2008.

However, last year the Angels had five of the top 81 picks and parlayed that into a group that is the core of a Class-A Cedar Rapids team that began the weekend with a Midwest League-leading 36-19 record.

First-round pick Mike Trout, a center fielder, has quickly established himself as one of baseball’s top prospects, with a .373 average, .450 on-base percentage, six home runs, six triples and 29 runs batted in.

Three Cedar Rapids pitchers — Patrick Corbin (8-0, 3.86 earned-run average), Tyler Skaggs (5-2, 2.63) and Garrett Richards (5-2, 2.91) — from last year’s draft are off to excellent starts.

The Angels, who under scouting director Eddie Bane have favored high school players, especially pitchers, in the early rounds of recent drafts, could build on that foundation. They received first-round picks and “sandwich” picks between the first and second rounds as compensation for losing Type A free agents John Lackey to the Boston Red Sox and Chone Figgins to the Seattle Mariners.

So, in addition to the 18th pick, they will have the 29th and 30th picks of the first round, as well as two of the next 10 picks.

“We’re already starting to see the results from the number of picks we had last year, and this year’s picks are a little higher,” Reagins said. “Some areas of the draft are based on need, but early on, you go for the best player available.”

The best player available overall Monday is thought to be Bryce Harper, a catcher and outfielder from Las Vegas who skipped his last two years of high school so he could be eligible for the draft this year.

What pitcher Stephen Strasburg was to last year’s draft, Harper is to this one, having been proclaimed “Baseball’s LeBron” (James) by Sports Illustrated when he was 16 — and becoming a YouTube sensation when video was posted of a home run hitting exhibition he put on at Tampa Bay’s Tropicana Field that included a blast measured at 502 feet.

Harper hit .626 in 115 at-bats with 45 extra base hits, 55 RBIs and 36 steals as a sophomore in high school, then got his GED and enrolled at College of Southern Nevada, a junior college for which he batted .443 with 31 home runs and 98 RBIs this season using a wood bat.

Harper, who won’t turn 18 until October, is being advised by Scott Boras, who negotiated a record-setting $15.1-million contract last year for Strasburg, who is scheduled to make is big league debut Tuesday for the Washington Nationals. There is speculation Harper might command an even bigger deal as an everyday player who, so young, already has a power-packed swing.

Local products who could go in the first round include Dylan Covey, a right-handed pitcher from Pasadena Maranatha High; Austin Wilson, an outfielder from Harvard-Westlake High; and shortstop Christian Colon and outfielder Gary Brown, teammates at Cal State Fullerton.

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com

Times staff writer Mike Hiserman contributed to this report.