OmarComing25

This is implying that going by wRC+ makes Abreu look bad.

Made my day

If only we could combine them, but knowing our luck we'd just get the wrong combination of tools.

His xOBA is .395 so he's actually been underperforming his exit velo numbers. It's really too bad that all his other tools are so awful.

I still want Madrigal but while a #3 starter with the 4th pick would seem to be a disappointing outcome for the #4 pick, if you look at the #4 picks from the last 20 years that would end up being one of the best outcomes. The top three #4 picks over that time are Kerry Wood, Ryan Zimmerman and Gavin Floyd.

Wasn't he top 10 on pretty much all preseason lists? He was #7 for BA before the update and he didn't move.

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/how-matt-davidson-became-the-most-improved-hitter-in-baseball/ Didn't see this posted anywhere here, really interesting article about how Davidson watched tape of himself from 2017 to improve his plate discipline.

Yeah I don't know how reliable the minor league batted ball metrics are compared to the major league ones, but his 2018 profile looks almost ideal to me right now. High line drive rate, high flyball rate, below average pop up rate. Also isn't as extremely pull heavy as he was last year so that would be a positive for beating the shift.

Typically the line drive leaders are in the 25-27% range. Freeman is the current active leader in career line drive rate and he's at 27%.

To me it looks like it comes down to his line drive rate. In past seasons he's been at around 17% while this season he's at 30% so it's not surprising that his BABIP is so high. I think the BABIP regression will come more from that insanely high line drive rate being unsustainable than due to general luck evening out. He's clearly making a lot better contact this year and it makes sense that a lot more balls in play are falling for hits since he's hitting so many line drives.

FWIW Steamer thinks his walk rate would be 14.5% in the majors right now. We’re talking about a guy who probably has the best eye in the minors so I don’t think that is unreasonable. He could have the eye of Narvaez with considerably more power.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.beyondtheboxscore.com/platform/amp/2017/9/30/16387510/phillies-dodgers-brewers-left-handed-pitching-mlb-stats LHP pitched just over 25% of all innings last year.

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/what-is-wrc/ It is league adjusted, not park adjusted.

If Covey can become something that would make up for Giolito's season.

If Covey can throw 94-95 with that kind of movement he suddenly becomes really interesting. Results were definitely not fluky tonight.

Dude won the Cy Young in 2021 in my OOTP for the World Series winning White Sox. You heard it here first.

Heyward took less because of the optouts, not because the Cubs were more desirable. Any deal with optouts is going to have a lower total monetary value. I'm not deluded enough to think Machado would want to come here if our offer was equal to other teams, but I see no reason why he wouldn't sign if we were clearly the best offer (which if it's not going to be because of significantly more money then we have to get creative with the optouts), that's the case with 95% of all athletes.

Yeah it's really surprising how well they've actually held up considering they're consistently being left out to dry by both the starting pitching and the defense.

Great post. The point of the comparisons to other short second basemen who have become excellent hitters is to refute the idea that Madrigal has a lower ceiling because of his stature. We've seen too many of these types recently tap into power that nobody thought they could have to make me think that Madrigal would be completely incapable of doing the same thing. And even if he doesn't do it he'll still likely be a good enough hitter. At this point I'm going to be pretty disappointed if we end up with anyone but Madrigal, unless Mize somehow falls.

I just hope the division still stinks this much in 2019 and 2020.

Which is why Ted Williams’ 1953 season is so nuts. He hit .407 with a BABIP of .353

Why would it be a joke when Moncada has easily been our best player and one of the top players in baseball this year? He deserves it over Abreu or Lopez and has been better than Altuve this year. Not that it really matters.

Clinched double digit wins for the season, was getting a little worried there.

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/heres-the-david-robertson-trade-the-nats-white-sox-were-reportedly-close-to-making/ This says the rumored deal was for Jesus Luzardo and Drew Ward. Luzardo is no Soto but would have been a great pickup too.

I know we have a dearth of LHP prospects, but I don't really care what arm a guy uses as long as he's good. The Indians last year had one lefty pitch meaningful innings for them and they were historically good. I don't think LHP is really a strong need.