Dominikk85

I would say mostly the hit tool is very hard to project, power and speed is easier to project but when you hit under the mendoza line the other tools don't matter much. Pitchers of course have their own risk, mostly injury.

The hit tool is the hardest tool to project especially for international and HS guys because everyone who has a half decent swing and good athleticism can hit .400 as long the pitching is bad enough. I'm hitting .400 in my beer league every year too:). In pitching 95 is 95 but in hitting the result is extremely dependent on the pitcher that you face. College hitters have less variance and bust rate but also less upside when you get past best first couple college bat picks (typically a college second rounder or late first rounder will make mlb has a bench/utility bat ceiling while a hs bat in that range could be a good player or bust out in AA with a 40 % k rate. Pitching of course also busts a lot, here it is more about injuries and also ability to throw strikes or hold your stuff through a pro schedule (every 5 days instead of once a week often velo drops). With the sox hitting it was imo a combination of bad development and prioritizing safety over upside. Sheets for example really isn't that much of a disappointment, his bat is mlb bench quality (got a little unlucky with babip), problem is that he is a 1b/emergency outfielder with a bench bat.

The disappointing thing about him is the plate discipline. In college he was advertised as having pristine plate discipline. In mlb his contact ability is fine but he consistently has above average chase rates and low walk rates. In college he walked a ton every year. Not sure what the issue is. Either he got pitched around so much that he walked despite mediocre pitch recognition or he has more trouble seeing mlb stuff than college stuff. His lack of ability to pull fly balls might actually be a coaching issue as sox have preached oppo approach and hit over power. I still think under the right circumstances he could take a step forward. 90% zone contact and a 112 Max EV is a good combination even though a mid 30s percent chase rate is not ideal of course but also not extremely egregious. With the right coaching I could seem him having a season where he hits 280 with 30 bombs.

Abreu is a legend but I think his batspeed is just gone, he can't turn around fastballs above 95 anymore. Last year he didn't pull a single fastball above 95 in the air, that is just the physical skill gone. He is still a good hitter and if he faces pitchers who throw 89 with 78 mph sliders he will destroy them but velo is just killing him and in mlb he doesn't see many guys who throw 90 but most are 95+ on fastball and 86+ on the slider nowadays.

I think it is a good hire. He has worked very successfully in Baltimore before. Yes he was fired but it was also after being promoted to a very different position. Mlb hitting coaching is quite different from being a minor league hitting coordinator, that is much more about game planning, mental stuff and relationships to players. As a hitting coordinator his role is to coach the coaches so that they ideally have a shared vision of what they want to teach to those kids.

The rich get richer, dodgers hired the probably best public pitching analyst max Bay (guy who modeled stuff + for eno sarris) https://x.com/choice_fielder/status/1853480735770050680?t=zVpZ34k9CzB5J4aka2ZNFQ&s=19

More important than having a top notch analytics group is having structures that implement the findings. There are 1000s of great baseball analysts out there who can do great work. There are still differences in quality of analytics but the key point is how it is implemented in scouting and coaching. What makes the really good orgs good is not that they are super cutting edge but that they are very good in communicating and implementing it across the whole Organisation. I read some posts by drivelines Kyle boddy a couple years ago where he claimed in some orgs reports by the analytics department are put into the bin without being read. Or slightly better but still bad others where the reports are being read and then guy reading it says "cool, that's interesting, now what should I do with it?" What will make or break the sox is not hiring a couple smart guys but having leadership implementing structures that forces everyone to actually implement the stuff. The sox did hire some smart guys in the past like for example Ryan Johansen who is a biomechanics expert but it clearly wasn't implemented as many of the sox hitters had a groundball, opposite field focused approach with a lot of chase. When the sox want to do it better this time they need to create better implementation structures and remove structures where old school coaches are laughing off analytics and just continue their way

Yes, also Santander might be really bad defensively relatively soon so if his bat Slips a little you have another expensive mediocre DH.

I think the sale return was great at the time. Moncada was a risky Player at that point but he was actually good for the sox before covid and injuries. Nobody could have seen that. Not everyone saw him at 1 overall but everyone had him top5. Kopech was a top50 overall prospect at the time and a great second piece. Sale was insanely good and at a great age and contract obviously but getting a consensus top5 prospect, a consensus top50 prospect was quite good. The big issue was that all those trade returns either were injury prone, underperformed or both.

The Os System isn't all that great anymore when you consider holliday, mayo and basallo untouchable. Sure getting one of the 3 as a headliner would be great but the Os weakest positions are second, third and first base and those are exactly the positions that their big 3 prospects project to play at (basallo can catch but most see him better Suited at 1B as he isn't a good defender). The Os need holliday at second and urias isn't great at third either so that keeps those two. At first mountcastle isn't bad but after they moved back the left field wall his power doesn't really play there anymore and he is more of a 15-20 homer guy with an ok but not great hit tool. The Os might want more than .270 with 20 homers from the 1b spot. But if anyone out of the 3 would be available it would be basallo.

I'm kinda scared to hear that. A too "noisy" hand load can hurt you and cause timing issues and it can make sense to quiet it down, especially when you are wild like Gary sheffield but vargas already has a pretty small and quiet hand load. I'm working with some hitters and I don't love the slight hand lift he does and would prefer the load to be more "connected" to the shoulders (more in line with the natural coiling of the hips and trunk) but it still isn't a very noisy load and with the sox "expertise" in player development I fear they will deaden his hands completely and kill the bit of power he has making him a total slap guy like the sox did with so many hitters

I also hate the lottery. Maybe have a lottery between the 4 worst teams or so, but that the guardians who had the 9th worst record and made the alds a year before (more a down year of some guys rather than being really bad) got the first pick imo is a distortion of competition.

I don't love the New rule. I get that eternal tanking is bad but when you are rock bottom you need 2-3 good picks in a row. The Os got 4 top5 picks in a row (1,2,5,1) which gave them a huge competitive advantage and a big part of their core (Rutschman, holliday, cowser). I would prefer it to not get more than 4 or 5 top10 picks in a decade rather than not twice in a row. Imo really bad teams should be able to tank hard for 3 years in a row, what you don't want is teams who tank all the time. Give teams an incentive to be good for 5-6 years before they rebuild and punish teams who tank, be good for 1 or 2 years and then sell off again (I know this happened to the sox too but kinda due to some catastrophic events and not intention to tank again quickly).

Burger has great power and good batted ball quality so when he is hot he can outslug his plate discipline issues but generally players with a 4:1 k:bb ratio that is backed up by a high 30s chase rate and low 80s zone contact don't tend to age well. That approach (Bad k to bb ratio and hoping that batted ball quality makes up for it has been the whole approach of the sox core during the short competitive run. Abreu, eloy, Tim, burger and others all had the same thing going. For abreu, anderson and for some rare times he was healthy for eloy it has worked but that approach can crash quickly if power or contact drop a little as we have seen. So I do think trading him made sense when you want to build for in 2-3 years. You can of course question the timing of the trade and the return they got.

I still understand trading him. When he is hot he is great but he also is a low on base percentage slugger with little defensive value and an extensive injury history. That type of Player usually doesn't age very well and even in their prime they can have long slumps. One month he might hit .190 with 1 homer and the next hit .300 with 9 homers. For now the bottom line has been fine (like 250 with 25-30 homers) but in his early 30s the 190 months could become more frequent and the 300 months less frequent and then he quickly is a replacement level player. The return for burger doesn't look good and they probably should have gotten a better return but the trade market for low OBP corner mashers is not really good in the modern game. I kinda understand the trade. Eder was struggling coming off surgery but before he was considered a high level pitching prospect. The alternative probably would have been to get a pair of lower variance high 40 fv guys (sox current 10-15 range in system) and maybe that would look better now but the ceiling of that is probably getting two bench bats or low leverage relievers. At least with Eder there was a chance he bounces back to #3 starter ceiling but of course also the risk he flames out of baseball and has no mlb career.

Maybe with a good September he can regain some value. But overall it has been a mess, sucks that he was first hurt and then bad so trade value was way down. And not being able to trade crochet wasn't great either.

Didn't quite happen unfortunately. Hopefully Robert has a good second half and get them a haul in the off season.

I think the fedde deal was fine. Not selling crochet and Robert is a risk though albeit I understand he didn't want to sell low. Now shut down crochet immediately for the season to eliminate risk of injury or performance decline, hope for a robert bounce back in the second half and then sell them for a good price in the off season.

I wonder if the failure to develop vaughn was related to covid though. Imo vaughn was rushed to the majors and probably partly because there was no milb season 2020. They probably were hoping to develop him enough at the alt site training complex but it obviously didn't work. We don't know if a full 2020 milb season could have developed vaughn better and of course the sox still could have let him play out 2021 in the minors and see if they can improve important KPIs like chase rate and ability to hit fly balls to the pull side before calling him up but covid didn't make it easier.

A top farm system is not a guarantee for anything but there was an article that showed that most teams who have the top ranked farm system tend to do well, I.e multiple playoff runs in the 6 to 7 years after they are Ranked best farm. Unfortunately I don't find that article anymore. Even the sox after they were ranked best farm around 2018 did make the playoffs twice and that was with a historical amount of bad luck (frequent long injuries to stars) and Bad decisions (TLR, free agency). So having the top or at least a top3 farm definitely would be a good start and hopefully there is a bit more luck and better decision making the next time

They are both really injury prone though and the injury proneness of core players like Robert, Eloy, moncada, Anderson was one of the big issues why the current core failed. Maybe it would be good to trade everyone and hope you get more lucky with the health of the next core.

The sox currently have a shallow System in depth but they have 5-6 top100 prospects depending on the outlet. Usually the top farm system has around 7-9 top 100 guys, for example at the height of their rebuild in 2018 the sox had 9 top100 by fangraphs. I think with a good deadline the sox could get there again. Crochet and Robert could add 2 top100 guys each, that would put them at 9-10 top 100 guys and a similar situation they where in 2018/19. Also trading guys like fedde can add some nice depth to the 10-20 range in the system I know the sox botched it big time last time and fell apart in a huge way but I guess the bright side was they still had some tradeable young guys left so they won't need a huge tank job for 5 years to bring the system back up to speed. Hopefully they will do a better job develop that young guys and surround them by better free agents but the re-rebuild could go quicker than expected, almost like that the padres did 7 or 8 years ago when preller traded away the farm, failed and then quickly changed course and rebuilt the system. This will he a bad season with likely more than 100 losses, maybe even 110 but at least the rebuild looks to be on track.

I think the main value is that it gets significant in a smaller sample size because there isn't the element of squaring up the ball. I think long term it will be mostly interesting to compare players to themselves and for example detect injuries quicker or detect physical decline for aging players.

Yes, that post is not very positive unfortunately. The sox are second last in average team batspeed in mlb only ahead of the blue jays. The sox average batspeed is 70.3 mph, league average is like 71.5, the leaders are the braves at 73.1. Eloy leads in batspeed at 74.5, sheets, Dejong, Lee and Pham are a little above average. Benintendi is really bad and also vaughn unfortunately below average. Luis Robert was not qualified but his speed is absolutely elite at 77 mph. The positive is that the sox have the shortest swings in the game at 7.1 ft which generally is positively correlated with K rate but negatively with power. Short swing is good if you are like the Os who are top 5 in swing shortness and batspeed but not if you swing slowly and try to slap the ball. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/bat-tracking Of course batspeed is not everything, some slow swingers like Kwan and arraez with elite bat to ball are good and some fast swingers are bad because of plate discipline issues but especially vaughn is kinda worrisome, he is a young big first baseman and shouldn't be below average in batspeed.

I wonder what is the issue with vaughn? At age 26 he still could easily have a breakout but a 100 wrc+ and -1 career war after 1700 career plate appearances is a big disappointment considering his draft prospect status. When he was drafted he was considered one of the best college performers of all time. His college career he hit 376/497/691 with 16% walks and 10% strikeouts and 50 Homers in about 700 PAs (a full mlb season). That profile was considered flawless, he walked, didn't whiff and hit for power. Then came minors time and he was pretty solid, his minors career he hit 278/386/472 with 8 Homers over about 250 PAs (like a low 20s homer pace). Power output was more ok than great at a 194 ISO but it was a small sample. Then he got called up pretty early. First year wasn't great but whatever it was his first year and he wasn't terrible and second year he improved to a 113 wrc+ and people thought he might be ready for a breakout but then came another ok but mediocre year I wouldn't read too much into his early struggles this year but the total body of work has been underwhelming. Strikeout rate is fine but he doesn't walk much considering his pedigree and hits too many ground balls to tap into his decent raw power. I don't think he is terrible but getting 260 with a 320 obp and 20 Homers is not what you hoped for when he was drafted. Is this a development failure? Should he have gotten more minors time? Or was he taught a wrong approach (contact oriented instead of "elevate and celebrate")? Or was this just a case of "don't draft a 1b this early because if he only is a 105 wrc+ guy he isn't all that valuable"?