Dominikk85

Don't forget free agent signings that didn't work (heyward, darvish, morrow). Cubs made a few bad decisions, but they still had a very nice run which shows how good this core is. What killed the cubs most was failure to develope pitchers. This year they invested massively into player development so we will see if that has an effect.

The dodgers also wouldn't let collins catch. They are very sabermetrically oriented and place a ton of value on framing and defense.

Well they can't go to 150+ this year because they need to leave some room for when arb salaries kick in. Unless they give out 1-2 year contracts that run out when arb for the core starts.

Good job by the marlins picking up aguilar and villar for cheap. Sure they come with bust potential but if everything goes right they could also combine for 60+ bombs and be nice trade candidates at the deadline plus neither is a long time burden on the payroll if they don't work.

Still was worth the gamble, a hundo plays if you can locate it which he wasn't able to do. Didn't work out but you can't teach velo so it was worth the gamble hoping he would find his command especially as the cost was minimal.

I hope they get to 180+ for 1-2 years at the end of the wIndow. Even if that means losing money they saved so much money in the rebuild that they should be able to go 20m into the negative for 2 years especially since they can save money after the window again if they start another rebuild in 2026 or so. Unfortunately many owners seem to not be willing to accept a single year loss of money even if the bottom line over 5 years is distinctly positive.

What do you think is realistic?

We obviously know they won't get close to the luxury tax anytime soon, but what is their payroll ceiling? I'm not talking 2019 but the ceiling during the next 5 years, obviously they need to allow for some room to go up as players hit arbitration. So far the highest payroll was around 130m in 2011 which is like 150m in today's baseball dollars. That was an outlier though, other than that the highest payrolls were like 115-120. Do you think a 150m payroll is realistic towards the end of the window? Talking about what will happen not what should happen of course.

Of course. But the point is even as a 2 win player he is worth that plus there is some upside albeit also some downside

I agree. The Os could have kept him and then traded him at the deadline maybe adding 2-3m to the deal and get a decent (but probably not great) prospect. The Os have a front office vultured from the Astros which is pretty smart so this is probably on the owner who doesn't want to pay him. But then again to be fair angelos wasn't that cheap, his payroll was 150M in 2016 and even 175m in 2017 which isn't bad for a dump like Baltimore. Maybe angelos paid some extra money for those years and now wants to get this money back while they tank.

I find the cock fight thing worse than punching a guy in the face, that is serious animal cruelty. In which place are cock fights still allowed?

I agree. I showed in my post above that the deal is about 10 mil under water (aging curve projection suggests 3/40) which isn't ideal but 10 mil over 3 years (3.3 per year) shouldn't cripple the payrol. The deal isn't great but it isn't that negative, at least not in a manner that should cripple the sox.

Do you think driveline guys getting hired by mlb while staying at driveline is an issue? Driveline announced for example they are doing a biomechanical study with justin stone who works for the cubs. Could it be an issue that driveline sucks knowledge out of several orgs and thus teams lose an edge? Then again driveline simply has that power currently.

I think this means vaughn is service timed until late april 2021 (unless he demolishes the minors and sox compete by august 2020) and then abreu goes to DH. The deal isn't that terrible (after all just 3 years ending at 36) but imo it is 5-10m too much and third year should have been a mutual or team option. Fangraphs has him projected for 2 war next year, so using the half a win age discount per year after age 30 that is 4.5 war or about 40m value. So the sox probably overpay him by 10m here. Still not crippling, that is just like 3.5 mil overpay per year, so it shouldn't ruin the payroll.

I wouldn't worry about the early sample that much. Even vlad junior struck out a lot initially and he is a great contact hitter, that is not uncommon the first 300-400 PAs at a new level. Still we can probably expect a low 30s K rate going forward which is a lot. Depends on how much game power he develops. If it is 30+ bombs that can still play.

He can definitely hit enough for a starting catcher if you give him time. The problem is that the sox don't seem to see him as a catcher as does longenhagen. So if it is a DH the bat is Still ok, but the question is if if it is more than average. His OPS was super high but often the milb ops of super high walk guys who lack either power or hit won't hold in mlb because pitchers there throw strikes unless you force them out of the zone. Tyler white is a good example of this. Slightly different hitter (more hit, less power than collins) but also a guy who posted 900+ ops regularly based on astronomical walk rates (coupled with like a 270 avg and like 15-20 bombs) and this didn't hold in mlb. Still think he will be an 800+ ops guy in mlb but the value of that depends on if he can catch or not.

the problem with Collins is that his skill set is very heavy leaning on the walk. He has some pop but 25 homers is not going to cut it at dh/1b when he is hiting 220 even with his elite walk rate. So he either needs to improve his hit tool to about .250 or improve the power to 30+ bombs. If he was a legitimate catcher it would have been easier of course.

i don't understand why he wasn't playing every day last year. Yeah he struggled but sox weren't playing to win and they could have let him battle through it and see what you have got. I they had given him 300 PAs they would know more now

Do you think that Chris correa, cards employee who went to jail for hacking astros database was right? He claimed he did it because he thought luhnow brought proprietary information with him from the cards to the astros.

This. A Comp pick is very valuable but it "only" gets you a 45 fv prospect which is projected to like 1.5 war per year. This is very valuable and gives you a larger pool too but it is not a huge difference maker. Not worth to give that up for a mediocre player but for a star it is easily, the window is starting to run with eloy, moncada, giolito all started their clock and not worth waiting to pile up more marginal prospects, the core is there, now it is about depth. Imo the best would be to get a star and 2 more QO guys. Yeah it wouldn't be great to not have a 2nd to 4th round pick and the corresponding smaller pool, but better to give up a 2nd, 3rd and 4th than 3 2nd rounders in years even if that makes one draft look meh. So if you give up a comp pick, give up more than 1 since the later comp picks come at a discount. The math is pretty simple. With 3 separate comp picks you lose 3 second rounders. This is 3 45s and about a total of 5.5 mil or so of pool money. Tank 3 picks in 1 year and you lose a 45, a 40 and a 35 prospect and about a combined 3.5 mil of slot money. So while it looks bad to totally destroy a draft there is a big incentive to sign either no comp pick guys or more than one at once.

Soto got 1.5 mil though, not a low bonus signing. Still you could have gotten like 10 Jose altuves for the250k:). Albeit you have to consider that this is rare and like 95% of the sub 50k signings never make it past A ball.

What strategy would you prefer at 11: Getting a polished and skilled guy with limited upside but a solid chance to become a bottom of the line-up bat or back of the rotation starter (with the floor of being a decent bench bat or pen arm) or a high upside guy with a serious flaw and bust potential who could be a plus player or bust in the minors? At 11 you probably can't have ceiling and floor (those guys are gone top5) so you have to decide. Is the core good enough to start supplementing with good depth or do they need to try to find one more star even if it means risking a bust?

10 cent beer night was also great:).

I think 11 is a good spot to take a falling pitcher, maybe even a HS guy. The top college bats and the super high upside HS bats are probably gone by then but you could still get a HS pitcher who is a top4 overall talent because teams shy away from that due to the risk.

A mlb hitting coach won't coach that much mechanics anyway. If he sees a glaring flaw it will be assessed but you are not rebuilding complete swings at the ML level. Regarding the approach waiting for the right pitch is good but everyone says that, even little league coaches tell their kids to wait for a fat one, the tough thing is how to decide this while the ball is halfway home when many pitches are still almost in the same tunnel. Basically the idea is to be very aggressive at the heart of the plate but giving the outer 2 inch of the plate (all 4 edges, but slightly depending on your strengths) to the pitcher like illustrated here. But still it is easier said than done, many have the plan but can't execute. Some teams use virtual reality to practice pitch recognition were you are basically shown the first half of the pitch flight and then you have to predict were it ends up. I have used a software that is called uhit. Basically a mobile phone game and you are batter view and a pitcher releases the ball and you have to touch the screen for every strike. If you touch the screen late it is count as a miss and then the software calculates your correct guess percentage and reaction time. Over time I got better learning to recognize the angle out of the hand. You see a too high pitch comes out level and a too low pitch shoots down too steep and you see a curve popping up. Still I never really got to the top of their leader board or close to it so there probably is some talent involved too. I know the Dodgers use stuff like that (probably more sophisticated than uhit) not sure if the sox are open for that stuff tough.