Dominikk85

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.

Longenhagen has him at 60 raw which is a bit light for a top 1b prospect (60 game is good but most have raw power half to a full grade below game power so most 60 raw guys are more 50-55 game guys) however he also thinks he has the bat control to get to all of his raw power. I think Vaughn will be able to hit 30+ but he isn't a pete Alonso type of pop guy. But if he averages 27 homers, .285 avg and a .370 obp in his prime years that would be great, basically what they got from abreu in a slightly different fashion (more walk, bit less on the power and avg).

To be fair Cole's value was down after 2 consecutive 4 era seasons. Still a bad trade going for older mlb ready guys instead of younger guys with upside. I guess the pirates thought they would get 2 cheap "safe" 2 WAR guys but that didn't quite work that way.

I think with Vaughn it will come down to how good the sox are. Vaughn will be in the minors at least till mid july and if the sox then are good he might come up but if they are 15 games out of first place it might be mid april 21 for service time reasons.

Unfortunately sox had some luck this year, 72 wins but run differential pointed to a nice 69 wins which would have been 6th-7th pick. Not saying winning is bad but I'd rather have run differential luck in a year winning mid 80s plus games so it makes a difference.

No. Just one year of control plus he is really expensive that year so no real bargain either. By surplus value he would be worth about a 50 and a 40 fv prospect but the red sox would probably want much more than that not because of baseball ops but because that would alienate fans if he got traded for a prospect that becomes a 4th outfielder. The red sox likely would want a top30 overall in baseball and I wouldn't give that up for a year of even an mvp candidate in his prime. Sure you could extend him but I doubt mookie would do that.

Reds have hired boddy. Kyle tweeted he remains the boss of driveline but probably leaves most of the work to his employees. Driveline can continue to work for other orgs but he personally has an exclusive contract and can't work with other orgs. The cubs apparently made an offer too but lost. I wonder if theo didn't want to make all those concessions to kyle because usually if you work for mlb orgs it means 100% exclusive and confidential and with this setup internal info might flow over driveline into other orgs. But then again what can people steal from cubs pitching development:)? Definitely a blow for the Cubs who rank dead last in the majors in homegrown pitching war the last 3-4 years and desperately need to develope some pitchers.

But why didn't he come back this year? Prognosis was he comes back this summer. If he didn't heal in several months what do we expect to happen over the winter? He basically had rest for over a year now so is another 6 months changing everything?

Well the only guys in that offense from the 2019 mlb team that matter are anderson, moncada, eloy, hopefully collins and depending on whether they bring him back abreu. Still anderson, eloy and to some extend abreu are bad plate discipline guys with bad k to bb rates. Collins and moncada also whiff but also have a good eye. Madrigal should help some while robert also is a bad plate discipline guy. However while I prefer guys with low K-BB numbers it is the overall production that counts. High walk and low K rate helps but the only thing that matters is your wRC+ and not how you do it. I mean the angels had the best plate discipline in baseball this year (lowest o swing, 3rd highest contact) but it got them nowhere but the twins had bad plate discipline (19th contact , 20th chase) and they rake. Don't get me wrong, better plate discipline is better but it is the overall output that counts. It doesn't matter if you have high on base table setters and power guys to drive them in like 10 years ago, it is basically just team with the highest average wRC+ wins. Still player dev should of course work on plate discipline as a better K-BB rate helps but there isn't just one way to success.

Would like it. His act wears off after some time but he can definitely motivate players. He does make some managing mistakes but overall it isn't that bad. He has a quite proven record and averaged like 95 wins with the cubs. This year it was pretty bad but it was also not his fault rizzo, baez and kimbrel all got injured at the same time and most free agents theo signed the last years sucked. I think the Cubs are also right to move on from him though, his extreme positivity and motivational act might have worn off and the cubs now might need now less of a players manager like maddon but more of a discipline guy.

Sure he is terrible this year with a 5 Era and tons of bombs but he did actually improve both his K and his BB rate compared to last year and while his K rate still isn't great he has some games that suggest more upside. Of course he also has those terrible 4 walk, 3 bomb for 7 runs games but giolito was literally the worst pitcher last year. Of course this is highly unlikely and most 5 era pitchers stay bad but could you see him improving big time and especially control his bb and HRs?

Baseball doesn't need it badly but I would like robo ump if it is good. Interestingly fangraphs interviewed a catcher and a pitcher in a pod and they didn't like it much and said it would not only call strange strikes but also be inconsistent which is exactly what it should avoid. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/effectively-wild-episode-1433-a-pitcher-and-catcher-report/ Maybe it was selective perception by the guys but maybe the system needs still some improvement. Stats however didn't change much with Robo ump, Ks and runs the same and walks only slightly down with robo ump compared to real ump in the first half. That would mean impact isn't that big

I think they will start him at high A and then promote him quickly after like 20 games or so if he demolishes that level.

Fangraphs article on him. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/eloy-jimenez-wraps-up-year-one/ His plate discipline wasn't great with 26/6 k/bb% but as I wrote in comments I think he can improve to about 20/8 which also would be in line with his milb numbers and make him really dangerous.

Especially since they are not playing for anything. Maybe in a pennant race he would have come back for a start but no reason now. If anything lose a few more games so you get that 6 or 7 pick. Not saying they should intentionally lose, you just not risk a worse injury to a core player just to win 2 more games.

Rutschman's first season wasn't that impressive. He had a good k/bb rate like vaughn but only 3 HR and a 770 ops. I wonder if that is related to his illness costing him power.

To be fair the red sox only did trade for 19-19, the extension came after that and has to be viewed seperately. 17-19 sale produced 17 war so it already paid off. Still by total war the sox could win the trade easily but of course concentrated war also means something. If moncada and kopech become stars I think it is a win win for both because the red sox couldn't wait for moncada and kopech to get good. For the sox that move was correct too of course even though they would have liked moncada to be immediate impact like acuna or alvarez but if he's good now that's fine too.

He also built a pretty impressive home grown Core with bryant, schwarber, baez, contreras and Russell. First FA signings also weren't bad with zobrist, lester and lackey but then it went downhill after 2017. Still a good team but in 2016 writers were talking about a "best of all time " kind of dynasty but this didn't really happen as some signings flopped and of course they were unable to develope any pitchers so they needed to trade their farm every season. They are still good but Dodgers clearly overtook them as the best nl team so not the anticipated dynasty

Does anyone else epstein did a terrible job the last 3 years? He did a great job building that core and even a few good signings but the last years were pretty bad. -he flopped about 250+m in free agent signings: heyward, darvish, chatwood, morrow, davis - he gutted the farm: no gm traded away more talent. You could argue the Chapman deal worked as he won a ws but the quintana trade didn't work all that well. Sure he brought a historical ws to chicago but what was so different from dombrowski who also won a WS and gutted the farm?

Hahn did bring analytics people. The question is who has the final decision. It seems like with the sox using those analytics informations is a bit optional. You are provided with them and you are free to use them but if you prefer gut feel in a decision that is fine too. Especially on field coaching (hitting coaches...) it is often still a bit more old school. The difference with the astros is they enforce using the analytics and luhnow is willing to clean out an entire department if they resist.