Dominikk85

If he is really good it doesn't matter but if the bat is a bit worse it could end on the short side of the platoon while a lefty platoon hitter still has value since 70% of mlb pitchers are righties. But if he hits like konerko or abreu it doesn't matter of course.

I think 35 is a bit rich for now. fangraphs has him around 50 now. But if he rakes in high A for 300+ PAs (say 1000 ops) he could move into the top30 rather quickly.

It depends. Do the sox want to do a swing change (jd martinez or donaldson style) with him to get more loft? Or do they hope that a couple more pounds of muscle and the juiced ball will give him enough pop? If they want to attempt the former which might increase his ceiling but takes more times and creates a risk it completely flops they might keep him in the minors but if they just want to let him hit they can call him up anyway.

I would think so. Of course he had to pay taxes, health care and other stuff as well as paying his agent but still like 8 mil or so of the 15 should be left. Of course you can waste any amount of money with bad investments, expensive divorces, IRS penalties and such stuff. But if you are smart you should be set with that money.

Definitely, the top college bats are usually ready within a year. However the question is whether you want to start his clock. If the sox have another bad start next spring they might want to wait a little longer until 2021. But if he rakes in june next year and the sox compete he might be up in august to help down the stretch.

I think only if he gets hurt and misses a month or more. He had a long college season and can use the rest in fall.

Usually this will sort out itself. Abreu is a FA and probably won't be resigned and others get hurt, bust or get traded.

The level is probably a bit easy for a college bat that advanced and they could have started him in high A but nothing wrong with gaining a bit of confidence by destroying that level. But good they didn't start him in rookie ball that would have been too much. There Really is no rush for him, he will probably reach AA by the end of the year anyway or they so it like the cubs with schwarber who played out the first year in A+ and then started the second year in AA. I could see him destroying A and AA similar to schwarber

Also probably prospect fatigue. Was hyped as the best prospect in baseball for like 2-3 years so people were a little annoyed and then when he was mediocre for 2 years in the majors he was declared a bust. Will take sime time to rebuild his stock.

Every team has such a move. The "smartest team in baseball" astros released JD Martinez. The cubs traded josh Donaldson.

Most owners hate paying non baseball personnel. Except for the GMs the pay for analysts and coaches is pretty bad. Thus they will probably prefer one of boddy's assistant coaches to get 80% of the performance for 20% of the cost. I think that is pretty stupid, player dev can generate so much money so that it is worth spending on it. Most owners don't see it that way because player dev doesn't show results until 3-4 years later and even then it is not certain.

Kyle boddy also posted he would like to be a pitching coordinator. He has a whole lot of demands though like he needs to have 100% of what is going on, limited travel days and ability to continue to be driveline CEO. Many GMs probably wouldn't like being dictated that much.

He just needs to grow into like 40 grade power (say 13 homers and a 140 iso).

Absolutely. Madrigal has a classic out of sequence swing that starts with pushing the hands forward. Also a too flat swing plane. This stuff can be fixed, I'm currently working with a HS player on the same issue but you need to fully commit to that change and accept that you might get worse for a couple months. This is not an easy thing to do though especially if you had as much success in the amateurs as madrigal had. Bregman did such a change with the astros but not everyone is willing to do it and there is also some risk that a swing change doesn't work. Don't forget that he has taken 10000s of swings with his old swing, to overcome that muscle memory it takes months of work with total conviction.

No.if he doesn't sign you lose that slot money from your pool and the slot money is added to next years pool (as long you offered a certain minimum percentage of slot value to the player).

Then the sox wouldn't sign him and get that pick again next year.

Vaughn definitely will sign, the question is just for how much. Maybe the HS guys wait for vaughn to sign to see how much they can get.

That is pretty normal if you graduate like 5 or 6 top 100 prospects in the last 3 years. Kopech, giolito, lopez, moncada, eloy all graduated so having like 5 top 100 left is pretty decent. Also Rutherford, hansen, dunning and fullmer have been ranked top100 by some publications but it didn't work out. The cubs systems wasn't great either after their guys all graduated. You have to look at prospects plus young mlb guys, nobody graduates tons of guys and remains a top system, farms are cyclical. The big issue w the sox is not lack of prospect depth but the rate of injuries and underperformance, their young guys simply didn't hit immediately like the Braves or cubs kids. Fortunately gio and moncada seem to have turned the corner, sometimes it takes time.

Fangraphs hasn't updated player grades, they just added the draftees. I'm pretty sure they will bump robert up in the midseason ranking especially if he can stay healthy.

Vaughn now ranked 46th in the top 100, third behind Robert and madrigal in the sox system. Other draftees: Rutschman 9 Witt 38 Bleday 45 Abrams 62 Greene 85 Pretty unusual that only 6 draft guys make the top 10 right away usually it is at least 8-9. Others will make it based on performance but so far it looks like a pretty weak draft. This year only had 7 50s at fangraphs last year it was more than 10.

The biggest factor is how much power the nerds get. Many teams have sabermetrics guys but then the final say has a non stat guy using his gut feel. Similarly a team might have a "data hitting coach" but then have traditional hitting coaches who just ignore him and teach what they think is right. The great strength of luhnow is that he creates power for those guys, if an old school coach postures like "i have 30 years experience in pro ball, we do it my way" he gets fired while in other teams following the saber guys is more optional than mandatory.

The riskiest guy from the top 10 rounds is probably dalquist. Some late rounders probably won't sign but dalquist is the riskiest of the relevant guys unless they really lowball Thompson.

Sox currently have the 9th worst run diff so maybe they could get another top10 pick with some luck. Teams like Baltimore, KC, Detroit, Miami are way to bad to catch them but about 6-12 are pretty open.

At least the sox got two progressive hitting guys with lisle and johanson. Not sure how it is with pitching though.

Weil they have already quite some depth and took a quite "safe" guy with Vaughn so maybe gambling on some upside isn't the worst think