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That's an expensive spaceholder.

You don't NEED to keep the guy on the roster. You just need to do that to keep him. If one of our guys is better, then we can sell him back to the original team, at which point the tryout would have only cost $50,000. So basically we decided not to pay $50,000 to tryout the third best rule 5 pick available.

I just deleted the huge rant I had written. I am going to try to take a more level headed approach to this. This probably isn't that big of a deal. It just angers me that we won't even take a chance on a guy. We don't have the huge payroll like big market teams, but we don't take chances like small market teams need to do to succeed.

Its stuff like this that makes me hate JR. We can pay barely anything to take a shot on someone but instead we sell our pick so JR can get more money. Same thing with the Bulls and their second round pick a couple years ago. We are just lucky we can't see our actual draft picks for cash because if MLB allowed that we probably wouldn't have a pick in the top 10 rounds.

They move guys around on the rosters all the time in the offseason. I think some of it has to do with the rule 5.

Didn't we do exactly that last year? Sold our pick for cash to the Rangers?

NOMBRE TEMP EQUIPO GP IP PA AB H 1B 2B 3B HR R RBI AVG SLG% OBP BB HBP S SF SO OPS Lazaro Leal 2017 Algodoneros 81 715 351 310 86 54 22 4 6 47 40 0.277 0.432 0.351 36 1 1 3 78 0.783

Also, according to the description from this video, he was the MVP of the all star game.

Video I found of one of his at bats in Mexico. From what I can find he has only played one game this year, so I am trying to find stats from last year. I don't know how we are signing him though because I thought there was still the ban on any Mexican league signings because of the lack of posting agreement. Maybe we got around that by signing a guy who is technically in their minors and not actually in the Mexican League. He seems to have a good body (6'2" 205 lbs) and decent speed. Considering he is still in their minors, he probably isn't that advanced with the bat even though he is 21 about to be 22. Also, funny coincidence. I believe his full name is Lazaro Leal Rivera. So he is our second Cuban Laz Rivera.

If Boras is still willing to talk to us then it means that it doesn't matter if an offer has been made because he knows we are willing to hit his price. All this probably means is that we haven't put forward a formal contract offer yet.

I was going to say this. Really one of the better player interviews I have heard.

I would be interested, and with the new posting agreement the fee is only a percentage of the contract, so nothing crazy, but it doesn't seem like the Sox have any interest. There have been a ton of teams connected to him either by having scouts at his games or people speculating who he will meet with and I have never seen the Sox be mentioned. Even if we were interested, it sounds like he prefers the west coast and especially San Francisco, who have a mutual interest in him.

That Bowden report was basically that the Sox have tons of money and have met with Harper and really want him. It didn't sound like he knew anything that wasn't already out there.

Yep. I was going to include that but I didn't know what the number was.

He did, but it was in a smaller sample and he switched leagues so he may have had the advantage of batters not being familiar with him. That said, Hahn did just make mention of his ground ball ability, so it seems like they like him for what he is and not what he could be changed into, so the Glasnow comparison probably doesn't matter for Nova.

He is actually fairly cheap (~$7mil), has a team option so the team has control if he does well and no costs if he doesn't, and I don't think teams really care about steroid suspensions once the player can play games again.

I'm not. Apparently the Pirates are one of the last teams really stressing two seamers down in the zone as the basis of pitching and making all of their guys do it. As soon as he went to the Rays his velo and spin rate spiked and his fastball location was much higher in the zone, which seems to indicate the Rays had him move to what most of the league is doing with high spin rate four seamers up in the zone. That change, and some others I can't remember, were quick fixes that an analytically inclined team like the Rays were able to easily identify as problems and things they could fix that would make him look better than what his numbers with the Pirates would suggest. This is actually why I have some hope about the Nova trade. The Pirates aren't just not good, they are actively making some of their pitchers worse by making them all use the same pitching strategy even if it doesn't play to their strengths.

I also feel like if we get him then we would end up trading Castillo at some point which would probably get a return to offset or more the lost pick.

The MiLB portion works the same as the major league portion, but with a AAA phase and a AA phase. If a player is eligible for the rule 5, then they are eligible for all phases. Just like how players on the 40 man are protected from the major league portion (and thus also the minor league portion), players on the AAA roster are protected from the AAA and AA phases of the minor league draft and likewise with players on the AA roster being protected from the AA phase of the draft. So whatever roster you are on, you are protected from that phase of the draft and any below it (ML, then AAA, then AA). However, unlike the major league portion of the draft, players can be moved more freely between the minor league rosters. Because of this, teams will usually put their best rule 5 eligible players (that aren't on the 40 man) on the AAA roster before the draft so that the only way a team can take them would be to take them in the major league portion of the draft. The more free movement also allows teams to move players that they select in the draft between levels without having to return the player to the original team as they would if they took a ML rule 5 drafted player off their roster. This was the case with us last year where we selected Mercedes in the AAA portion of the draft but then sent him to Winston-Salem. Because of this easier movement, it is even more important to protect eligible players by putting them on the AAA or AA teams before the draft. However, you won't see much coverage about this movement because it really doesn't mean anything besides protecting the player and more than likely the player will be moved back down to where the team thinks is appropriate right after the draft. So overall, the minor league portion of the draft is less used because it is easier to protect players and thus fewer prospects with any real potential are left unprotected.

Seems like he is basically an infield version of Adam Engel.

Didn't Hahn say we weren't going to spend stupidly just to get incrementally better? Because getting in a bidding war for an average reliever on the wrong side of 30 seems to be exactly that.

The date to add people to the 40 has passed. At the date of the deadline we still had Avi and Davidson on the roster.

Abreu for Seth Beer, straight up. /s

As others said, its probably a check in to see what the asking price is in case we get Harper and decide to go for it. Who knows, maybe they really love one of our guys who we aren't as enamored with.

The fangraphs guys were saying there was a little less worry about his contact issues after his team USA stretch last month. I think one of them said they talked about it in the podcast that should be out soon. After watching a couple of the games and looking at the stats, I am much less concerned about his contact but much more worried about CJ Abrams and Riley Greene. My personal top 5 right now is probably 1) Rutchsman, 2a) Witt, 2b) Vaughn, 3a) Josh Jung, 3b) Corbin Carroll, with Kameron Misner as the wild card.