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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.

Maybe it would make sense if we can trade Abreu and then get Carlos Santana from the Mariners while giving up minimal assets in return.

It seems like they both have some love for Misner.

Kameron Misner was a name I hadn't heard before who sounds really interesting. Big tools and potential but missed time with an injury. Sounds exactly like a guy who puts it together for their junior year and rises up the boards.

Didn't he break Barry Bonds freshman homerun record at ASU? Dude has serious power, but he really doesn't seem to get much draft love and even less than Vaughn.

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/45445/comparing-drc-ops-and-wrc/

https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/card/104176/eloy-jimenez The stat also seems to work for most minor league stat lines. Eloy posted a 150 DRC+ at AAA last year.

Yeah, like I said, its better than the other ones haha I also found it interesting how big the separation is between Ted Williams and everyone else.

I didn't see this anywhere else, so I figured I would mention it. Baseball Prospectus has just introduced a new hitting metric called Deserved Runs Created plus (DRC+). Its supposed to be more descriptive and have better predictive power than wRC+ or OPS+. It is like those in that it has 100 equal to league average, but I have found several players where the difference between the it and the old ones is more than 10 points. Its also nice because on each player's page it not only has their DRC+ but also the standard deviation amount so you can tell how confident they are in the number and what kind of range of possibilities seem plausible. They have also folded this number into their WAR calculations, so we can probably expect their numbers to be different than the other two. https://www.baseballprospectus.com/drc-deserved-runs-created/

So that sounds like it doesn't include Seager which means they still might have to use someone else on their roster to get rid of his contract.

Bobby Witt Jr just hit for the cycle in the gold medal game of the 18U Pan American championships. In a couple days cumulative stats from the whole tournament should be available.

Someone said Seager's team option turns into a player option if he is traded, so we should really count that $15mil as part of the salary because if he continues to struggle he would probably take it. If that is the case, then taking all of his salary would be about as much as Cano because the Mets sent contracts back and got money. So you could be looking at a deal very similar to the Cano deal if you want to build that from our prospects.

And was just non tendered by the Reds yesterday.

Robbie Grossman and Wilmer Flores are intriguing to me because they both have good platoon splits against lefties which we might be needing next year as we just let go of one of our best hitter against lefties. Jordan Patterson is also an interesting guy. Not much major league playing experience, but he put up some good numbers in AAA (though it was in a hitters park in the PCL) and he got claimed by several teams so other organizations think he might be something too.

He also said his source couldn't give him stuff anymore because it was starting to piss off the FO.

Well I dislike this. Four years of a decent catcher with good offensive numbers for two years of an already 30 year old reliever that won't even be that cheap in probably non-competitive years. Unless the FO really believes in Zavala and has moves lined up for us to be competitive this year, this really doesn't make much sense to me.

We will have another legit list next week with pipeline coming out with their first draft top 50. They will probably have Adley and Witt at the top and I think they like Vaughn.

That assumes that the Mariners retain 0 of Cano's contract and that he produces 0 value for the team. Considering he put up over 3 WAR last year and is projected for 3 WAR next year, that seems to be a bad assumption. So if you can get the M's to retain some of the contract and Cano produces some value, then the package would definitely have some surplus value.