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The team I saw him most linked to before this rumor was the Rangers at #8 and they just had their own new rumor today with it coming out that they might take Kody Hoese. A couple people saw him taking BP in their stadium today. Maybe the reason they moved from Baty to Hoese is that they heard Baty might be gone by their pick, which would seem to fit with this new Sox rumor.

I know high school baseball stats can be useless, but Baty did lead the nation in home runs with 19 while also hitting .615 with 44 walks and only 9 strikeouts in what I think is a pretty good Texas division.

Super old for his class (like 19.5 y/o) HS 3B from Texas with huge power and good hit tools. Been rising all spring with last I heard being he could go #8 for underslot. If we do this, it is almost definitely because we are trying to float guys. Edit: pipeline has him ranked #17 and FG has him #10. FG says his hit/power combo is comparable to present Gorman, but I would like to add the caveat that he is actually about 5 months older than Gorman.

Uh... so apparently Brett Baty might be in consideration for the Sox at #3. https://www.mlb.com/news/latest-news-2019-mlb-draft?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage

Maybe its more of a Trea Turner.

I don't know if Colome is going to get the return most of you guys seem to expect. Yeah, his ERA is good right now, but the advanced stats seem to indicate he is in for a ton of regression. He has a .185 wOBA which is in the top 1% of the league, but he has a .308 xwOBA. He has a 1.59 ERA, but a 4.23 xFIP. Those huge spreads seem to indicate a good amount of luck and good defense so far. His xFIP- is only 94 (meaning he has only been 6% better than MLB average) while his .308 xwOBA is only .010 better than league average. Maybe he will be able to sustain numbers better than his expected stats, but even then in his career he has only out performed his xFIP by 1 (right now its 2.64) and his xwOBA by .025 (right now its .123). Maybe we can sell high right now to a dumb team (Mets?), but I just don't expect us to get a ton in return when we do offload him. Of course there are other ways for us to increase our return by packaging a smaller piece or eating money, but I'm not going to factor those in when trying to figure out what kind of return I would want from these teams.

The new FG podcast came out and its mostly about the draft. They mentioned Fletcher as someone that could be heading to Vandy because he has a high number and was really under scouted because he reclassified late and it was rainy in Maine so teams didn't really get many good looks at him. I wonder if he is the over slot target that we are trying to save money on our first pick for.

I would do the same. I guess maybe we can say we are going to spend big on it in the offseason considering we have all that Machado money to spend. Damnit, now I kind of want Abrams again. F it, reverse auction and take whoever goes further under slot.

Here is how I feel right now (this might change by lunch): Abrams has tantalizing skills and could be an 80 runner with plus game power if everything goes right. He is the kind of guy you lose sleep over having passed on if he hits. If he is destroying the majors five years from now, we will all be talking about how we all wanted him but KW made us take someone else (because we have to blame KW for everything). However, is he a transcendent player? A type of guy who only comes around every few years? Or is he just this year's toolsy HS pick that everyone falls in love with until 3 days after the draft when the next toolsy guy is identified in the next class? Because to me, it seems like Vaughn might be that type of player, or at least that type of bat. 60 hit/60 power is a pretty rare combo that would be hard to replicate whereas I think you can find some "discount" CJ Abrams on day 2. Maurice Hampton, Jerrion Ealy, Tre Fletcher, Connor Walsh, Dasan Brown, James Beard, Hudson Head, Glenallen Hill, hell even college guys like Greg Jones, Jake Sanford, and Jordan Brewer are all tooled up guys that could be something special. The difference with all of these guys is that we wouldn't have to pass on a possibly transcendent bat to get them. If the new strategy really is "loud tools" then there are plenty of guys with tools that can approach Abrams, but how many have the combo of tools to approach Vaughn?

Callis had an interesting point on the pipeline podcast last night in regards to the rumors of Rutschman falling because of a supposed shoulder injury. The point was basically that even if there is a shoulder injury and suddenly he becomes a below average arm, he still should probably go #1 because he has the hit/power combo with plus receiving in an era where players don't really steal as much anyway.

Would love a Fletcher pick if we can get him in the third or later. Check out his swing numbers, 99th percentile for all of them. https://www.perfectgame.org/Players/Playerprofile.aspx?ID=460960 This might be one of those cases of teams just not having enough info to feel comfortable with him and that causing him to go lower than he should.

Wow, that is just crazy to me. He is a 6'4" lefty running plus to plus-plus times with 100+ mph exit velos and a strong arm in the outfield. This is a comment from PBR from ~6 weeks ago:

I think it was the PBR podcast where they said he reminds some scouts of David Price. Obviously still very raw, but that is the kind of upside on him. Also, does BA have Ethan Vecrumba ranked? He is an Indiana kid that had some numbers that stood out during the Super 60, but I never really heard his name much.

Yep. One is an OF/1B named Jason Hodges (FG #133). Dude is built and has some ridiculous power, but doesn't make enough contact right now. Other guy is Kendal Ewell who seems to be more of a raw five tool type. There is a decent amount of talent from the area in the draft. Antoine Kelly (FG #104) is a pitcher at Wabash Valley JC who is played HS at Maine East. Also in the area is a catcher out of St. Laurence named Matt McCormick (FG #121) as well as a LHP out of Nazareth named Michael Prosecky and a SS out of St. Rita named Jalen Greer, both of whom are ranked as other HS guys in the FG rankings. https://www.prepbaseballreport.com/news/IL/Illinois-2019-Rankings-Updated-0834257619

So maybe relevant to this conversation, it looks like one of the articles from FG draft week is titled "Swing Changers: The Shift to Emphasizing Big Tools and Player Dev". Article is scheduled to come out Friday, but I think just from the title we can basically surmise what its going to say about the draft philosophy of good dev teams.

There are two outfielders at Marist that have pretty loud tools and there is a kid from Indiana named Ethan Vecrumba who put up some really good testing numbers. Also, more towards the top of the draft, Dasan Brown is from Canada and is kind of like Kelenic in that he didn't play HS ball his senior year so it was tough to judge competition. Brown actually faced a bunch of pros in the competitions that most scouts saw, so he might have looked relatively over matched. He is also one of the youngest guys in the class, not turning 18 until late September. I think Tre Fletcher is also interesting because he is from Maine, played some prep school in New York, went back to Maine and reclassified to this class from 2020. So cold weather, under scouted area, and lack of record like other 2019 prospects.

Some stuff on Valdez from an article about south florida draft prospects: https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/high-school/article230900279.html

Interesting to note that the mock says the Sox have interest in Yordys Valdes who FG have at #79 and pipeline has at #82. Maybe he is our primary third round target or a backup, underslot second round option to try to get whoever falls to the third round.

I love that mock. Heading into Monday this is so exciting. There is a real chance Adley doesn't go 1, and even if he and Witt are gone by our pick it looks like we are going upside heavy. I think it was the FG guys a while back said something about there being more HS guys this year that might be willing to take lower amounts, so we might even be able to get a few more Bryce Bush types. He was someone I wanted us to target if we took Vaughn. He is currently #28 on FG and #29 on pipeline. I know people like comparing Abrams to Tim Anderson, but Hampton seems like a better comparison to Anderson, though in CF.

Not much considering it sounds like he will go to Miami @4 if we don't take him.

New MLBPipeline podcast with an interview with Vaughn and some notes on guys rising in the new top 200.

Relevant note from today's FG chat:

If you are under 25 and/or haven't played 6 professional seasons, then you are under the international bonus pool caps just like all the 16 year old latin american players. The interesting part is that if Stewart is under contract for 6 years, then he should be a 25 year old free agent that is not restricted to the pool amounts and I do not believe he would have to be posted or have teams pay a release because he would already be a free agent. So that would make him a 25 year old free agent pitcher. Teams would probably be willing to pay pretty good money for that.

This is so interesting to me. It seems like this might be the international path that so many want to see happen in basketball. If MLB players are getting paid very little for their best years, maybe some of the HS guys decide to forgo college and just go straight to Japan, make real money for 5 or 6 years, and then come over to MLB when they reach international free agency at 25. Or maybe they have an agreement to post him in a few years when he is still under the bonus pool rules but is closer to the majors so he doesn't have to spend as much time in the shitty living conditions of the minors while still getting the same amount of money he wanted from the draft.

It might be a matter of semantics, but I disagree that its always good to have a high contact rate. Like its been said, it could lead to low percentage contact. Its good to have great barrel control and a low swing and miss rate, but to me that is different than just a high contact rate.