bighurt574

3 straight years at low-A, hmmm. https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=mcreyn000jon

Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing....

I can't see WAS letting Rendon get away at this point.

No one here has any idea whether BOS would want Madrigal. He's probably one of the more polarizing prospects out there. Just because he's a small guy doesn't make him the next Dustin Pedroia. If Madrigal develops 15-20 HR power, we'd all be thrilled. Realistically, I'd think Vaughn would have to be the centerpiece of a Betts trade, and no thanks. Trading for Betts really only makes sense if you're going all out for a world series in 2020. Otherwise, just bid on him when he hits the open market next year.

I wouldn't trade for Betts. We're not going to win that bidding war to sign him long term, and I wouldn't want to give up top prospects for one year of his services (it's going to take a lot more than Steele Walker as the headliner, lol). If we want to bid on him though, wait a year and give it a shot I guess. I don't see how we put together a trade for Betts that doesn't involve Robert or Vaughn. Not sure Madrigal would even get it done, sort of depends on how BOS would view him as a prospect. But without those 3, there's such a big dropoff in our system. BOS would almost certainly find a better deal elsewhere.

In Year 5 with Oakland. I'll hold it against the Sox for trading away a 3 WAR player (what Semien basically was in his first four years with Oakland). I'm not going to hold it against them for trading away an 8 WAR player. There isn't a Sox fan alive who thought Semien was an 8 WAR player.

Pretty crazy rookie class this year.

When the Cubs traded for Castellanos, there was a graphic showing all his flyouts at Comerica that would be HR's at Wrigley. Not sure how much the change of ballpark helped, but he's obviously doing quite well and probably playing himself out of our price range. Sure, we can pay up, but knowing the Sox, that would be the big acquisition of the offseason, and I think we'd all be pretty disappointed. I can't see them forking out the cash for Castellanos and a top starter. Any guesses on Castellanos's next contract? $75-80M over 5 years? 2020 will be his age 28 season, so he's still relatively young.

Is there a video of the Goins play anywhere? Missed it.

There's been some updated top 100 lists that are relatively recent. He generally seems to fall in the 5-20 range. MLB Pipeline has him at #5 behind Franco, Mize, Gore, and Adell. That's the highest I've seen.

I don't know, I know it's a small sample, but Vaughn didn't exactly dominate A/A+ this year. I'm still expecting Vaughn to spend all of 2020 in AA/AAA and get the call-up a few weeks into 2021.

Yeah, the silver lining is that finding guys who are even a game or two above replacement level would be a huge upgrade. Then plug in Robert in CF, Madrigal at 2B, and sign a TOR starter and we're all set....

It will never happen, but interesting comp idea. There are all sorts of large law, accounting, and consulting firms that manage to divvy up their profits every year among partners based on a variety of performance-based factors (e.g., billing, business generation, etc.). There's really no reason MLB players couldn't collectively do the same.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/27539755/worst-performances-baseball-every-position

Well, sure, they could pay him, but I’d rather they spend that kind of money elsewhere.

League-average OPS in 2016 was .739, now it's .760. https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/bat.shtml

I believe that's it. While his stat line is roughly the same, the league-wide numbers are way up, which impacts OPS+.

I like Castellanos but he's playing himself out of our price range right now.

The problem is that if an organization doesn't take advantage of service time rules when everyone else is doing it, you're putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage, especially for an organization with payroll limitations who would likely lose a guy to FA when his control is up. Yeah, you can say "everyone else is doing it" isn't an excuse for treating employees poorly, but this is ultimately the system that the players' union signed off on in the CBA. And the way teams have acted was hardly unforeseeable, so don't give me that. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

I'd still take Machado over Harper and would have at least matched SD's offer.

We need to add a top end starter and a 5th/6th starter for depth this offseason. It would be nice to do better than Nova for that backend guy but if Nova is back that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. The crappy thing about this year is that Nova has basically been our #2 starter, not our #5.

Yeah, August looks brutal.

Can we get a year back or is the clock already ticking?

That's what I'm wondering, a pitch is a pitch whether it's in AAA or MLB. Seems like they can manage his workload just as well at the MLB level, under the supervision of their major league coaches/trainers. I do like the delayed spring training start though. Heck, they could even use him as an "opener" early in the year to manage his innings.

Top 7-8 pick is more likely, we have a lot of "ground" to make up to get a top 5 pick. It's supposed to be a deep draft though, so we should be able to add a nice piece there. Where we've run into trouble lately is where we've picked in the early teens and just miss on some elite talent (assuming we would have picked them anyway and not still gone with Collins, Burger, etc.). Of course, last time we picked 8th, we wasted it on Fulmer.