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Very pleased with how the Sox ran this draft. I don’t know how it will pan out, but they approached it well.

Speaking of...

So I guess if we have our optimism hats on: Reed April .163 / .250 / .209 (40% k rate) May .233 / ..325 / .507 (26% k rate) June .260 / .385 /.603 (26% k rate)

eh, if he sucks after 50 PAs here do we think people will be patient? (I will not ).

dislikey no guzmany

No I think he will mainly because he has, but the reasons he is able to did not line up to the reasons I thought caused it. There may be a switch hitter aspect to this, I don't know.

Collins being up was not working since...ricky didn't bother and I am on team #freeyermin, but if you are going to claim this dude I support actually seeing if he can maintain performance in majors because it will be hard to care about AAA production. The question will be if he performs very well through the end of the year, to what extent would the sox hold a spot for that production?

Kris Dunn was really bad at defense in the second half of last year. Porter definitely has trouble with mobility so I don't know to what extent this hurts but his team defense was much better than what bulls had previously.

I had very much thought that Moncada would be able to maintain a higher BABIP due to speed and his hard hit % so it is wild to me that this is not true.

The other thing I did not know which is helpful is its assertion that GB% and FB% normalize faster than LD%. James McCann's higher babip was not a result of increasing LD%, it actually decreased, while GB% increased. HE also cut his IFFB% wayyy down. So to what extent his BABIP reduces to in the second half will be interesting to see!

Not totally true. If the claim is that Nick Madrigal will be able to support a higher BABIP (and therefore average since nearly all of his balls are in play), this article states the following in support: - Harder contact does not correlate with BABIP - RH pull hitters have higher babip (Nick Madrigal 46% pull% // 44% league wide in upper levels of minors) - BABIP goes up as higher GB% goes up (Nick Madrigal 52% GB% // 43% league wide in upper levels of minors) - BABIP goes down as FB% goes up (Nick Madrigal 24% fB% // 37% FB% league wide in upper levels of minors) The following does not support it: - Speed of player does not correlate with BABIP Unknown - Low Line drives correlate with higher BABIP HOWEVER: None of these are VERY strong correlations, but multiple together may indicate a higher BABIP. Nick Madrigals AA BABIP is .400. League wide is .315. How much do the + correlations mean for elevating his BABIP? We will see.

I'm glad you said this, because it caused me to fall into this article, which was absolutely fascinating. https://www.pitcherlist.com/going-deep-an-exposition-on-babip/

Bailey already has his on base. Not happy seeing homer cruz only pitching one inning, hopefully not injured.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-better-way-to-evaluate-nba-defense/ pegs wendell carter jr as the only positive bulls defender including new additions thad young.

Too many times the speed grades seem to overemphasize time to first, which isn't how a lot of us think about it. Players like TA have slower times to first because of their swing that gets them out of the box slow.

This is one of the many mysteries where we have to figure out whether Madrigal's tremendous "soft" traits end up maximizing and improving skills that currently aren't showing up in lower competition.

I did not say he was an mlb caliber player, I said he was an actual mlb player. He had multiple years in the big leagues to improve and appeared to plateau, which he did not. It was talking about the remarkable outlier that was JD Martinez. I also did not say it was the only reason that he wouldn't work out that the astros released him, but it adds to the lower likelihood his lottery will cash in, because they are an org that has been very good at evaluating talent, including maximizing players other orgs had thought had hit their limit.

I actually want to extend him: - One, I don't believe they'd actually be forced to pay a premium for his peak offense of the moment - Two, it has been years since sox pitchers and catchers have had a relationship as good as this. Clearly he has been a mentor to a young pitching staff - regardless of results. I think he's a good vet anyway. I do not think he will be expensive, because catchers have been remarkably cheap in free agency despite everyone thinking they'll get paid a lot more.

Lillian it's worth mentioning that what Reed has done in AAA is in the PCL league, which has very inflated offense due to geographic factors but also some park factors. It allows the most home runs of all leagues in the minors. So his offensive numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt, especially when you factor in the MLB ball in AAA, which greatly improved offense - yet his declined. So if he comes in and goes on a Yordan Alvarez run - then we pay attention. But if it's relatively similar to this - an .800 ops, it's probably not going to translate much beyond what we can produce with other players in ML level.

Exactly this, I haven't been discouraged by Madrigal's lack of HR power, though I definitely do use it as a shorthand admittedly, it's the lack of doubles. I do think he is a guy that can turn doubles into triples, but to do that you need to get more basehits to the gaps which he has not done a good job of to date. It's his lack of xbh that has been discouraging to me, but that said, I was a high person on Madrigal and I am not saying he is now a bad player or prospect. But the pitching in the big leagues is going to be much better more often, will that lead to more of his bad contact? I think what has been heartening is his BB rate improving as he's gone up. I thought his power would be better, but I do think his path to plus-starter is through walking more often. The common wisdom that players without power will get walked less because pitchers aren't afraid of challenging them I have found to be overblown - because too many pitchers aren't that great at control if the hitter can actually avoid swinging at balls. And I think I'm being positive when I'm saying madrigal will improve his obp skills as he advances. So if Madrigal can refine his sense of the zone and really only swing at strikes, he can optimize his production. I just don't think that will be peak Rod Carew. But if he hits .390 I will not be complaining he doesn't hit enough home runs, it's just I don't think a player can hit .390 while making such light contact.

Gladney home run number 5. Also weirdly Camilo Quintero suddenly showed up in Birmingham. Assuming it’s for Madrigal but strange first ABs. Edit: never mind just your run of the mill milb.com screw up saying it was Quintero’s first game.

Eaton has a 9% BB rate, 14 HRs, and 9 triples. He’ll need to walk more than now, and hit for WAY more power or have a .350 avg

That said I don’t like Dragic.

Don’t forget you can use valentine and Hutchinson’s salaries.

I actually think it’s not enough to say he needs to be a good base runner, I think he’ll need to be elite in baserunning metrics to max out his value. Question for me is is there a willians astudillo amount of power out of Madrigal when he’s 26/27.