bmags

He reminds me so much of watching Trayce in his first season.

I completely disagree. The pen will always be there as an option. He would be so much more valuable as a starter. I mean, maybe we try him as a 4 inning guy. Something, but he can be a 1 inning pitcher whenever, we don't need to prepare him for that. If we can show he can throw 4 dominant innings, we could trade him for something else. If we say he's a 1 inning pitcher in the minors...that has zero value outside of him being able to prove it in the bigs. And even then maybe he's just a middle reliever. It's a poor use of his talent.

The other thing I want to mention is when I think about player dev, it's not just about creating stars - it's the getting the most out of every player, turning a few more 40 guys into 45s. That's where I see orgs like LA and HOU and STL being especially good, constantly creating depth and acceptable performances. I think people get too caught up in the performance of our top draft picks, but this really focuses on the best value actually being in turning more international and round 3-10 guys into either ML pieces or acceptable tradebait. That's where the big value wins are.

I believe FVs for BA are only in increments of 5, same as fangraphs. In the paragraph tehy handchecked the numbers and found only discrepancies of 5 or 10, which they chalked up to difference of opinion. This was important mainly as a check to make sure their adjustment of the BA numbers - which equated to more of a range figure (ceiling FV) than what they wanted which was the more traditional FV fangraphs uses. I think they wanted to avoid having artificially created outliers. But BA had many more grades than fangraphs to check, so what I don't know is if what they chalked up here as acceptable with the r2 check with fangraphs, is enough of a sample to say "yeah, our adjustments are good across the board", because fangraphs only has grades on usually top prospects, their adjustments on the lower bound may be worse.

I actually don't think it's forced and makes complete sense. When she was an essos she claimed a lot of morality and power from the ending of slavery, but in westeros she has to deal with people who do have a reference point for her - the targaryen rule (and specifically her father) they experienced and were crushed under. She does not have a moral claim with the ending of slavery, since they have none. So they do not respect her power in a way that is different for her than in essos where she was just an unknown.

BA which had the most available prospect grades does not use a straight forward FV, so they had to make adjustments to BAs scores to get a singular FV value, then they judged that against fangraphs FV value to validate if that has significantly altered, but you would not expect two separate scouting sites to have a perfect correlation in scores.

Jake Arrietta sucks.

Glad to see Hansen return to form but not going to get that excited about a 24 year old succeeding as a reliever in high A.

Man seeing nick Burdis arm blow again makes me a bit nervous with Zacks arm too.

Yeah this is where I would lean. A big tell for me is paddy seemed to do pretty damn well in Toronto yet his signings have mostly struggled to hit past low A. That to me is player dev.

Theirs did surprise me. Also, despite me not viewing ours as particularly good I would have guessed we outdid baltimore or the reds in this model.

This article is really dense and hard to read. Curious to see how others think about this rubric for grading player development: https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/2019/04/finding-star-nothing-luck-quantifying-effectiveness-mlb-player-development/ Scroll to the bottom if you voted to see where sox landed. My short summary on how they graded it, I believe, is they looked at the players Future Value (FV) prospect grade when acquired and their signing total, and then if that player's FV increased over subsequent years, the team is credited with creating additional surplus value over the signing amount. I believe because of so many of the white sox successes being first round picks, they started off with good FVs and higher signing bonuses, and thus get less credit. But the biggest hit is undoubtedly our lack of international pipeline developing at all. I couldn't tell you this is the best way to evaluate this, but it's certainly a difficult thing to do and this is where the sox ended up.

I don't get this, if Witt or Abrams have great starts to their career, they will be as valuable as anything else. They could be traded for immediate needs, maybe not elite, but could certainly use them as the centerpiece for great talent controlled for several years.

Frankly, no that's not progress to me because there continues to be a reported preference if (not stigma) around drafting college over high school with a first round pick, and perhaps that has influenced their evaluation of talent for the second round pick where they continue to be surprised by these "first round grade" position players falling to them in the second round (where they pay them over-slot). The high school talent available in that 30-75 range is comparably priced, volatile, but also offers exciting athleticism and tools not usually available by the college players in that area. I'm glad bush signed as a 33rd rounder, but I want to see the willingness to invest in younger, raw talent across the spectrum. And it can pay off huge. For the top 30 of mlb pipeline, 53% of those are high school draft picks (16), 23% are international (7), and just 6 are 4 year college picks (20%). Ian anderson was community college. Carter Kieboom and Taylor Trammell could both have been selected by the sox in the 2016 comp round where we took Burdi. They need to take more shots with these younger players that can develop and improve through their promotion to bigger challenges.

Absolutely.

Flores, though kinda seems like a guy that would show up one year throwing 97 again.

You are right that he does express that they are changing their approach starting last year. My issue is that what he described their process as in 2016/17 was different than what he described at the time. And again, we have the years of interviews of hostetler saying they needed to start balancing out their system with younger players, and then had the 2017 draft that only had one high schooler, an 8th round pick. As far as bias, yes, drafting recently has been more productive than in 2001-2010, which was the among the worst in the league. But they have also been picking much higher and crucially, have a CBA that eliminated the spending disparities that occurred prior to 2013. With the new CBA, and an average first round draft position of 7th since their poor 2013 season and I am not going to do backflips for the increased production. Comparing Keenan Walker (47th overall) and Jared Mitchell (23rd overall) to me isn't quite fair compared to looking at a 11th, 10th and 4th overall pick. And again, to me my biggest issue is by far their use of 2nd and comp round picks during hostetler's tenure, which again I tend to attribute to an organization-wide mindset of overvaluing more mature prospects due to reduced risk. But regardless if they took high school profiles or conservative college picks I don't care, they will be judged on those players production. Considering where he has picked and the effort of the org, I'm not quite sold yet. But it may also be the fact that he has more pressure to provide top talent since we don't get any from international still.

I think I just hate most this idea throughout that interview that for kw/hahn/jerry they are obssessed with spending the millions on as much certainty as possible. And I wouldn't particularly mind that if we were picking in the back half of the first round. But we are talking about drafts with 3 picks in top 50, an 11th overall and a 3rd overall draft. The idea that our target should be depth is a poor focus. It also just goes to this idea that screams out when you read them talk about intl and the draft. They always seem to talk about how young players don't pan out. I think they believe it's a waste of money. When discussing yolbert sanchez, someone mentioned how them being in on him for $2 million is an example of how they aren't cheap. But I kinda disagree, it's not about cheap per se, but it is the idea that they are so nervous about spending money toward more volatile player types. They'd rather spend $2 million with more certainty they get something out of Sanchez than 4 $500k 16 year olds who are most likely never going to make it out of A ball. That's what I read with this interview. College players for them are a CYA. If they drafted a high school guy 3rd overall and they failed, they are going out on a limb in an org that thinks young players are bad investments. If they draft a college player and they struggle? Well, college players are more likely to "work out", they just got unlucky.

I worry about flores in AAA with the new ball, contact heavy approach will be tough.

I think that part where Dany says "the dead are already here" references that the dead know the entrance to the crypts and get into winterfall through there.

Also it feels like they will lose the battle and that will be tough to watch. The plan with bran being isolated and watched by Theon seems very dumb, they need to just ask sansa what to do. Also, while I understand they need to protect the dragons after losing one, it feels like you'd want to swing them around and have them attack from the rear.

I would expect the following to die: Absolutely, no questions about it - Greyworm Almost certain - Brienne, Jorah, Davos, Tormund, Other Nights watch dude Feels like it - Arya

I like the episode too. Was nice to just sit with the characters while they are all together. Last year felt like plot point -> plot point -> plot point etc I also like that they have acknowledged how bad tyrions decision making has been, because for a while it was going on and it felt like a betrayal of his character, and now that it's a thing you realize there may be a cause of it. But it feels like for a great number of people they just would rather be dumped a wikipedia page of the rest of the series and get upset about anything that isn't essential. I do think the show was more wonderful when it portrayed events and then had this great supplementary material fueling even more depth. As it's gotten out in front of the material, and as they've had to end it, the lack of outside depth provided is hurting it for some people.

I liked the idea of wacha but the juiced ball this year has really torched him and who knows if they change the ball again. Still love his fastball/changeup combo, but I don't know if his command is what it was as he is just getting destroyed on a bunch of pitches in the middle of the zone.

this part: " Where we were in ‘16, my first draft doing this, it was one of needing to provide as much depth to the organization as possible. We just did. That was obvious by the prospect rankings and where we were as an organization. We needed to provide as much in the next two classes as we could to give Rick and Ricky (Renteria) the guys at the big league level to fill those spots as needed. Last season you saw us go toward a few guys — obviously there’s Nick and Steele (Walker) were more advanced hitters — but guys like Lency Delgado, Bryce Bush and Kelvin Maldonado and those guys, we’re… Swinging more for the fences? …Starting to get logjammed a little bit and you want to spread it out. We’ve got to make sure we’re having a nice balance and that’s with high school and college, ceiling and production, and also pitcher and hitter. We’ve got to make sure that that stays its course. Those first two drafts we were trying to provide as much as depth as we could. We’ve done a really nice job of that. Last year I think you saw a little bit more of the personality of the department." I uhh, hate this? How does everyone else interpret those paragraphs? I can't tell if i'm reading them correctly.