Dominikk85

Yeah freddie freeman was reported to have a pretty severe case and he had a monster season while others were affected quite a bit.

Also not doing a trade out of fear because you got burned would be very bad. There are lots of good reasons to keep vaughn (and also the other top prospects madrigal, kopech and crochet) but a trade in the past that went wrong is not one of them. You can't let fear be your advisor as a GM, you gotta use your projection of the player, compare with surplus value and projection of the return and then make a decision. And obviously there is a price for anyone, nobody is untouchable but it would be very unlikely to get fair value for a prospect like vaughn or even kopech. At this point the sox should keep their advanced top prospects and sign one if they need him. If vaughn gets traded it likely will be when he hits his second arb year as first basemen tend to be overpaid at that point due to the way arb works. But I could also see vaughn becoming another konerko and stays with the sox for live to continue the great sox 1b history of the last 2+ decades (thomas, konerko, abreu).

Definitely the Rays and As situation has to be resolved before you can think about expansion, two good teams with half empty or less full stadiums is enough.

Yeah Eloy proves to be a disaster trade for the cubs. At least torres gave them chapman who closed game 7 of the WS but quintana didn't do much for the cubs. I can understand the cubs at the time though. Eloy was a top prospect with great power potential but he also was defensively limited, was seen as a bit injury prone and was a bad k/Bb guy so there was a chance he would become a low on base DH slugger like CJ cron. Quintana on the other hand was very solid even though he always was riding limiting batted ball production which was a bit risky compared to a high K ace but that was what the cubs had success with arrieta and hendricks before. But then eloy really reached his ceiling becoming probably more of a 40 homer guy instead of a 30 homer guy and also his OBP seems to outplay his still shaky plate discipline because he hits the ball so well. And on the other side quintana did become quite bad.

Vaughn never was going to be traded anyway. Teams very rarely trade a top5 overall pick before he reaches the majors unless he flops in the minors and just gets dumped. Sure if the Indians would have offered Justin Bieber maybe the sox would have done it but that never was realistic. In the large majority of cases such a high pick will reach the majors for the club that drafted him unless he is very bad in the minors.

This. What he said was not legally prohibited but insulting a Japanese player when seattle has a strong japanese fan base that still is buying mariners merch, insulting his top prospect, insulting a long term star AND basically admitting service time manipulation is a bit much. Maybe he could have survived one of those things but saying that much BS in half an hour is a bit much and it was time for him to go especially since there were some incidents before.

Leiter throwing high 90s is the clear number 1 pick and probably a top10 prospect in baseball in a year. He always had a big pitch mix and great command but question was always the velo. But if he maintain 95+ without getting hurt he really is a monster. Sure with pitchers one injury can change everything but leiter throwing that hard makes him a monster prospect, could be like shane bieber.

Yeah olberman is a bit of an ass but that doesn't mean he can't be right. Disagreeing with someone just because you don't like him is not a good idea.

Even worse than the language thing is probably that he admitted keeping guys down due to service time reasons. GMs never admit that, they always invent something like "needs to work on his baserunning". This could cost the mariners quite a bit of money if the players file a grievance for service time manipulations. Prior grievances have been lost as the player can't really prove he is ready but if the ceo is on record admitting it was manipulation that could be different. Was that guy drunk or what? Normally a man in his position should be intelligent enough to not say stuff like that.

Was on a business travel and just got back to internet this afternoon:)

MLB com reports that tatis signed a 14 yr, 340m extension. Not confirmed yet.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2021-top-100-prospects/ 14. Vaughn 34. Kopech 39. Madrigal 73. Crochet

Yeah, I would say that the eaton signing is exactly the same as the EE signing or many other sox veteran signings, i.e getting an older veteran maybe coming of a weaker year on the cheap and hoping for a bounce back. That isn't isn't a terrible strategy even though it often will fail because that is baked into the price but you do need a plan B in case it fails. Trying EE was not the worst idea but they should have cut ties earlier and released him when it didn't work

Yeah that makes sense. He could be a star but he also could be a guy striking out 40% in A ball and then projecting as a .220 hitter in the majors. If his hit tool is good he obviously could be very good.

Obviously there are exceptions that projections can't predict. They are using past data with historical aging curves but obviously there are cases like a swing change, added pitch or physical change that projections don't know. However there are also many cases where changes like that regress so most of the time it is better to ignore stuff like that albeit cases like JD martinez or jose bautista do happen occasionally and of course no prediction system can foresee that.

It also is a minors deal so it doesn't mean he is the primary backup but more minor league depth

Why?

Yeah, i think with grandal likely catching 120+ games and a strong lineup the bat of the backup catcher doesn't matter much at all. Also Lucroy is not even guaranteed to be the backup catcher, I think he is more an insurance if Collins doesn't improve enough to be at least playable as a backup.

Mike trout wasn't a non prospect though, he was seen as a top talent with big physical tools but ranked lower because he came from a weak baseball region and thus teams had doubts whether he would hit about top pitching. Big mistake in hindsight but quite different from guys like altuve who came out of nowhere. But yeah, there is a chance that a guy like madrigal adds 20 pounds of muscle and becomes a 20 HR guy.

Yeah I agree, I can understand if you don't want to rank madrigal top25 due to upside concerns but not ranking him is quite crazy. Really for an 80-100 ranked player you are glad if he becomes a 2 war player. For example here are the 2014 fg top100. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2014-top-100-prospects/ There are some solid players ranked 80-100 and even a few good ones (berrios, odorizzi, wong, colome) but most of them did not even become multi year regulars.

Yeah they have lots of pitching but pitching prospects can evaporate quickly (like it happened with many sox P prospects too). Their position player side of prospects is still pretty weak apart from witt who is very far away.

I don't think the royals will be very good, I think they bought low on benintendi after his bad last year and hope he can bounce back so they can flip him for a better prospect at the deadline. I think it is a good trade. Lee has some tools but also a massive K problem and not much developed game power so maybe it was time to cash in for him.

I think Jose also benefited from having no April to mid may or so. He doesn't like the cold weather and usually isn't as good the first 6 or so weeks of the season. Career ops by month April 836 May 806 June 848 July 830 August 987 September 884 Overall 870. So last year he started with hot weather right away. Even that he was quite bad the first two weeks (maybe it is not just the weather but also some time to warm up) but in August and September he really raked. I think the better shape also played a role as playing for a contender motivated him more but some regression certainly will be coming. I would gladly take 3 war and a 130 wRC+ from him this year.

That is Strange, fan graphs depth charts has them at 88 wins (1 behind the twins and with only one AL team projected for 90+). I think 83 is way to low, and I think even 88 is quite conservative, I would guess more like 90 as median outcome.

I don't think it will change because once covid bans are lifted there won't be that many DHs anymore. Reason they are needed now is the shortened season and make up games due to covid postponements. For a couple DHs a year you don't need to change the rule.