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I don't think there is any real debate that it is the ball. With all the technology at the games now they can literally show that the ball is traveling further for any given velocity and launch angle. They have also tracked that the ball doesn't slow down as much between coming out of the pitcher's hand and crossing the plate. Then there are all the numbers with the AAA leagues using the MLB ball instead of the MiLB ball and how the home run rates skyrocketed. The most important thing to note with regards to the AAA ball change is how players hit for more home runs in AAA than they did in AA in the same season, which would rule out any effects of steroids unless you believe all these players only started taking steroids once they got to AAA. On top of all of that statistical evidence, there is also the anecdotal evidence of all the pitchers who say the ball feels different this year and it effects how they pitch.

Why? Apparently attendance and viewership numbers are up this year which seemingly would mean revenues are also up. They are already seeking season ticket renewals which would give them every reason to pump up hopes again. Sure, KW and Hahn took some heat, but in the end nothing bad actually happened after that died down. And these guys aren't as big of names as those guys so it would likely get even less blow back from common fans when we miss but it would provide hope for those that know them.

Interestingly, in 2016 the Browns hired Paul DePodesta who was one of the original moneyball guys. In fact, he was who Jonah Hill's character in the Moneyball movie was based on. Apparently the Browns are kind of on the cutting edge of the analytics revolution in football. So a few years from now we might look back at the Browns like the Astros when they sucked but then came to rule the league with analytics.

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/minor-league?pos=all&lg=30&stats=bat&qual=y&type=1&team=&season=2019&seasonEnd=2019&org=&ind=0&splitTeam=false&players=&sort=18,1&pagenum=0 Laureano and Bailey finished 8 and 10, respectively, in the DSL in wRC+ among qualified hitters. If you lower the required ABs, then Reuben Benavides also is on the list and is even higher than Laureano and Bailey.

I feel like I just woke up from some weird fever dream

Yeah, I think anything in the top 10 should get us a good player. It sounds like this draft has a deeper first tier, but that first tier isn't as impactful as this year when the top 2 or 3 were highly ranked in the top 100 right after they got drafted.

They aren't going to get anyone good and they aren't going to move. They are going to get some middling acquisition that will help us reach .500 and more people will show up because we have such low standards after seeing the shit product they have put out there that we will think a .500 team is amazing. And that is exactly why we won't move from Chicago. We have been abused by this franchise for most of its history that now any time we are not the worst team in the division people will be excited. So we are an easily excitable fanbase in a major metropolitan area which is basically an owner's dream.

I'm generally a pretty positive person, so I'm going to try to put a spin on this shit deadline. Maybe standing pat means Hahn is finally feeling the heat and knows he doesn't have much time left to actually produce a winning team. If that is the case, maybe we actually will spend some real money to get better this offseason.

Why do people act like the international signing period is one day? Its a period. It is open until next June 15th. That is a hell of a lot of time for people to pop up. Exactly! Five more were just yesterday reported to have defected. And then there are also the young asian prospects that some teams have started targeting.

I can't tell if that role sounds like they "fired" him or if it actually is a promotion considering we are coming in to the point of the rebuild where we will start signing and trading for major league talent. I guess we might be able to tell more based on who replaces him. If its internal, then it would seem like they are okay with the scouting department and it is actually a promotion. If they go outside the organization it might signal that they aren't happy with the current group.

Except we really don't. So much has changed that we have kind of hit a confluence of factors that makes the situation untenable. Due to the swing change revolution, more balls are being hit in the air as opposed to on the ground. That makes it more dangerous. Due to the juice ball and reduced drag, balls are being hit harder than ever and keeping that speed for a longer time. That makes it more dangerous. Teams are eliminating foul ground and putting seats closer to the field so fans can be closer and so teams can fit more seats in. That makes it more dangerous. So basically there are more balls hit harder in the air than ever before all while fans are closer to the field than before. So no, its not really the same as 100 years ago.

I kind of like some combination of division and record. For example having it be a random order of the 6 divisions, but have the first 6 picks be the last place team in each division. That would make it so bad teams get better picks while also not necessarily giving the top pick to the same team that has the #1 domestic draft pick. It would also hopefully decrease the amount of times there are multiple teams in the same division tanking at the same time because if you finish second you automatically miss out on the top 6 picks. Also with how important winning your division is for the playoffs, it would hopefully make division races tighter. The other way to do it would be instead of having the worst team in each position pick first that the divisions would be ordered by out of division record so it shows how good or bad the division really is.

I mean it would give them like 10 months to scout when they know exactly where their pick would be if you just do the lottery at the end of the season and the draft in August like was suggested. Plus, they already have to scout kids from the age of 13 with all the early agreements, so being able to concentrate for a year at a time on guys would probably be easier than what they are doing now.

I just have to laugh about them trying to get Covey to work with a four seamer more. He actually has a below average spin on his four seamer and definitely does not have the speed to make up for it. Plus, if you are trying to throw more four seamers, you are likely to get more fly balls and infield flies, so of course they put in a DH at 1B in a stadium with huge foul ground. On top of all that, they also put in a rookie catcher who probably isn't the best to be calling a game when a pitcher is working on something.

Seems like it considering he tweeted about this link https://www.redbaronsathletics.com/sports/bsb/2018-19/releases/20190522hc00lq

Sending him to AAA doesn't mean he will be there the rest of the season. Maybe they are seeing if they can make a change in a lower pressure environment first and then bring him up to test it out when he has had some time getting used to it.

High School all star game is going on right now in Cleveland. Its the top 40 guys from the PDP league which had 80 of the top players in the country. https://www.mlb.com/video/high-school-all-star-game-c2525683083

It seems to basically be a combination of the endowment effect and loss aversion. Endowment effect states that people tend to value things they own more than an identical thing that they do not own. You will see this all the time when talking about prospects. You could propose a trade for two basically identical prospects and both fanbases would say the other team wasn't giving up enough. We always value our prospects more than if that same prospect were in a different organization. Loss aversion is the tendency for people to get more dissatisfaction out of losing some amount of value than satisfaction from gaining that identical value. If you lost $100 you would lose more happiness than you would gain if you were to gain $100. Because of this, losses seem to hurt more than gains. But one important way these two things compound is that loss aversion is not based on the true value you gained or lost, but on what your expectation was. So because the endowment effect shows that we tend to value our own players more than we should, our expectation is higher for them so any loss aversion has a higher starting point resulting in an even greater difference between the downside and upside. TL;DR: Behavioral economics says that we will gain much less happiness from winning a trade than we will lose happiness for losing a trade, which seems to check out.

Spending half of your international bonus pool to save a few million dollars on the ML roster is a shortsighted use of resources. International talent is so cheap and cost controlled that we should be using it as an avenue to try and attain high end talent that we refuse to pay for in free agency. Instead we use it to get someone that is easily replaceable but we like because it might save JR $10m over the life of the contract over signing a comparable free agent, and actually even worse because if all you care about is defense then you could have probably just drafted a college senior sign (the same age as Yolbert now) for $10k.

So not related to the 2019 class, but I thought I would put it here anyway because this is the most recent LatAm discussions. One of the guys I was really excited about us signing when word came out about half way through last period was this guy Patrick Merino. It sounded like a couple teams wanted him after he had a great showcase, but that he was going to sign with us. I guess the Cuban connection was paying off again. It was supposed to have happened several months ago. It never did. He ended up signing with the Rays for $375K. Given that he is 20 in the DSL you might be skeptical, but so far he has hit 3 HRs in 4 games in a league where it is notoriously difficult to hit homeruns. Maybe instead of convincing Yolbert Sanchez to wait we should have been doing that with Merino. It will be fun (read: excruciating) to see what he becomes and see if we messed up another one! https://www.mlb.com/player/patrick-merino-691193?stats=career-r-hitting-minors&year=2019

Vera was probably my favorite pitcher that was going to be released. Reports he could get his fastball up to 95 and that he has a raw feel for both a slider and a curve. He was also one of only a few who were described as possible starters in the majors while most other were thought to be relievers. He is a bit wild, but then again so are most of the pitchers in the CNS and he is younger than them. People there seem to say that pitchers aren't really coached well and are often out of sync in their deliveries which a MLB development staff should be able to fix. If he is cleared during this period, I would love to get him. I expect more of the guys that were on that release list to defect, which is one reason I want to save the money we were going to give Yolbert Sanchez and see who pops up later.

It looks like there is going to be a good amount of top tier pitching, so things might line up perfectly for us.

Nope, I just messed up haha. This is the correct link, doubled check this time! (and edited the original) https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/17120537/mike-piazza-went-62nd-round-pick-hall-famer Edit: And steroids for analysts is a horrible idea! You have to give them nootropics. They are like steroids, but for your brain! lol

I just heard about this on Effectively Wild today, but this website is kind of like ESPN's basketball trade machine. https://www.baseballtradevalues.com/trade-simulator/

Yep. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/17120537/mike-piazza-went-62nd-round-pick-hall-famer