Laika

interesting that Gurriel made his way into this graphic

Addison Barger is a stud, that's why. With prospect projections it's not that the mean projection is "wrong" necessarily it's just that the distribution of possibilities is never displayed. Like if you project Bo Bichette right now to be a 4 WAR player, 65% of all possible outcomes will fall within say 50% of that mean projection. He'd have to benefit from a large skill improvement on defense to get up over 6 wins, and he'd have to suffer a catastrophic injury or something to be below 2 wins. Probably. But Addison Barger's distribution of outcomes will be much more diverse. If the projection system is saying his "full season talent" right now is 3 WAR the part it is not showing you is that his possible outcomes are not clustered around that as tightly as someone under 30 with a bunch of MLB data. So his chances of producing 0 WAR will be orders of magnitude higher than Bo's. And his chances of being worth negative WAR will be like 100x higher. The curves of their projection distributions will not look the same, at all. His curve will be much flatter. Bo will also have better chances of elite seasons. The skew/kurtosis of the projection curves for a true prospect will be insane. It will be all flat, wonky, maybe even bivariate. Bo's should look more like a normal distribution.

He KNOWS he can get at least that much if he has a strong season.

Padres get Matt Carpenter to lengthen the lineup. Makes sense.

Yeah Alek Thomas is in a polarizing statistical position. The prospect models will still like him based on the strength of his MiLB results and his age. And his position if he's a true CF. But the MLB results were gross by every measure other than contact rates, and speed/defense. And a lot of that gross data was "stable" within 2022. So there is major incongruency, and it's coming in a familiar way, by which I mean this is a familiar reason for promising looking minor leaguers to bust. Simply not hitting the ball hard enough. Nick Madrigal being the extreme recent example, but there have been others like Vidal Brujan and Geraldo Perdomo. So how he "projects" is really just a function of how reactive your model is. I am not prepared to just hang my hat on Steamer for a prospect projection like this. It's going to just take some middle ground. To me this is more of an all or nothing proposition. He'll either be a bust or a below average player for the same reasons he stunk in 2022, or there will be some scouting reason that the problematic data will change a bit. Like maybe he's a good enough pure hitter to improve has average exit velocity.

LMAO okay I think the Rangers will end up signing Conforto.

Yeah they need to graduate a couple more average regular (or better) position players in the next year or two. And they really need Tiedemann or Zulueta to pan out and produce. Payroll is getting hefty.

he's a tough one to evaluate for sure my gut says if contreras and benintendi can pull $75M and $87.5M... and Nimmo can get 8 years... 3/$60 would be light

Devers will be incredibly young and surely command a 10 to 13 year contract but I don't want Toronto to give it to him. He has some warts. He's not a good defender at third. He's a bit of a hacker - we have seen him run fairly high K rates in some past seasons and at times even when he is good he is a bit swing happy. The walk rates are good enough but not great by any stretch. So we don't have the "pure slugger" profile and we don't have a profile with defensive value and speed to slowly age away. Some team is going to give him $300M+ and I just don't see why he's worth more than Austin Riley.

Yeah even this year some decent OF are signing one year deals. brantley, gallo, JDM, kiermaier, luplow so far. there will be many more. last year I know Pederson and Pham were cheap. comparatively, the C you can get on a one year deal are horrible. Hedges, Maile, Zunino so far. Zunino the only interesting one but he was replacement level last year and I think had Thoracic Outlet Surgery. 100% no reason to give in and move a scarce two way player for some random poopy outfielder just because they hit left handed and have a few years of control.

I don't think any LHB free agent outfielder would look at Gurriel - Kiermaier - Springer and think playing time is a serious issue. Two big injury risks + a right handed hitting performance risk.

I want some old farts Have depth to trade from

The durability track records of the Jays rotation are pretty amazing, save for Bassitt who had his face caved in and almost died once and also had TJS in 2016

I think the depth is fine. You've also got Bowden Francis who might be a decent #5 or swingman. And maybe Ryu in the second half. Juenger perhaps as a 3 inning guy? Maybe Pearson for the same role. Sem Robberse will be in AA/AAA so could come up. Seems like a better situation than last year but I dunno.

I dunno, I am pretty bullish on Addison Barger. I think he takes one of those spots.

Kind of a gross amount of $$ for Seth Lugo tbh

It's pretty comfy tbh

There are a half dozen teams who really want a better C and there is basically one team selling that thing. Toronto will trade a catcher before the season, I think. It might take a couple months for someone to capitulate though.

"from a depth perspective" I don't think he meant they have a top 5 pen. Just one of the deeper bullpens. It's true, honestly.

I think it's pretty bad for Moreno. When a guy hits .315/.386 in AAA the thing to do, to maximize their development, is present the next challenge to them. This is precisely what Toronto did with Kirk. When he showed he could hit minor league pitching in his sleep, they brought him up.

I want Moreno playing every day in the big leagues he's the kind of bat that would be boring but just put up a quiet 120 wRC+ as a rookie.

who said I was the mature one? I am legitimately a piece of s***. I need therapy.

Siddall kind of out to lunch here. The only reason Kirk "doesn't catch enough" is just because Jansen has always been here. They could and would absolutely run with Kirk and Moreno. If Moreno flops or one of them gets hurt, they'd insure it with some crusty veteran on a minor league deal; no big problem.

lol oops