Laika

I'm glad YOU are excited for it but sorry, this is an early example of the type of modern youth sports s*** that has parents spending thousands upon thousands of dollars for their kid to maybe end up as a solid fundamental high school baseball player, but they are just as likely to end up resenting the sport. It's also part of the culture that makes sports like baseball and hockey inaccessible to poor kids; five year olds should be as connorp says "chasing butterflies" on a school ball diamond and maybe doing some catching and hitting if they like it, but that's about it. Your kid doesn't know who the f*** Brad Wilkerson is and he'd probably have more fun if you dressed up like Wags the Dog and flipped balls to him. He's not rubbing elbows with Bo Bichette. Products like this are marketed to the parents. Again, I'm glad you are excited about it. I am not just being a snarky wet blanket. This is a microcosm of problems that are part of a broader discussion about the nature of youth sport and accessibility to sport. Everything that you are saying about Florida baseball culture seems s***** to me. I remember playing AAA hockey up here at 10 and 11 years old and how serious the adults took it almost ruined the sport for me. I was pretty good but after those two years I hated hockey. Surly coaches, angry coaches after losses, annoying off-ice training multiple times per week, parents screaming at referees and getting into arguments, long ass bus rides all the time even on school nights. I'm glad I had the presence of mind to tell my dad that I didn't like it anymore after those two years. 5 year olds are so impressionable. Most of them will copy their parents, do what they like, do whatever dad says. If your kid truly is a baseball rat and never loses the fun then that's awesome but I hope you listen to him and he doesn't just end up as some cog in a youth baseball business marketed at you that will steal a huge chunk of his childhood.

No no no, groundballs up the middle are what make money in mosquito baseball

Neither of them are actual stop gaps. Turner might take 3 years to sign, same with Didi. This DJLM rumour mill is turning into the blob because New York is at the centre of it but Gregorius is 1.5 years younger and pretty damn good... he could get about as much $$ as DJ when the dust settles. Stop gap might be someone like Gyorko, Brad Miller, Kike Hernandez, Hanser Alberto, maybe Marwin Gonzalez, maybe Maikel Franco wants to sign a one year deal, maybe the market for Cesar Hernandez never develops and he is cheap. Sexy list, right?

Sign Max Headroom, cowards!

Apparently not... at least not anyone on the BA top 50

What the f*** are ex pros going to teach a FIVE year old? lol. Five. Like five years? Five years old? Kindergarten?

There is Blue smoke around literally every player.

It's very possible the Blue Jays don't feel like they need a big infielder. If Martin and Groshans looked mature at the alternate site, both could start in AA or AAA. I know it sounds aggressive but we don't know what any teams are thinking about prospect development right now. We might see Toronto just get a one year option for 2B or 3B later in the offseason

10 Manuel Beltre Manuel Beltre Dominican RepublicSS Notes: Born: June 9, 2004. B-T: R-R. Ht.: 5-11. Wt.: 165. Report: One of the best hitters in the class, Beltre is a baseball rat who has spent years documenting his path to professional baseball on his social media accounts, sharing his daily training and highlights on his Instagram account of more than 60,000 followers. Beltre has a short, simple swing, performing well in games with a high contact rate, good feel for the strike zone and gap power. Beltre isn't as tooled-up as some of the other top prospects in the class, but he has a ton of game experience relative to his peers and it's evident in his all-around instincts and fundamentally sound play. Beltre, who trains trains with Jaime Ramos, is expected to sign with the Blue Jays. (they don't mention a bonus but the #8 player is expected to sign for $2.5M and a few players below Beltre are expected to sign for $2M) 39 Last: 38 Martín Giménez Headshot Martin Gimenez VenezuelaSS Notes: Born: Feb. 15, 2004. B-T: R-R. Ht.: 6-3. Wt.: 160. Report: Gimenez and Wilman Diaz, one of the top shortstops in this class, train together with Alexi Quiroz. Gimenez has a long, lanky build with plenty of room to pack on weight. He has a chance to develop into a power bat once he fills out, with some scouts praising his swing and approach, though others said he's still learning to recognize breaking pitches. Gimenez has a strong arm for the left side of the infield and it should grade up as he fills out, with a good chance he ends up at third base or possibly an outfield corner as he gets bigger. The Blue Jays are expected to sign Gimenez.

You cannot be a consistently great SP in NPB without stuff. Sometimes a pitcher with great command will have their stuff UNDERRATED. I think that's what's happening here.

He is arguably wrong. Sugano's NPB numbers compare favourably to other Japanese pitchers who have come over and had great success (Tanaka, Maeda, and others). Sugano is easily distinguished from Gooch, who basically had one random good year in Japan but was mostly a reliever and wasn't even consistently pitching on the main circuit over there. Remember, the point he is responding to is not "Shun Yamaguchi is good" it is "Tomoyuki Sugano is very good". His rebuttal is "Shun Yamaguchi was bad therefore Sugano should not be expected to be good". It's an argument as weak as his fragile Fangraphs ego, and he is delivering it with the stuffy arrogance of a 15 year old. The Blue Jays took a flyer on Gooch and paid almost nothing to do it. To compare Sugano to Gooch is so disingenuous and much worse than comparing Sugano to a #2 SP.

Why are all Fangraphs prospect writers snotty little f***s?

Yours is worse

Common sense and reason. Toronto brass are outspoken about not shooting down any rumours, so these things take on a life of their own. The organization has Bo Bichette. They have multiple very good infielders in the pipeline in Groshans, Martinez, and Hidalgo. No CF on the MLB team and not much in terms of great OF prospects. Springer will cost no prospects and less than half the money of Lindor. Laika's brain cells say Springer is way more likely than Lindor. Kim is a separate type of asset and is one of the likeliest free agents to land in Toronto, I think. Nice 3B fit for 2021 and then who cares after that, maybe one of him or Biggio go to the OF.

But why would you just go by media reports?

When I think about long term investments in players I tend to make a mental list of weak points. The more there are, the less I want to commit. For Springer: - Never been a workhorse. Injury risk? - Some performance questions going forward (cheater) - Not a great defender - Already over 31 He's a very well-rounded player and the sum of his parts has been very good, but there are a few small cracks that could become big issues. But these are also all reasons that his contract could end up as quite reasonable. He projects for ~4 WAR... is there really a huge amount of risk on say a $110M contract? How big does the deal have to be before it's a turn off?

Look at this s*** take: Yes, the Lightning need cap space more than Nikita Kucherov. Holy smokes.

This is getting into tabloid territory, but Vlad really just seems like a fatty by nature. Even when he was young and more fit, he had a ton of weight on his body and a very wide frame (that's where the power comes from, right...) He gained such an alarming amount of weight in 2020... like, an amount of weight that a normal person could not gain without, say, trying to get as fat as possible for a movie role or something like that. I think that was a bit telling. You probably need a combination of large frame + fatness genes + bad habits to do that. Hopefully his commitment to fitness now is legitimate but I'd still put money on him getting fat again, or at least yo-yo-ing for most of his career.

Yeah the "defense" number in Fangraphs dashboard is defensive skill + positional adjustment. If you want to see those two figures separated, click on the Value tab and you can see Fielding + Positional as two columns. Example with John Olerud... he has +99 fielding runs in his career because he was an exceptional first basemen, but first basemen have the worst positional adjustment done to their value so in his career he suffered -144 runs from the positional adjustment. Hence his -45 number on the Fangraphs dashboard. It was only five years ago, or so, that Fangraphs changed their dashboard to show this adjusted "Defense" number instead of raw UZR. I remember hating it at the time because of this exact reason. What I want to see on the dashboard is how good the player was at their position. No reason they can't just show both on the dashboard (defense + positional adjustment). I said at the time that this would confuse lay-people and it clearly does. (Note that the defensive runs number on Fangraphs will be either UZR, or Total Zone 1, or Total Zone 2, or Total Zone 3, depending on the year. There are three different formulas for TZ based on how retrosheet boxscores changed over time).

All you can really do is look at Total Zone, which is TZ under standard fielding on Fangraphs or I think Rfield on BR. Self calculate their TZ per 150 games let's you compare it directly to UZR/150 of a modern player

Yeah, Olerud was +82 runs in his career by Total Zone and then +16.8 runs at the end of his career by UZR. That's +6.63 runs per 150 games in his career. For reference, Keith Hernandez and Daric Barton are like +9 runs per 150 games.

Where are the casual fans? You think we don't know how TZ is calculated?

If you don't think the way TotalZone is calculated (or maybe more correctly, not adjusted) for the 1991 to 1995 seasons unfairly maligns Alomar, consider the following: Ages 20-22 with SDP +13 TZ runs (total across all years) Ages 23-27 with TOR -26 TZ runs Ages 28-33 with BAL and CLE +13 TZ runs For his age 34 season we start getting UZR. His UZR/150 was -1.6 and -6.7 in his age 34 and 35 seasons. Age 36 was lower but that's a very small sample. It just does not pass the sniff test that he was as bad at 23-27 with Toronto as he was in his mid 30's when UZR kicks in. The fact that he was above average before and after Toronto makes me think something funny was going on with Toronto. Maybe it was the turf, and maybe it was positioning (which could have been his fault I guess, and then it would be fair to slap the negative runs on him). But even if you forgive some of the negative Toronto years and assume he was above average, you're only moving the needle by a few career WAR. If you take the -26 from Toronto and turn it into a +14, that's only four more career wins. "the stats are not correct" is not an argument that holds much water with me. These stats are more or less just looking at catch/out rates... certain years can be wonky but you can't hide being an elite defender for an entire career; if he was truly elite it would have shown up in the out rates. Elite defenders by definition get outs. It really looks like he was just a good defender. Org is hitting the nail on the head with the Hech analogy. It's possible to be an "elite" defender by tools/actions and not by results, for various reasons. It's kind of like having bat speed and power but a hole in your swing, or elite stuff on the mound but being one ingredient short of a good pitcher. If Alomar's career began in 2020 perhaps the +15.8 defensive runs on his Fangraphs dashboard would be more like +158 runs.

I too believe that this Kim CF talk is bonkers. Why would he sign here to play CF? By "across the diamond" the Jays mean 3b, ss, 2b. He might be able to handle CF but I think Toronto would send Biggio out there before Kim

Two literal clubhouse cancers.