Laika

It contains a ten year "personal services" option which will pay Pujols $10M to work for the organization after the contract ends (a front office or coaching role). That at least makes it a bit more awkward to cut him. There are milestone considerations too.

He's doing a slow tear-down of his core. Mike Trout will be dealt soon enough.

Tigers announce that Tarik Skubal, Casey Mize, and Isaac Paredes will all debut this week. Wow. None have played in AAA. Could have easily gamed service time on them next year.

Yes he does.

I'd like to say that I 100% agree but I only 90% agree because the team just does not have the depth at this point to do much of anything to fix the current roster. It's really just an IF depth problem. Drury and Panik are the issues. (Tellez is arguably a tiny issue if you think he should not an everyday player.) The team cannot f*** with Kirk, Martin, or Groshans in a s*** season like this. The other options on the 60 are Ruben Tejada, Kevin Smith, and Andy Burns. It's easy to say that Drury should be jettisoned immediately for one of them but Ruben Tejada is 31 and has a lower career wRC+ than Drury and was last productive in 2015. Kevin Smith was dogshit in AA last year so that would be real desperation to rush him. Andy Burns is also nearly 31 but probably deserves a shot more than Drury out of pure f***ing loyalty to the organization. So there's a weak argument to jettison Drury but zero rational argument to dump Panik. This ignored potential FA infielders. Toronto should absolutely be spamming waiver claims to upgrade these nobodies.

RE: Drury, it's like the organization is scared of getting Urshela'd. He's a year younger than Gio.

Pretty hard to evaluate without any data from this year. Two college RHP at or near the top but I don’t see anyone comparable to Torkelson or Martin as far as College bats go. I think I remember reading that it is a deep class in round 1 but again, who the f*** will even know with so much baseball being cancelled in 2020.

Realistic shot at #2 with Bichette's injury. Nobody should catch Pittsburgh though.

Has Randal Grichuk improved his approach? Career best BB and K rates so far. If he can bring the old power back into the equation...

Yeah I think most moves will be relatively minor. Toronto has no pieces of real value to move anyway

Giles - they won't get offered anything. Panik - nobody will want him. Shoe - okay chance he gets dealt. Bass - okay chance he gets dealt. Shaw - small chance he gets dealt? Anderson - small chance he gets dealt.

He didn’t say you’ve changed your opinion. Relax.

Not to Teoscar's current extent. Right now his BB/K ratio is a tiny 0.11 and his wRC+ is 158. No players since 1945 over their career have had a BB/K that low and been an above average hitter. Javier Baez (0.17 and 104 wRC+) and Tim Anderson (0.13 and 99 wRC+) are the closest. When you think about great hitters with s***** BB/K ratios, it's players like Matt Kemp and Jose Abreu who are examples. Both have better BB/K rates than Teoscar but he could do something similar if he could just walk a bit more while maintaining his current K rate.

Definitely better than Albert Almora

Acuna is a different type of hitter than Bo. More swing and miss with some contact vulnerability in one quadrant, but huge power in all quadrants (and more walks).

If you want to see something that is simultaneously amazing and depressing, compare Vlad and Bo's isolated slugging per balls in play heat maps. Vlad has a cavernous hole up and in. He appears to this point to be physically incapable of driving a pitch up and in. He also has not learned to at least hit pitches on the outer half or pitches that are generally up with regular authority either. Bo on the other hand murders pitches that he should, pitches up, even pitches out of the zone, and he has the elite contact skills to put the ball in play for hits even in areas where he doesn't drive it. Think about the above Vlad contact heat map in relation to the ISO/BIP heat map. He makes contact with pitches up and in 90+% of the time, almost every time he swings, but he never hits them for power. It's an automatic groundout. He's a f***ing soft groundout machine when you put the ball there. A double play God.

He swings a lot and doesn't walk much but I haven't seen any real holes yet. He can barrel pitches anywhere. I'm not sure how he could be exploited - he does seem to have a decent eye so he doesn't often swing at complete trash. Even if you compare to Vladdy who in theory should be just as good at making contact, Bo looks far superior at putting the bat on borderline pitches everywhere; Vlad has a soft spot low and away and gets cold on borderline pitches low. BO VLAD

Man, I just gave you a warning for openly criticizing a mod. Careful what you wish for.

Yeah, one draft every year. A New Player Draft in Feb/March. Any signed player without MLB experience is eligible so it covers rule 4 draftees from the prior year, July international free agent babies, and even bigger offseason IFAs. The NPD in 2021 will be super weak and weird as the 2020 MLB draft has already been picked over AND we haven't had a 2020 MiLB season to get data on prospect risers/fallers. Full dynasty so you can add/drop eligible players freely all 12 months of the year. No more cut-down deadlines. There are some mandatory promotions out of the minor leagues at the time of the NPD if a player on a minor league roster has a lot of MLB experience (higher thresholds than we used before, check the new Rules section). Some minor roster rules are a little bit in flux. We might do something like limit the IL during the offseason so teams don't hoard a gross amount of IL players all winter. We might expand MiLB rosters a bit before the 2021 NPD.

Deleted all of that trash. It's the f***ing Miami Marlins - no need to get heated. Open insults directed at the mods can result in swift bans. Public warning.

This is all baked into the projections though, and they’re pretty damn close

Is Acuna better? Career fWAR per 150 games: Bo = 6.47 Acuna = 5.21 Projected fWAR per 150 games (Depth Charts, i.e. Steamer + ZiPS): Bo = 4.02 Acuna = 4.29 Kind of just comes down to how much you believe in Bo's small sample size MLB career. Projections are so close. Bo is already a top 20 projected position player in baseball. Anyone who feels sad about Vladdy right now should just think of Bo!

Fangraphs has a live updates line. MLB Gameday updates stats including OPS during games. Just saying, if you glanced at the lineup on Gameday during the game but before the home run by Vlad, his OPS might have been the worst in the lineup.

The guy's post might have been pre-homer, at which point Vlad's OPS may have been the lowest of every starter on the team.

Jonathan Singleton without the weed