Laika

I took a quick look and I can't find the toggle. Not sure this is an option in Fantrax, for some reason?

about 6 inches

He had his appendix removed a week ago. This was a second surgery after that?

The hype was pretty silly to begin with for a high school player who profiles at 1B. Hard for them to go in the first, although we have seen a small number this decade (Triston Casas, Josh Naylor, Nick Pratto come to mind). But I think Jordan has been playing 3B. Really all it takes is one team to think he can play 3rd and he's probably going high enough to sign... maybe even the notion that he could play the OF. Or, one team to see a Triston Casas type of hit-power combo.

Gurriel - Grichuk - Teoscar is a high variance OF with a lot of downside risk. Not much to take to the bank. In a good world, Gurriel is a 3 win player and Grichuk and Hernandez both approach 2 WAR. But in a bad world Toronto could get like, 2.0 WAR total from the three. On an individual level it would not be shocking to see any of them have years under 1 WAR. Grichuk just did it, Gurriel is a big BABIP risk as a low BB% player without much defensive value, and Teoscar has basically been a 1 WAR player his entire career. I don't think the defense would be that horrible though and I am slightly excited to see what Gurriel and Hernandez do this year.

Kinda weird.

Yasiel Puig is decent, would be a projected upgrade for Toronto, has a chance to be a significant upgrade, is positioned to be a bargain, is perhaps unfairly maligned, and is fun to watch. Should the Blue Jays sign him? Yes. Will the Blue Jays sign him? Almost certainly not.

Everyone knows how to read FanGraphs. If Puig was a really good player he'd already be signed. Or a reliable player.

The main problem with this selective sampling is that you started with 2017, which was the best season of Normal Puig. Start with 2015 and there's no trend. Even the numbers from 2017-2019 don't seem significant; players fluctuate like that all the time. Careful.

Max, he does. Not as much of a chance but it's there.

Todd, we might end up seeing that Biggio + Panik lineup against righties. Good call.

Billy Butler with defense

It's not faith in any sense of the word. He projects for 2 wins and was a 3 win player as recently as 2017, and his skills have not changed since then. We have projections for every player and, centered around those projections, we can reason our way to upper and lower tier outcomes. Puig is expected to be worth about 2 WAR. It would not be that weird to see 3 WAR because he did it recently while exhibiting the same tools. If you get super optimistic and say, presume he has a good defensive year and figures something tiny out on offense, 4 WAR seems super optimistic but still possible... maybe you give it a 5-10% chance of happening. Alford projects to be BELOW replacement level. Do you know how bad you have to be to get a negative projection? Here are some other players with ZiPS projections around -0.3 WAR: THE Ryan Goins Richie Martin, coming off a -1.0 WAR year old friend Mitch Nay Sicnarf Loopstok (yes this is a real name) old friend Kendrys Morales old friend Dioner Navarro, who hasn't played since his -1.8 WAR 2016 but did play in AAA last year and had a nice 69 wRC+ old friend Travis Snider, out of the league since 2015 Danial Palka, who had a 2 wRC+ last year. That's not a typo. old friend Ezequiel Carrera In order to envision a scenario where he is worth 2 WAR, you basically have to imagine that he has some sort of Freaky Friday thing happen with Byron Buxton. It would be borderline shocking to see Alford get to 1 WAR, but I guess that might be possible if he is used mostly as a defensive replacement and pinch runner? I dunno. The guy can't hit at all. Like, he swings through every type of pitch, even hanging sliders and fastballs.

Bigly doubt this, lol

Yes, as soon as the annual NPD ends would be the line in the sand between seasons for this purpose. That is one reason to have debut waivers. The second reason is to prevent teams from populating their MiLB roster with actual prospects, for free, now that we have unregulated demotions/promotions. Maybe we will just leave it as it is.

That’s not absolutely true. I mean last year Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel were free agents until the all star break. Puig could just be demanding too much money

Sorry, but Puig literally is a tiny adjustment away from being good. Alford is a thousand large adjustments from perhaps being a replacement level Baltimore Oriole. Log off right now!

Julian Merryweather is not a legal add under our new rules. We changed it so players who had tickled AAA were eligible during the waiver draft but during the season they have to go through a debut waivers process if they don't have MLB experience, which would apply to him. ALTHOUGH I'm not sure I love that rule construction all that much. I think I may tweak the rules slightly. It feels like players that hit AAA in prior seasons should just be fair game. This player group will not include many real prospects anyway and it will slightly decrease the administrative process of debut waivers. Debut waivers should probably only apply to players that did not hit AAA in any prior season. So, the players more likely to be real prospects who, say, crush AAA in their first season there and get promoted or zoom from A ball to the majors. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Nobody thinks he can be that good. But his maximum exit velocity and sprint speed are still upper-end, so he still has his elite total athleticism. At 29 years old he isn't far from his physical prime - it's not hard to imagine some tiny little tweaks unlocking more. And even if he doesn't improve his talent has been pretty flat from 2015 through 2019. Here are his WAR/150 rates for those seasons: 2.85 1.44 2.86 2.16 1.21 1.85 (2020 ZiPS) 2.09 (2020 Steamer) We're talking about a guy who, in baseball terms, has actually been almost remarkably consistent as an average talent for the last five years. He is also obviously one teeny tiny swing adjustment, or some more intelligent baserunning, or some better outfield positioning, away from being comfortably above average. It's not like he is maxed out defensively or has been exhibiting a lack of power or huge strikeout issues. He just has not been able to be as good as the sum of his parts.

3/30 was a reasonable offer for Moustakas early in the offseason. The contract the Reds gave him is shocking.

Changed the maximum weekly adds to 10 for now. Will drop it back down in a couple weeks.

SIGN PUIG you cowards https://www.radioscouts.com/puig-should-be-our-friend/

This draft seems stacked. Give me any of the top 5 and I’m happy.

update?

I'm assuming that offer was much earlier in the offseason. I bet at this point he'd sign for anything as long as it's a starting job on an MLB roster. Pillar has kind of set the bar by signing for $4.25M after being projected for $9M+ in arb3. Puig made like $9.8M last year.