Laika

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.

Never said he was. Man players in baseball are far from angels. Machado is a fart, Donaldson is a douche, Bauer is an arrogant worm, all the Astros are cheaters, Acuna is lazy, Hosmer is a retard, Stroman is a diva, and so on. Puig is going to cost someone like $5M. If Toronto doesn't have payroll space for that, or only has that much room, there are bigger problems. The upside with Puig is that he has a 4 win season and helps the team sneak into a wild card spot. It's a high variance roster as it is and Puig would supplement the good side of the variance. The other upside is that Puig has a strong year and is an asset at the trade deadline. The third other upside is that Puig is productive and fun to watch and the spectator sport that baseball is has more spectators in Toronto as a result. Honestly, I cannot even wrap my stupid f***ing head around how somebody can logically end up at the position that the Toronto Blue Jays should not sign Yasiel Puig on a cheap one year deal and should instead just roll with Anthony f***ing Alford. There is not a worse expression of modern fandom than worrying about the team saving a few million bucks, or worrying about the team clutching onto a useless player out of options who projects to f***ing suck. Anyway, Atkins and Shapiro have already more or less signalled that they aren't signing a guy like Puig so it's a moot point. I disagree with them and I look forward to comparing Puig's 2020 production to the Blue Jays OF/DH production.

too much goal post moving and fact manipulation in this post to take it seriously Puig PROJECTS to be about average and he has demonstrated upside above that. Fisher, Teoscar, and Alford project to be below average, bad, and horrendous and none of them have any real demonstrated upside. It's okay to say that Teoscar and Fisher have potential (I agree they do and they would still fit on the roster and get the opportunity to play). There is no reasonable argument for Alford anymore. Puig's "issues" seem so unfairly overblown. He got in trouble for speeding once, missed a team meeting maybe once, and frustrated his managers a few times by running through stop signs, etc. He's not toxic and he has been unfairly maligned. He's also a media darling and an advertising dream who will literally throw hands for his teammates and he busts ass on the field.

Puig is a huge projected upgrade on Alford. Steamer 600: Grichuk 2.0 Puig 2.0 Gurriel 1.5 Fisher 1.0 Teoscar 0.4 Alford -0.3 ZiPS: Puig 1.8 Grichuk 1.4 Fisher 1.2 Gurriel 0.7 Teoscar 0.4 Alford -0.3 Teoscar and Fisher are the types that don't deserve to be gifted starting roles. They should fight for playing time. Alford does not deserve a roster spot. All that signing Puig does is bump Alford from the projected 26 man roster and upgrade the team by at least a projected win. Seems like a no-brainer unless he wants significant money. Teoscar can be pencilled in at DH, or in a DH platoon with Tellez if they have a 5 man bench. Gurriel-Grichuk-Puig-Teoscar are all RHB so Fisher can get a lot of playing time off the bench in a platoon role if any one of them struggle.

Puig should be a Blue Jay. It has to only take like $5M at this point. Last year he had twice that salary and a competing team traded for him at the deadline... he’d be taking some playing time from Teoscar who could just slide to DH anyway, be a good OF insurance policy, and then Tellez gets bumped to AAA where he should be, earning playing time the hard way like his talent dictates. Ugh. Puig!!!

I have trouble putting any real stock into the Hatch narratives. The guy has a huge sample at AA, 53 games, and he has been mediocre. I’d be happy with a decent middle reliever

Great content

and so they shall remain

I don't care about spring training stats. Travis Shaw projects to be decent. Alford projects to be terrible. That +/- was a running total since 2018 began.

Nice. That'll move his +/- to a healthy -45874