John_Havok

This was just the minor league portion of the Rule V draft in case anyone was wondering. The major league portion cannot happen without a CBA, and that's where Spraker is eligible to be taken.

So much of the MIF conversation depends on Moreno and whether or not they feel he has a shot at sticking at 3b to start the year IMO. Assuming no service time related changes in the CBA... maybe they keep him down for a couple weeks to gain the extra year and worry about Super 2 later. That, of course, assumes he is truly ready for 3b. We don't know that at all. IF that's true and he is ready, that solves the MIF problem and Biggio will be the primary 2b with Espinal the jack of all trades backup. At this point I have very little confidence that Pearson/Stripling will be an adequate 5th man rotation option. Pearson's innings will be so limited even if he is effective, and Stripling just hasn't shown enough that he belongs in the rotation IMO. Yes, if Pearson throws to his talents, He and Strip could be a viable piggyback option for a while, but there's no way that could last all season. I'd be more comfortable signing Kikuchi as the 5, letting Pearson work his s*** out in AAA and be the first man up if needed. If he doesn't work his s*** out as a starter, then I think it's about time to cut bait and send him to the pen full time and see if he can be truly effective there throwing 100mph+ for 1 inning at a time.

Yeah but the trunks look like more muscular in the thighs, not starting with the wide hips like Vlad Sr and Jr

I have the top 2 reversed, I think the pitching is more important if only 1 spot is upgraded... but I have no doubts they are going to get both upgraded. In either case, upgrading MIF1, means MIF2 wont need upgrading since that would then be Espinal. Same with the pitching since a starter getting upgraded pushes one of the depth starter possibilities directly to the pen anyways. I think they're done with the pen for now except for the token minor league signings with ST invites that will happen after the union and owners quit jerking each other off.

Extrapolating the sexual prowess and # of partners of Vlad Sr, if that trend continues you could have an entire minor league system full of Vlad Guerrero the Vs .

Multiple 15 year old sons of the Vlad.... dude swung quite a heavy bat all over the field. This kid has a much leaner build. That thick lower half is notably absent.

Alternatively, Gurriel becomes trade fodder. His contract and obvious upside would be something many teams would be interested in trying to take advantage of. Not saying he SHOULD be traded, just that getting Suzuki would make him somewhat more expendable.

How so? Grichuk is a bench guy, why would be imperative to pay Suzuki more (his rumoured target is 4 years, 48 million) than Grichuk to ride the pine for 2/3rds of the season?

So basically a minor improvement on Gurriel offensively, but what about defense? I'd wager this guy would grade out better defensively than Gurriel

Yeah, I don't recall the specifics but his original deal was 7 years, 22 million with a guarantee he gets his release at the end of 2023. Kinda shows how service time manipulation is still such a problem when you can sign a guy for a 7 year contract, have it be 7 years later but the guy still hasn't accumulated 6 years of service time for your team, even having spent just 559 PAs in the minors.

Nah, Gurriel signed a special deal that says the Jays have to give him his release after 2023 so he is free to negotiate with every other team. So I guess it's still an ARB year, but the Jays have no control over whether it's with them or not unless they negotiate an extension first.

That's a very narrow lens you're looking through though. Look at it this way. Teams valuations have skyrockets in the past 25 years. Player's paychecks have also increased, but nowhere near the same rate. Owners are enjoying every benefit of their teams being worth billions of dollars, while players are still fighting to get a proportionate piece of that pie. Owner's will take every upside they can, but then when some form of revenue dries up, they expect that downswing to be shared by the players. Capitalists when the value rises, socialists when the value drops. There used to be tons of guys in their mid 30's that were still contributing to their team's successes and were also getting "rewarded" for their production and value from earlier in their career. With analytics (and the steroid era being gone), we don't see early to mid 30's guys getting massive paydays like they used to. Owners have realized they shouldn't be paying someone in their mid30s for something they did 5 years ago. So, while very few exceptions still exist, the money that used to go to the upper age bracket guys, gets floated... back.... to.... nobody. The owners aren't bound to pay the young stars anything more than their league minimums for the first 3 years, then slow incremental increases through arbitration until they become a free agent somewhere in the range of 30-32 for the most part, unless they offer long extensions that generally fall below market value because of risk hedging. Superstar players of course get to FA earlier, but the system isn't failing them to begin with. The truly elite will always get their high AAVs, now its just a matter of how long the deals will be. Another main point of the players is that all the revenue sharing that takes place from the massive media market teams that gets shared to the have-nots, doesn't seem to be being put back on the field. Markets like Tampa and many others don't seem to be able to increase payrolls, despite receiving 7 figures in revenue sharing every year. The Yankee's don't care about that really... yeah the owners there would likely prefer to not give away money to other teams because it's still money... but when they see those teams not using it against them... yeah, they're more cool with it than it would seem. It's the players union that is far more pissed off about the money not being spent than the Yankees are. Essentially, this current stoppage is all about the owners not wanting to inject all that money they are saving on older players into the younger players. They want to keep it and watch their franchise valuations keep ballooning. The players union wants that money to be put back into the rest of the players, whether it's through a floor/increased luxury tax threshold, earlier arbitration, free agency etc. All the stuff about the universal DH and some other things.. that's all the minor ******** they throw to the media to make the other side look like pedantic f***s. Also, consider that the relative labour "peace" between the two sides since 1994 is 100% due to the fact the players would NOT accept a salary cap. The owners wanted one back then with no floor, and the player's knew they had to strike and never bend on a straight cap. They didn't, there was no cap, and the owners knew that a salary cap was a non-starter ever since then.

Probably. For personalities like him, it's about the attention, not the money.

Master level trolling. The man is a savant.

Of course he will explain more. And the more he explains, the less it will make sense to anyone with a functional brain. The way the writer's cherry-pick who they vote for and don't because of morality clauses and how they apply them differently is nauseating. It shouldn't even be a consideration. All kinds of people in every walk of life are *******s and douchebags, but if you play a sport that has a hall of fame and your numbers warrant your inclusion, that it shouldn't matter if you told a reporter that his or her face looked like a 90 year old vagina, or bet on cockfights in a back alley in Singapore while getting a handjob from a trans midget with a lisp and didnt leave a tip. On field is what matters because it's NOT subjective. You have the numbers, or you don't.

Clemens was an *******, so,,..... duh, morality clause. AKA, the thing the writers tell themselves over and over again to exclude guys they don't like without proof of anything because one time they were declined for an interview so the player could go do a line of coke off strippers tits.

Exactly. I mean, any deal of course would be pending a physical, but the fact they didn't even want him at 18 and a half for 1 year speaks volumes.

Yup, It's fascinating to watch the mental gymnastics every year to justify "X thought process" for this guy and completely ignoring it for other guys.

I think the market on Rodon is softer than we realize. He had a fairly obvious velocity drop in the second half of last season, and combining that with his very recent and prolonged injury history teams are probably very wary of signing him for high dollar figures. He might be a prime 1 year pillow guy that signs for well below what others of his skill range do because of that. Him expecting a 20 million-ish dollar AAV for even 1 year would be extremely surprising to me. The skillset it there for sure, but I doubt there's many teams looking at multiyear deals for this guy despite the obvious skill. And if they are looking at multiyear deals, the AAV wont be what it could be.

All that said about Espinal, if I had to pick who I think will be the better hitter in 2022, I'd take Wendle, but the difference is probably not huge. Wendle is a spray guy too and hits the ball harder.

The biggest thing that changed with Espinal from 2020 (SSS caveat) and 2021 is his whiff rate on certain pitches, and thus, his overall K rate. Against the fast ball in 2021, his whiff rate was just 10% vs 22% in 2020. Breaking ball whiff rate was about the same... slightly up from 20% to 22% so not super significant. Offspeed whiff rate fell from 40% to 25%. Overall K rate went from 24% to 12%. Exit velo average was 85 in 2021 vs 87 in 2020. Looks like he might have made some conscious efforts to reign in his swing a bit to make more contact and spray it around as well. His pull (39%), centre(31%) and oppo (31%) rates where pretty even last season with a slight favor to the pull side, whereas 2020 he was 46%, 40% and 15% To a guy with no power, that's how he's going to have to hit to be even remotely successful. To put the fastball whiff rate into perspective, Vlad's whiff rate on fastballs was 17%. Obviously not saying Espinal is a better hitter against the fastball, just saying that whiff rate is really really good.

That's basically his output in 2020, but that was 60 PAs, so not really all that telling. He's a slappy spray hitter with a good eye at the plate. Yeah, if his BABIP doesn't run higher than most, his offensive value will dry up. But his defense is plus wherever he plays, so there's always gonna be PA's available for him somewhere. But he probably shouldn't be a starter either.

I wouldn't say ALOT more depth in the pen, basically just 1 more guy and ideally he'd be upper tier. Someone like Kenly Jansen would be about perfect to have a clear top 2 of Jansen/Romano. Garcia, Richards, Mayza, Cimber, Stripling (assuming long/swing) then the rest of Pearson, Saucedo(L), Snead(L), Borucki(L), Thornton, Hatch, Kay(L), Merryweather, Phelps, Castro can fight it out for the remaining spots or be rotation depth. Likely even some other pickups before spring training of even more guys on minor league deals with ST invites, just like every year.

Not a bad idea. Though that might retard the growth of this new thread

That's lame.