KingKat

Guys who get traded along with a million other guys for J.A. Happ don't count. Hutch is awesome though. He's never been hyped but he's achieved at every level including MLB.

Comparing the Red Sox and Blue Jays sides of their respective deals doesn't make sense. What the Red Sox did is what the Marlins did. Find a taker for their contracts and maybe pick up some useful pieces at the same time. What the Blue Jays did is more like what the Dodgers did and there's all sorts of reasons why the Blue Jays (or anyone else for that matter) shouldn't operate like the Dodgers.

He also drew as many walks in his first two games as JPA did in his first two months. Even though JPA is a lock playing time wise and TDA will probably always be a question mark, this is going to hurt. JPA sucks and any hopes that Thole would be a sleeper source of value have been dashed through a combination of sparse playing time and poor performance.

New legit guy: Stroman (sure he was an early pick but he was also a signability guys too so there was reason to be skeptical. Results in AA do a lot to legitimize a prospect.) Burns (really nice breakout in high A, best middle infield prospect at the moment although there could be a wave of them on the way) Sleeper: Deiferson Barreto (A guy with only two years in the Dominican Summer League on his résumé shouldn't be considered more than a deep sleeper but the dramatic improvement in walk rate is worthy of attention). Michael De La Cruz (Another guy who spent most of the summer in the Dominican. He's 20 though and has looked awful so far in Rookie League so he may bust just as quickly as he broke out). Emilio Guerrero (Raw infielders are a bit of a specialty for this club. Defense is questionable but it's been a nice offensive breakout) Shane Dawson (Took a big step forward this year, looks great.) Bust: There were definitely dissapointments (slow progress for Sanchez, lost season for Osuna) but I don't know that anyone played himself out of prospect status this year. Dissapointments in the low minors are probably too early to dismiss but and there wasn't that much in the high minors. Deck didn't do worse than expected.

There's a strange logic that seems to equate low ceiling with high floor. Ricciardi in particular seems to specialize in the so-called safe picks that turned into low ceiling busts during his tenure (Adams, Purcey, Cooper, etc.). The fact that Rogers was being cheap kind of limited him to those kinds of pick but there was a belief that the cheap approach would provide value beyond the investment which it did a few times (Hill, Romero, Marcum, Litsch, Cecil) but not nearly often enough to justify all the high upside picks that were left on the table. The low ceiling approach was a bust overall. At least on that point, AA is better than Ricciard. He gets that you should draft for ceiling although he often seems to draw way too much of an equivalency between athleticisim and ceiling.

That has to be the official reason and the main reason but they may have been killing two birds with one stone.

Actually that would be quantifiable but I'm not going to continue to argue semantics with you. My point it that I don't see how it is productive to make assumptions about something you can't qualify. No you probably shouldn't assume it's has zero impact but you can't say it's obvious. Nobody knows.

But he didn't just say it was visible (which itself is debatable), he said it was obvious. So it's this impossible to measure things that in spite of this is somehow obvious.

How can something be not easily quantifiable and at the same time obviously be there? Something can't be obvious and invisible at the same time.

t Farrell's seeming ignorance of something as basic as platoon splits was a huge red flag. As a fan it was like: We waited all this time for this? This was the first sign that maybe AA didn't have his priorities quite right. The worst part is that in the long run it ended up costing the team Butterfield and all that good defensive alignment work he was doing. That probably had more impact on wins and lose than anything the manager did.

Fair enough. He really got under my skin though for whatever reason.

Probably harder to get video feeds.

Frank Robinson was a prick.

Violently shakes head.

Yeah the challenges introduce a lot of problems... The managers don't want the responsibility and who can blame them. They don't see the replays themselves so they can't know that the play was blown. In the NFL, the head coaches have their own video people who can tell them whether something is worth challenging or not. No such luxury in baseball. Managers will base their decisions on the situation. They will make challenges that they can't win because of the importance of the situation and they will refrain from making challenges they would win because the situation doesn't seem important enough (situations that might end up snow-balling). On anything close, the managers will have no way of knowing what's worth challenging. This will greatly reduce the effectiveness of the system. This system isn't designed to maximize the amount of correct calls. It's designed to help get some additional calls right while also creating a lot of built-in friction so that the umpires feel less threatened by the change. Still I want to be clear that I'm not against reviews even in this half-baked form. This is progress and if the cost of progress is compromise, so be it. If they go with this, the flaws will be exposed pretty quickly and it will lead to further improvements. This is way better than the status quo.

At least this time AA didn't waste time and just went with someone he liked. It sure beats dedicating an entire friggin' year to a manager search and still getting it spectacularly wrong.

You're implying that they had a well invested 120 million but it's a poorly distributed 120 million. They spend a bunch of money but they went with two backups at 2B. They spent a bunch of money but didn't upgrade from Lind and J.P. They spent a bunch of money on a position (SS) that they didn't need to upgrade. They spent money on veterans but they didn't realize how out of shape some of them were. That's what they're paying for.

Poetic justice.

You must not know much about Charlie Manuel if you think he compares favorably to other managers.

Man I had fogotten about that article. As I read the first part, I got tricked into thinking it was a serious article for the second time. Sam Miller is awesome.

Well the article I posted determined the most exploited holes not the biggest weakness per say (although they are obviously related). If J.P. is indeed equally bad at everything than there's no necessity to exploit a hole. It would mean, you could literraly get him out with anything and pitchers in such a scenario would just throw whatever they feel like throwing and not worry about exploiting a hole. I don't really know how JP actually profiles but his problem might not be an inability to put certain pitches in play but rather just an inability to recognize the location of pitches outside of the strike zone regardless of what pitches they are.

Man, how faptastic is Votto? I knew a lot of his success came from how his pitch recognition and how selective he is but I didn't know how thoroughly he could murder one particular pitch. His approach is litterally perfect for a player who is better than anyone else at hitting one particular pitch. This is an interesting contrast to say Miguel Cabrera, who hits every kind of pitch equally well. Neither player would find the same succes with the other's approach. Both can recognize pitches like nobody's business but Cabrera has more to gain by swinging and Votto more to gain by being patient. Both are baseball divinity.

Pretty nice article here that breakdown with hitters have a difficulty with a certain pitch that opponents have successfuly exploited. http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2013/8/1/4573564/the-biggest-holes-in-swings-mark-reynolds-pedro-alvarez-denard-span-alberto-callaspo In order of frequency of the pitch: Fourseam: Mark Reynolds (no wonder his slumps are so long if he can't hit the most thrown pitch in baseball) Sinker: Dernard Span Changeup: Alberto Callaspo Slider: Chris Carter Curveball: Mark Trumbo

Can you put him in touch with Beeston?

We probably shouldn't make too many assumptions about that vote. Either way it's still great news because it means it's closer to happening possibly even real close.