TwistedLogic

If you want to pretend that Posey wasn't on the same board, sure. Do 2008 and 2009 not exist anymore? Or are we not in a position to evaluate them? 2008, 2009 and 2010 were franchise defining drafts? Thanks for conceding and proving my point then. I agree, they do define that franchise over the past half decade. Mr. Joe Cool? http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-laughing002.gif Delmon Young was drafted in 2003, he was not drafted when Friedman was GM. I never said he was irrelevant. I only mentioned him once, as a poor top 1:1 pick, when Nox mentioned Hellickson. He has nothing to do with what I've said all along, that they've had weak drafts for seven straight years. And yet again, you've yet to disprove that.

Because they were turned into key pieces of major trades before they became irrelevant. I know they're nothing prospects right now, just like I know Smoral and DSJ and Borucki are still nothing prospects, which is why I didn't mention any of them. But AA actually leveraged value out of the picks he used on Nicolino and Nolin, unlike what the Rays did with many of their major busts, including Beckham. I've never attacked the Rays outside of criticizing their recent draft history, and I've been completely justified in doing so. Neither of you have yet to refute that. Tell me how you can paint any semblance of success on their drafts since '07. You can't, which is why you both keep taking your straw men out to a swim with your red herrings. I know I said I was done with this, but when you make up blatantly false garbage like accusing me of attacking your beloved Rays, I'm not gonna ignore that either.

And he might have been "above average" for picks in the top 3 nearly a decade ago. Not only is that mostly out of his control, and determined more by the strength of the prospects simply available in the draft, that doesn't change that if you were to calculate averages for his first round selections in the seven years since, there's no way he's anywhere near average, considering everybody he's drafted since then has done f***-all. *Precedes. That typo was atrocious. What you wrote means literally the exact opposite of what you were going for. Except that's ********. You've done nothing to dispel my claim that they've been hideous at drafting in recent years. You haven't even attempted to defend their drafting from 2008 to 2014, because you know it's been garbage, and I am completely correct in saying it has been. If you think that a 31st round Kiermaier draw is enough to compensate for 4-5 years of terrible drafting, enough to even consider a team average at drafting, then I'm sorry to say, but I'm not the one here making laughable posts. Funny, because we seem to pin down just about everything else a GM does to give or take credit from them in single sweeps, without any regard to what influence the rest of the front office around them has to their decisions. You don't want to pin down a front office's ability to draft because it goes against your biases. Engulfing your sentences in a bunch of convoluted rhetoric doesn't make you seem smart, and it doesn't make your point any more cogent. I never said the projections were wrong, I never even said I was right. I made a joke post that you turned into something bigger like you did here, because I knew all the sheeple on this forum would pick the Rays and I didn't mind going against the grain in an inconsequential predictions thread. I don't expect people as anal and uptight as you guys to understand that I don't care about being right all the time. This is a recreation.

So Friedman deserves credit because there were better prospects simply present in the drafts where his team had the #1-3 picks? Oh. Well okay in that case, why'd you stop? I mean if you wanna average out his success with his top picks, why do you limit that to a three year sample that began nearly a decade ago? Why not expand that sample to the additional seven years since then? I never set out to defend the Jays FO here though, did I? I made a one-line post about my distaste of the Rays drafting in recent years, and you typically started a semantics argument about my use of the word atrocious. Then Boxy came along and threw out an irresponsible Jays comparison when he shouldn't have, because anybody here who doesn't have turd in their eyes knows that the Jays have been far superior at drafting since AA's tenure began. Nothing I've said in this discussion has strayed away from facts. Now you're the one stuck defending your favorite team in a place where there's absolutely no logical defense. You wanna suck Friedman off because he hit on a 1:3 prospect 9 years ago, go ahead. The Rays have been garbage at drafting since that time, and there's really nothing you can say to prove that false. The Jays drafted more relevant prospects in 2010 alone (in Sanchez, Syndergaard, Nicolino, Nolin and Pompey) than the Rays have in the seven combined years since. I'm done wasting my time on this, can't make a point against people buried so deep under their own biases. You're irritated by the reality that a team you admire to such a strong degree has had such an incredible weakness for such a long time, and that's fine, but no matter how hard you try to spin it, you can't prove that that weakness hasn't existed.

The level of irony here in the use of the word homer is hilarious.

Saying that the Rays are garbage at drafting means I'm a Jays homer? That's ironic, given how much of a hard on you have to have for Friedman to try and defend his drafting during his Rays tenure. You're the one that brought the Jays drafts up in the first place, and even if I'm the biggest Jays homer on earth, can you say ad hominem? You have to be incredibly stupid to take an objective look at both teams' drafting over the past five years and conclude that the Rays were better at drafting than the Jays were. I told you to post a comparison of each team's draft record since 2010, but I know you won't do it because you'll defeat your own stance and embarrass yourself. Even if he was in the organization, Hellickson and Upton were drafted prior to Friedman becoming the GM. If you wanna stretch to give him Hellickson, I get to stretch to s*** on him for drafting Delmon at 1:1 and Townsend at 1:8. I don't discredit Longo or Price, but to say someone is good at drafting for hitting on guys at the top of the draft is idiotic. It's like saying that the Nats are geniuses for drafting Harper and Strasburg. He loses a lot of the credit he gets for drafting Longo and Price by blowing a 1:1 on Beckham. And what exactly is that "etc etc"? After the guys you listed, and Jennings, who is the "etc"?

This is what Friedman had to say prior to the 2011 draft: http://i.gyazo.com/34f5554d4147133a3f068130b25be5ad.png Yeah, they really delivered on that historic draft, didn't they? In the short span where the Rays took Guerrieri (1:24), Mahtook (1:31), Hager (1:32) and Martin (1:38), the Red Sox picked Swihart (1:26), Owens (1:36) and JBJ (1:40). The Giants also took Panik at 1:29. The Rays had already made 10 picks before the Jays stole away Norris at 74, and picked again at 75 to take Granden Goetzman before the Padres took Hedges at 82. To take a couple words from a Rays blog itself, the 2011 draft for them was a catastrophic garbage fire, and the years surrounding it don't look any prettier.

Actually I'll make it easier on anyone shameless enough to bare their nuts to defend the Rays here. Bring me one relevant name other than Kiermaier that the Rays have drafted since after 2008.

lol you're listing the busts, now list the hits. Let's compare the Jays with the Rays since 2010 then, shall we? Actually no, let's start the Jays at 2010 and give the Rays all the way back to 2008, and compare how many relevant names each team has drafted since then. Go ahead, draw up a list and post it here.

You're really giving him credit for pulling Longoria and Price with the 1:3 and 1:1 picks? Really? When he drafted Beckham 1:1 the next year? Nice, so he hit on two of the three picks he had at the very top of the draft. What a feat. Moore, Cobb and Jennings are the three biggest names that they drafted outside of the top 3 picks. I'll even throw in Vogt, who they gave away to the A's in a cash trade before he broke out. Two of those guys were drafted in '06, and two of them were drafted in '07. Over the last 8 years since, the only guy to come out of a Rays draft in a big way was Kiermaier in 2010, who was picked in the 31st round and was basically a fluke break-out like Pillar and Pompey. Over the last 9 years, outside of two guys in the top 3 picks where you should never miss, two guys in the 10th round or later where luck plays a large role, and one guy they threw away for notihng, the Rays only real successes were Moore and Cobb. People can have their own opinions, but in mine, that's atrocious.

Triple play?

No, it absolutely isn't. Tim Beckham, LeVon Washington, Josh Sale, Justin O'Conner, Drew Vettieson, the front-end of their draft was abysmal throughout his entire tenure. Guerrieri has been a train wreck so far, and even if he comes back and puts it all together, to be the only relevant name out of 11 first round selections in 2011 is just unforgivable. AA got his post in 2010, if you trade his draft history since then with Friedman's, Friedman would be lauded as leading one of the best draft teams in the game, and AA would be suffering an endless crucifixion at the hands of the fans, and especially those on this board. For a forum like ours, where GM's endure scrutiny over the most minute possible mistakes, to give the Rays any sort of pass on their drafting is ridiculous. We don't need to suck Friedman's dick any more than we already do.

Could you be more of a hick?

Gun sale coming up?

Didn't he miss like two months last year because he tried to leg out a grounder? And people complained about him going too hard? I'll take a few less infield singles if it means it'll keep him healthy enough to be in the lineup, and I'm sure he feels the same way.

Keep warnings to PM's, like you're supposed to. Nobody else gives a s*** about them, and the rest of the forum has no need to be involved in them. The extent to which you use your mod-label to thump your own chest is nauseating.

Have to take into account that this simply counts all pitches outside of the zone, it doesn't take into account the proximity that those pitches have to the zone. A team with a ton of wild pitchers (like the Jays) will of course grade low on this list, because you simply can't frame a pitch that's a foot outside of the zone. That said, I have been surprised at the number of close pitches, or pitches I thought that Martin had framed incredibly well, that have not gone for strikes for the Jays pitchers.

The #AddAProfessionRuinAMovie hashtag on twitter right now is f***ing hilarious.

It's not a 50-50 chance. Look around the league. The chance you get a better GM than AA are slim, regardless of what people think of him. Especially when you consider the people who would be doing the hiring.

I think it's working out as expected. We all thought Happ would get better at Safeco, and we all knew Saunders was one of the most injury prone players in the league. I still like this trade, and unless he breaks a few more bones, I still expect Saunders to contribute at some point.

This is from the pitcher's perspective. The teams at the top have had more pitches outside of the zone called for strikes. The teams at the bottom probably employ somebody like Aaron Sanchez. The teams at the top also probably have better framers, though of course that isn't close to being the only reason, since teams like the Padres and the Jays are a lot lower on the list.

http://i.gyazo.com/41c7576bd1e1561dc078269cc9472b79.png Can't vouch for credibility or accuracy, so I'm not sure if it's of any use, but I've thought for a while that it's something worth looking deeper into, and it's nice to see someone try at it. Doesn't surprise me to see the Jays at the bottom of the list.

http://i.gyazo.com/dd89330257aeb5810b6eddf76a78c3c0.png That sounds exciting.

Friedman's drafting with the Rays was atrocious.

lol, when has this ever not been what Spanky does?