BlueRocky

Cashman is saying he won’t even do Frazier for Stroman straight up. Loaisiga and Deivi G might be the only guy I care for. It’s true they have a lot of pitching, many of them were considered top guys last year that have fallen a bit, but many of their young arms have injury problems that I wouldn’t want back as a centerpiece for that trade. The way things are going this smells like another Happ for McKinney and Drury situation. Cashman’s fleecing resume is quite impressive and he’s also holding a lot of hot garbage as trade chips. Stroman is worth way more than that, do ourselves a favor and look elsewhere.

I tend to agree, the NL race is closer. NL central especially

Four Fisher Cats named to the Eastern League All Star team: Forrest Wall Santiago Espinal Nash Knight Zach Logue A couple more could’ve made the team but were either snubbed, promoted, not enough games, reworking his “illegal” delivery and got hammered, or dealing with injuries like Pearson, Murphy, Sopko, Diaz, Adams (A+ AS)

Fyi guys, the Blue Jays actually have a LHP prospect in double-A named Jake Fishman and his walkup song is the original pokemon theme.

There’s some truth to this. I wake up one morning and will see over 150 new messages. Then checking my phone during break there’s another 150+ new messages. Granted a lot of it isn’t baseball talk, so much of it wouldn’t have been messages that would’ve made their way into a forum post, but I really didn’t expect it to be this active.

Savage

The decision making is certainly a bit curious. Holding Vlad down last year is arguable since he was still 19. Bichette would be 21 if called up and much more polished defensively. Vlad also had a month of AAA while Bichette should be closing on two or three months of AAA before he gets called up. Either way we have 7 years of control if you include 2019. Who knows what will happen after CBA changes.

0:26 Way too early 2020 MLB Draft talk 11:00 Alejandro "Captain" Kirk 19:58 Josh Winckowski 24:02 Lourdes Gurriel Jr's hot streak 28:54 Next year's payroll: Will the Blue Jays spend money? Competitive timeline? 31:59 Hector Perez and return for Osuna 36:52 Ken Giles, most valuable trade chip? Twins as a trade partner? 43:00 Call-up coming for Bo Bichette 45:08 Everything Cavan Biggio 58:09 Wrap up

We covered a lot of prospect stuff for your listening pleasure for anyone interested in that. This episode is complimentary to the regular weekly Radioscouts podcast. Had some technical difficulties with this weeks original recording (Most sincere apologies to Nick, who gave over an hour of his time). But if Mike wasn’t on in the first place this week’s episode wouldn’t have any chance of happening (RIP thunderstorms). Enjoy. 0:26 Way too early 2020 MLB Draft talk 11:00 Alejandro "Captain" Kirk 19:58 Josh Winckowski 24:02 Lourdes Gurriel Jr's hot streak 28:54 Next year's payroll: Will the Blue Jays spend money? Competitive timeline? 31:59 Hector Perez and return for Osuna 36:52 Ken Giles, most valuable trade chip? Twins as a trade partner? 43:00 Call-up coming for Bo Bichette 45:08 Everything Cavan Biggio 58:09 Wrap up

Sigh

There isn’t really an article like that. They cover a ton of college baseball and will have weekly minor league standouts, and like monthly ranking updates. The most exciting stuff happens around draft time, then it gets a bit groggy till next spring when mock drafts and tournaments starts up again. There’s a bit of IFA coverage but they haven’t been saying much since Feb

The BA podcast was really interest, covering midsession prospect ranking updates. They said the current iteration of top 100 is far inferior to two years ago when we had names like Ohtani, Acuna, Vlad, Eloy. Special names. Now it’s a basically Wander Franco, Mackenzie Gore, Casey Mize, followed by a whole bunch of “guys” and a slew of up coming pitchers. (Cited Nate Pearson as one them) In the past they would get to 60+ names in the top 100 before drawing a blank, now it’s like after 40 guys and they start running out of exciting names. It’s a byproduct of a bunch of guys that just graduated from rankings, and haven’t added in 2019 draft picks and IFA names yet to the new list. Like we can’t talk about Adley Rutschman because we haven’t seen him play a game in the minors yet.

Merryweather wasn’t highly rated, and Thornton was outside Astro’s top 10. And still doesn’t get love from Houston fans. Those guys were basically “Forrest Wall” caliber return for pitching. Some upside, maybe one or two plus tools. Fringe MLB but has potential to be more. Just looking at how front office dumped Loup, Axford, Oh, Granderson, Pearce there’s a good chance Sogard is on the list to be flipped if his production continues into July. The return might not be great but you never know, Merryweather looked bad at the time.

But you’ll get a prospect And open up more playing time for Bichette and Biggio at the same time. If the prospect is anything between Santiago Espinal, Forrest Wall, or Trent Thornton, Julian Merryweather I’ll take it. I like Sogard, but 2020/2021 should be the priority, and who knows if he can hit like this next year. Projections say no.

Kirk’s 160 wRC+ is impressive. It’s harder to generate good power numbers in the FSL

Been keeping tabs on him since Bluefield. He has potentially 5 tools which is interesting for a catcher, but he’s got the body of a shortstop. Power also seems better than advertised, arm is good. Very speedy and athletic. I feel like Moreno would get more prospect list hype just because his body type is more ideal and if he can hit, but fails at catching, it’s possible to find him another position like 2B/3B or LF. It’s not uncommon for prospects that played catcher @17 to move off there. But so far he’s been fine behind the plate Also keeping tabs on Javier D’Orazio in DSL.

Filthy three Ks

This would be nice.

Whatever Grichuk ate for breakfast this morning needs to continue

Like if this is the starting point for Thornton, he’s in very good shape to stay in the rotation.

Yeah there’s no way the hand is completely fine after getting nailed. We’re very lucky he didn’t miss 6 weeks like Bichette.

For Diaz that’s incredible value. Houston Astros is a pitching factory

He mentioned a few other things, just off the top of my head and paraphrase: - our bullpen hasn’t had much velocity, and acquiring it can be difficult. They’re happy with Jordan Romano’s development and he surprised some people - when considering extension talks, they look at projections of how they think players will perform in the next few years (he’s referring in general, but kinda hinting on both Grichuk and Stroman). The team has more information about their own players than any other organization and can make those assessments more accurately, sometimes it’s difficult to acquire that information about names in other orgs during trade discussions - Atkins did a study on Merryweather while he was still in Cleveland. He’s been closely following him ever since. Recovery from TJS allowed guys to fully learn about how to take care of their arm and rebuild the mechanics, and proper form, this sometimes can increase velocity dramatically as the case with Merryweather - He highly values talented players/prospects that not only enjoy playing baseball, but enjoys the process. Guys with tremendous work ethic and loves working on their own craft. Cited Merryweather as one of those. - He feels doing something really special can take sacrifices, like one step back for two steps forward approach (citing the tanking) and how teams like St Louis Cards and SF Giants always seem to have competitive teams despite being small market because their farm systems are always exceptional. Atkins wants to build an elite farm system to promote long term success