metafour

Sem Robberse is a real prospect having a pretty decent season as a 21 year old in AA. Hernandez is a rental OF posting a 102 OPS wRC+ with bad defense and a 31.6% K rate. I doubt it.

Barriera back up to Dunedin: 3 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K He back!

Teams like the Rays and Orioles have a big advantage in that their ownership is notoriously cheap and thus their fans have zero built-in expectations, which means that they can always just operate smartly without any outside pressure to do otherwise. If you remember, this FO came in and was immediately blasted by the legacy baseball writers in Canada. They were already at a negative position with the fanbase because of the irregular circumstances of how they came in before they even made a baseball move, and they have an Ownership group that cares more about how the fanbase perceives the team than Tampa or Baltimore do. Unfortunately, they have bosses themselves who will largely dictate the direction of the team. This was immediately felt with their move of attempting to "gently" rebuild while still trying to compete with Donaldson. These guys are obviously smart enough to know that they should have sold high on Donaldson and blown up the team, but imagine they actually did that given the fan opinion of Shapiro and company when they were hired? It was very obvious that their direction was largely being dictated by Rogers. The same applies to the speed at which they went to try to contend with Vlad/Bo. They were hired at the peak of an unprecedented nation wide re-interest in the team. Once they started winning faster than expected it became very easy to tell that Rogers was going to want to strike while the iron was still hot from the 2015 season.

Scratch that, he's 5 for 6 now David Guzman also 3 for 5 with a 3B. He's also 17 and signed for $650K. Super short at 5'7 but he's had a few multi-hit games recently.

There are a lot of moving pieces with what actually took place: 1) Merrifield had already stolen second base in the same at-bat. Does the probability of stealing third base decrease if you just stole second a few pitches earlier? I'm not sure, but you'd have to assume the catcher is awake after already giving up second base in the same at-bat. 2) It was actually only one out at the time of the failed attempt to steal third, not two. So Espinal could have still moved Merrifield to third base on a sacrifice and your point about scoring on a wild pitch or error or passed ball would still be in play. 3) With one out, you are actually talking about both Espinal and Kirk batting to attempt driving him in. Both guys have underwhelmed this year, but neither guy strikes out much and both are high-contact hitters. Kirk especially has a good history of hitting, so even though he has been "bad", it's not unfathomable to suggest that he can break out at any point in time. Of course, what actually ended up happening is that Espinal proceeded to walk, Kirk singled, and then Luplow singled as well. So all three "bad hitters" reached base. I'd have to assume that there is a higher probability that one of Espinal/Kirk hits a bloop single than scoring from third on a balk (incredibly rare) or wild pitch.

Enmanuel Bonilla with by far his best game of the season: 4 for 5, 2 3B, 1 2B, 1 K

Again, it's really not different from the Draft at all. Why spend $7 mill on Austin Martin when Santiago Espinal signed for $50,000 as a 10th round pick? You are going to have flame outs regardless, the only difference is that the Draft is a bit 'safer' because the players selected are 17-22 as opposed to 16 years old. If you look at the current Fangraphs top prospects list, most of the best prospects who came via IFA are still the high-priced ones (I'm using FG because they conveniently include signing bonuses as a data field): #3 Eury Perez - $200K #4 Elly De La Cruz - $65K #8 Jackson Chourio - $1.9 mill #10 Francisco Alvarez - $2.7 mill #12 Adael Amador - $1.5 mill #17 Endy Rodríguez - $10K #18 Luis Matos - $725K #22 Diego Cartaya - $2.5 mill #28 Curtis Mead - $200K #39 Junior Caminero - ??? #44 Oswald Peraza - $175K #45 Ezequiel Tovar - $800K Keep in mind that only a few dozen guys get $1+ mill signing bonuses per year (I think the most recent class had 31 total who received 7-figure bonuses), whereas lots more sign "for peanuts". So from the above example, 4 out of 12 being 7-figure signees is actually a pretty high success rate (Matos and Tovar are flirting with 7-figures as well at $725 and $800K). Our #1 IFA prospect (Orelvis Martinez) was also obviously a high-priced IFA signee as well. It's not "rarely worth it", it is incredibly worth it. One success (eg: Vlad Guerrero who has been worth ~$75 mill to date) covers basically every complete flop over a decade by himself.

Alan Roden has also been promoted to AA.

Why would you be skeptical when the overall signing rate is so absurdly high across the league that the only explanation is that teams are coming to pre-selection agreements? This is all happening while some guys are getting massively over slot, and others are getting massively under slot. The only way those puzzle pieces fit together to conclude with the drafting team coming under the penalized total limit of how much they can spend is if the team is VERY sure of which players will sign for what amount. There is no other explanation, mate. You will see 4th rounder Landen Maroudis announced for OVER his slot of $547K. The only way that signing can even happen is if they KNEW that Nimmala would come in at underslot, which is what was just announced. They didn't just blindly select these players and then get lucky that Nimmala took way underslot, which just so happened to give them the money to sign a HS pitcher in the 4th round. C'mon dawg. People were commenting during the draft that there wasn't many obvious under-slot or Senior picks made by the Jays, yet they were drafting a lot of highly ranked guys. Well, now that Nimmala signed for $700K under his slot, you know why they could actually do that. All of the picks made after Nimmala came after they knew how much money they saved on Nimmala's pick. That's the only way the math works. If Nimmala actually wanted $4 million, then they don't have the money to be as aggressive as they were. So do you honestly think they just got absurdly "lucky", or do you think they knew exactly how much it would take to sign Nimmala before they even chose to pick him?

Holy s***, for $3 million! Keith Law was stating that he thinks he fell because he was pricing himself too high.

Right, but it's usually for disagreements on health that come up during post-draft physicals. It is very rare these days for any team to outright misguage a player's intentions, or to just outright fail to understand their price-tag. These kids are all called one final time before the pick is even made to confirm whether or not they will sign for 'X'. If they won't agree, they'll simply draft someone else. Again, this FO's hit rate is literally 100% over what is now 7 drafts. You don't hit 100% on the basis of "negotiating" with drafted players; you get to 100% by extreme due-diligence all the way up to when the pick is made. So when you see a HS player drafted in the 5th round, it didn't happen because the team is "hopeful" that they'll be able to negotiate a signing. That player was drafted because they agreed to sign for a pre-agreed upon amount.

What BA wrote about the kid would be overridden by what actually happens. Did you consider that? If the kid was actually "going to college", why would the Jays draft him? His draft slot is worth $547K, I'm sure you know that this amount is lost from their pool if he doesn't sign. So you think they willfully drafted a player that they knew wouldn't sign, which would harm the rest of their draft class as well? Again, you also have the actual track record of the fact that this FO doesn't "guess" on player signability, so there really isn't any basis to conclude that for the first time ever they chose to draft a player that they couldn't sign. Try connecting the dots a little bit. Kevin McConigle, the Tigers' #37 pick was also written about pre-draft as being unsignable. The fact that he went #37 overall means that he's signing. The pre-draft stuff is therefore no longer relevant.

Sure, but this FO's first draft class was in 2016 and since then they have failed to sign a total of zero players drafted within the Top 10 rounds. They have no misses. And it's not like they're just taking college kids with every pick. It's just funny that we're still at the point of "boy, I hope they can sign all of these guys". Their draft classes are clearly incredibly calculated - they generally end up spending right down to the limit before penalty. If they drafted someone with a Top 10 round pick, it's because they intend on signing the player. That has been concluded by now.

Again, he wouldn't have been drafted in the 4th round. That's a big miss and loss of pool money fort a team (the Jays) that already didn't have a 2nd round pick. Why would they pick him?

No announcement yet, but looks like Landen Maroudis signed:

First Top 10 signing is Canadian HS Sam Shaw:

LOL Gurriel had 5 hits in this series and somehow managed 0 RBI's! No wonder they lost every game! I can't believe we fleeced the D-Backs and got a real winner (Varsho) for a stat-padding loser like Gurriel who can't even get timely hits like Varsho produced today to seal the win LOL!

LOL 2 for 1 trade and the D-Backs lost every game LOL! Man Gurriel really stinks! AZ got fleeced, how do you get two players for one and can't even win one game head to head LOL!

Arjun:

Mason McCrae (apparently he got hired by the Cubs) signaled out 13th rounder Brennan Orf as a model darling. Very similar profile to Alan Roden from last year:

Brandon Barriera made an appearance in the FCL this morning: 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 2 K

I don't think this is empirically true at all. It is very easy to see failure within your own team, but I think you would be shocked if you looked at the draft history of some of the teams around the league who are presented as "good" in the draft. The Jays by and large have been drafting at the back end of the order year over year, and they also generally don't receive extra picks; despite that they have found elite prospects (you need to appreciate how unlikely it is to find a Tiedemann level talent in the 3rd round) and have generally found guys that are still performing with later picks (eg: Connor Cooke was a 10th round selection and he has an absurd 55 K's in 29.1 IP this season). It's really easy to wash away Nick Frasso as a 4th round pick, but that is a major hit by actual empirical odds. Most picks by and large are going to fail, and this isn't something only reflective of the Jays. It's just easier to see when it's your own team. The Rays for example receive a million extra picks every year, and their flop rate is disgusting. And this is a "model team" that you would assume is just nailing it every year. For example, from 2018 to 2020 their top picks were Brendan McKay, Matthew Liberatore, Greg Jones, and Nick Bitsko. That is 3 complete busts (McKay, Jones, Bitsko were/are horrible) and Liberatore has made the MLB, but he's been utterly horrible. So that's 4 straight years of absolutely nothing, with McKay being a Top 5 pick. Nate Pearson is a success in comparison to those names. It's easy to see Austin Martin and say WTF were they thinking, but look around at the other top picks from 2020: Torkelson has been bad, Kjerstad looks good, Max Meyer bad, Asa Lacy atrocious, Emerson Hancock bad this season while repeating AA, Nick Gonzalez might be something, Robert Hassell is flopping, Zac Veen is horrible, and Detmers has been a success. The Jays record of top prospects flaming out at the MLB level is also not in any way unique to them. The final jump to the MLB is a massive one and this chews up elite prospects every year. I don't think it's indicative of anything to point out that that the prospects they've traded have largely failed for the teams that acquired them. Has CJ Abrams been a big success for the Nationals?

Signings are starting to flood in. Nothing for the Jays that I can see so far, but we have movement.