metafour

Nobody is trading the #1 prospect in baseball for a 3-month rental. I don't give a s*** how good Ohtani is. Holliday is absurdly good.

No, it really doesn't. His pitch-calling is also ass and does not grade well. He has a good arm behind the plate and so far he has shown a pool-noodle at the plate with next to no power. His lack of power actually started once he was promoted to AAA. He hit for a crappy .105 ISO in AAA despite batting .315. That has continued at the MLB level. He also doesn't walk much so unless he starts learning to drive the ball (his Statcast metrics are not promising) he will continue being a non-impact bat.

Arizona's 83 wRC+ catcher? Thoughts aren't that great tbh.

I mean, the guy is not old and provided massive value the past two full seasons while running a 99 and 106 wRC+. He was actually a fairly safe player because he provides so much defensive and baseunning value and wasn't dependent on hitting (this is still true as he is still a positive WAR player). Who or what could have predicted that his wRC+ would collapse by 30+ points? He is still hitting the ball hard (Max EV) but his barrel rate has collapsed. He is just completely lost at the plate. Don't BS me and pretend like you "knew" he'd somehow turn into one of the worst hitters in the league at age 27. s*** happens. What was your take on the Berrios trade last year? You loved it right?

Sanchez and Romero are both guys who had massive command problems all throughout the minors. With Sanchez, it was very clear: he was able to harness his arm-strength for one full seasons, and that was his 3.5 WAR season. The year prior to that season he was a 5.95 K/9 to 4.29 BB/9 pitcher, and the season immediately after he posted 6.00 K/9 to 5.00 BB/9 - both of those are horrible. Again, he was a ~5+ BB/9 all throughout the minors. So his ~1.5 seasons of good pitching are a complete outlier to the massive track-record of piss-poor pitching he had. Romero was much of the same, as he looked like a total bust in the minors (he was essentially written off entirely, that's how underwhelming he was). He was able to salvage himself for a few seasons at the MLB level, but his underlying peripherals were never amazing even when he was good. The main difference again is that both of those were guys who were outright bad for long stretches in the minors, which made their MLB "resurgence" much more suspicious as there was no track record to believe they would be any good. Manoah didn't throw much in the minors, but he completely dominated. Then he came up and dominated in the MLB for ~300 straight innings. His collapse came out of nowhere, and if you actually look at it, it seems very likely tied to the rule change about pace of play. He worked very slowly last season, and he came in fatter than ever. So an already slow pitcher comes in out of shape and he's forced to pitch at a considerably faster pace. Sure, maybe he just sucks out of nowhere all of a sudden, but this is a guy who had no command/control issues who is now walking 6.35 per 9. It's very likely that he just can't handle this pace of play, as opposed to he just somehow forgot how to pitch. Now I guess you could make the case that maybe he'll just never recuperate because he inherently has to work slowly to be any good, but it seems pretty silly to conclude that after 16 starts you need to fire him off into the sun when his entire track-record prior that that was elite. Jonathan India had some pedigree, but don't forget that he was an under-slot pick at #5. He was rated much closer to #10 in his draft class than he was to #5. So not really any different from Manoah's pedigree. The Fangraphs writeup on India was that he had no plus tools but could be a solid regular....after his ROY season he has basically become that: a guy who hits a bit with ok or worse defense. I guess part of my confusion here is that you know that Biggio/Espinal suck, but apart from some prospect pedigree, what makes India that much different? Biggio was a 2.7 WAR player his first season (not much unlike India) and Espinal has been a ~2 WAR player the last two seasons before he started sucking this season. Sure India is better, but he's not even that clear an upgrade to justify the cost of trading a young pitcher who was a Cy Young finalist for him. Merrifield is better than India and they got him for two low-end prospects.

You're high lmao. Whoopity doo a ~100 wRC+ 2B with below average defense. There is nothing overly interesting about India's Statcast data either. This isn't a guy who hits the ball incredibly hard or flashes elite traits. Manoah was a Cy Young finalist just a year ago and in his rookie season was also on pace for 3+ WAR over a full season's worth of starts. He actually not only has a higher peak to date, but he's also been very good for longer (almost two seasons vs. just one for India), and he's younger to boot as well. What's the major difference between India and Biggio?

I understand what you are doing, but I don't quite get the logic. How is this trading Manoah while he "still has value"? Keep in mind that both Berrios and Kikuchi were negative pitchers last season, and they are both positive this season and a large part of why this team is still competitive. Pitchers I feel are much easier to correct than hitters. In this case, you are talking about a 25 year old who has already had elite performance at this level and was spotless in the minors (which is why he breezed through so fast). You would actually be dumping him absurdly quickly, and in this hypothetical I don't think you're even doing it for much reward (India).

Of course, it was tongue-in-cheek. But Manoah is a massive douche-canoe who came up quickly and immediately dominated, which likely gave him the false confidence that he could just do whatever he wanted to. He's been thoroughly embarrassed this season, so I'd have to assume given how competitive he is that he's going to go home and have a lot of incentive to not go out a laughing stock. I don't see what the rush would be to try to get rid of him at his absolute lowest point, and for Jonathan India? A guy who has been struggling for longer than he has, and who really doesn't present much intrigue because he's not even a good defender. And again, India's "best" wasn't even as good as Manoah's "best", so it's not like the Jays would be getting a guy with a bigger ceiling than the guy they are shipping out. Seems like a pointless trade considering that the Jays do in fact have several infielders who are near MLB ready.

No, I wouldn't do that. Why would you? Manoah is fat as s*** and is struggling big time with the pitch clock change, which is likely what is fueling his collapse. You lock him into a room and force him to lose weight. His "issues" seem much more fixable than whatever is going on with India. In reality, India might just be very average and his rookie season easily could have been a mirage. He's not doing much with the bat and his defense isn't very good either. Manoah's "peak" was also better than India's peak as well, so what's the benefit to the Jays here? Also, the Jays are not lacking in high minors 2B types. Barger? Martinez? Jimenez? Hell, Schneider? It's not like India is a gold glove defender.

You could have also seen Kikuchi give up a HR to Hernandez.

Watts-Brown gets the remainder of the bonus pool. Top 10 rounds all signed now.

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.