metafour

Not sure if serious LOL. Scherzer would have smoked that old loser.

He looks like he has a better hit tool than Espinal. I've seen a prospect blurb from earlier this season - apparently his hit tool matches the output so far (ie: he can really hit).

It could be all sorts of things. Some people's bodies just aren't as resilient, whether its weaker bone density, smaller/weaker joints, ligaments, etc. You'll see some athletes who are extremely susceptible to minor things like muscle strains, whereas others aren't. Buxton might just be a guy who is extremely explosive/athletic but in a body that is a bit fragile. I don't think that his weight has anything to do with it, and really, Mike Trout's more robust frame just means that he's putting even MORE stress on his joints and tendons and ligaments any time he exerts himself.

What would being "more robust" have to do with anything? Baseball is a non-contact sport. There are 6'2 190 pound WR's in the NFL who get lit up. Some guys are just more injury prone and Buxton obviously falls in that category.

I don't think it's actually that out of the realm of possibility that Kevin Smith has a higher ceiling than Biggio. Biggio has the better eye and plate-discipline profile for sure, but he's a low-BA hitter and Kevin Smith has gotten to his power much easier than Biggio has. He's also the better athlete and should provide more defensive value. Of course his profile is more volatile as he's already shown that he's prone to collapse at the plate, but Biggio has clear flaws in his profile that really cap his offensive upside IMO.

This stuff is really overblown. JP Arencibia likely gets evaluated more properly under a more modern system of evaluation. He didn't fail because "oH No CaTchER pRosPEcT", he failed because the holes were obviously there the entire time. In a more modern model-driven system, who gets "hyped" for a guy who never walks, strikes out a lot, and has inflated numbers from playing in one of the most extreme hitting environments on the planet? Not only was he never anything special behind the plate, but he would have failed regardless of what position he played. The best teams today are all also extremely good at evaluating their own prospects. They trade very few guys who become superstars elsewhere, and they don't miss on evaluating which guys to keep very often either. Travis d'Arnaud was actually pretty legitimate, he just ended up getting hurt every year.

Kiley McDaniel just released a new Mock Draft and....we have a new surprise Jays pick/connection! https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/31651109/kiley-mcdaniel-2021-mlb-mock-draft-20-new-no-1-gets-jack-leiter-kumar-rocker

It was a continuation of the game yesterday. He pitched yesterday.

It depends on how much the "public rankings" are being affected by that development (him trying to push himself down to #4) if it's in fact true. I did find it kind of strange that all of a sudden ~2-3 HS shortstops are supposedly better than him.

He hit another double. 4 for 5, HR, 2 2B, BB Disgusting.

19 year old RHP Sem Robberse in Dunedin: 14.46 K/9 3.38 BB/9 0.48 HR/9 57.9% GB%

Samad Taylor: 3 for 4, 1 HR He's kind of killing the ball right now.

6 strikeouts to 4 walks (albeit 3 of those came tonight) so far in June. It's possible that the extreme K-rate in May was rust-related. He's definitely still worth watching at just 22 with his power/speed combo.

Kevin Smith is 3 for 4 with another HR (7th on the season) and a SB. No strikeouts. Is he back LMAO?

Jud Fabian concludes his 2021 season with an 0-4 day with 3 strikeouts against powerhouse South Alabama as Florida is embarrassed out of the tourny in a 19-1 loss. Going back to May 20th (game #1 vs. Arkansas) he has hit .147 (5 for 34) with zero extra base hits, 14 strikeouts, and 3 walks. He concludes 2021 with a .249/.364/.924 slash line with 79 strikeouts and 40 BB. His .249 BA is dead last on Florida's roster among hitters who meet minimum plate appearances.

Beltre will 100% play. He's very advanced for an IFA kid.

2020 3rd round pick RHP Trent Palmer is making his pro debut in Low-A Dunedin today. No idea if he was held back due to injury or just extended work - I don't think it was ever announced.

Also, Kendall Williams (the guy everyone was worried about us trading to the Dodgers for Stripling) has been very very "meh" so far in Low A.

Another Hagen Danner season watch update: 14 IP, 6 H, 0 HR, 5 BB, 17 K 1.93 ERA, .136 avg, 0.79 WHIP He's up to 3 IP in two of his last three appearances. He's 22, but High A is a pretty aggressive assignment for a guy going straight back to pitching after a few seasons of trying as a position player. They probably liked what he's showing and the numbers obviously suggest that as well. Should be a fun one to watch.

Except he didn't - hence why Ford is in play as high as the early teens. And again, the player you are referencing doesn't even need to play catcher. By hitting ~.250 with a 30%+ strikeout rate on the season? Or do you mean that you conveniently throw out his weeks of not hitting anything, and then conclude that his hot streak is "him hitting the best pitchers college has"? Even if you want to say something about him hitting Leiter, why wasn't he able to do that all season long? What explains the disconnect? Give me the actual list of players who "advanced" past striking out at an obscene rate in college to somehow not having that issue in the pro's? You literally haven't given a single counter-argument to anything I have said. You just parroted "lost development year" again. What lost development year? Was he sitting on his couch the entire year? He plays for one of the premier schools in the NCAA - in Florida nonetheless (YEAR ROUND BASEBALL). These guys all trained year round regardless of COVID. What a joke statement. How come the rest of his team isn't striking out 30%+ of the time? Did they not also "lose a year of development"? So many questions, with literally zero answers. Again, I've literally given you a list of comparable prospects who turned out to be the exact opposite of what you just stated. How many players who can't make consistent contact in COLLEGE have magically fixed that pitfall against superior pitching in pro ball? It doesn't happen very often at all - so you believe that a good use of money is to bank of the unlikely happening?

LMAO. No, but the 3 game stretch shows that he didn't all of a sudden just "fix" his crystal-clear contact issues. Your entire retelling of his season was that he started out really slowly, but now he's back to mashing and it's all gravy. But it's not "all gravy" - as Arkansas just showed. His ENTIRE SEASON worth of data is a well below-average strikeout rate and a .257 batting average. That is bad, and highly concerning. Every minor league team he will face is at minimum as good as Arkansas and more likely better, so you're not really "selling" your guy as being this elite talent we shouldn't pass up by stating that 9 strikeouts in 11 at bats is nothing to worry about because Arkansas is tough. Go look at how much Spencer Torkelson is struggling so far - college to MILB is still a big jump, and it is highly concerning when a top draft prospect can't even keep from striking out 30-40% of the time against NCAA pitchers. Your other "points" don't excuse his obvious deficiencies either. Being only 20 is nice, but that isn't a magical equalizer nor does it explain his strikeout problems or correlate to suggesting that its going to get fixed. Griffin Conine was also 20 when we drafted him - he still has the exact same problems (strikeouts) that he did in college. Conine hit 18 HR's in his junior season at Duke with a 27% K-rate - while also posting a .286 BA (30 points higher than Fabian currently). Even the COVID excuse is a copout - none of these guys just stopped playing baseball for a year, and in fact he played 17 games with Florida last season and then 19 games of Summer League ball. The tools are obvious and they're nice, but you really aren't grasping the risk here and what it means. You think this is the first guy who hit HR's in college and could play some defense but also showed SERIOUS contact problems? It's not an uncommon profile, and most of the time these guys don't ever materialize and the strikeouts just get worse against even BETTER pitching in the minors. I just highlighted two guys from our recent drafts (Conine and Woodman) who fit that mold. Even Kevin Smith fits into the same category as a SS who showed promise in the field and had obvious above-average power - but inability in placing the bat on the ball. I also brought up Jeren Kendall for you: 15 HR's for Vandy with a 25% K-rate but yet still hitting 50-points higher in BA (.307) than Fabian; he actually most resembles Fabian as he too was a "Top 5 pick" at one point and then hyped as a potential steal when he fell to the Dodgers at #23. Once again, his obvious contact issues never corrected. You also didn't even touch on my other point about how as a team with a LOWERED bonus pool, you are basically advocating the allocation of a significant amount of our TOTAL pool on a player who is obviously absurdly risky. So basically, if he flops (as guys with contact problems in college generally seem to do) this entire draft class might end up being a complete net-zero as you'd need to skimp out from 3rd, 4th, etc. round picks in order to pay Fabian over-slot. It doesn't make any sense to basically put all of your draft chips in the basket of a guy who was striking out at a ~40% clip for a large portion of this season.

But you just ducked past the fact that he was as hopeless as ever in his most recent series against #1 ranked Arkansas: 1 for 11 with 9 strikeouts. It's nice that he got hot for a few weeks, and hit some HR's off a less-sharp Leiter (I don't remember the exact timing, but was he not shelved for "rest" reasons sometime soon after?) but no matter how you slice it, a 36% K rate in college baseball is really bad and highly concerning. He's also only hitting .257 this year (6th best on Florida out of 8 qualified batters) so even claiming that he has a "chance to hit for average" seems to not align with what he's actually producing - how much of his NCAA leading power is him just selling out for HR's, hence the abhorrent K-rate and pedestrian batting average? Now add on the talk that it doesn't look like he is going to sign for slot - so effectively we would need to allocate a large portion of our overall pool (as we don't have a 2nd round pick) on a guy who could flame out incredibly quickly in the minors. His type of profile doesn't seem to translate to long-term success very often - it's actually not that much different from someone like J.B. Woodman who didn't have as "loud" tools, but also didn't strike out anywhere near the rate at which Fabian is showing this year. Woodman also hit a lot of HR's in the SEC and had tools in CF.

This is a common fan-driven thought exercise, but it's really not something that I think teams actively contemplate. Mainly because you're rolling back an asset a full year and delaying its potential usefulness. Ideally, if they do their work and pick the right player this year - that player would be 1 year closer to helping the team than anyone they would draft in 2022 with the same pick.