metafour

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.

Fabian just went 1 for 11 with 9 strikeouts against Arkansas so it doesn't look like the contact issues just magically disappeared - thats a bad as he was showing earlier this spring. But the other thing that needs to be considered: we have no 2nd round pick which means we have a reduced bonus pool, and it looks like Fabian wants over slot or he's going back to school. He doesn't seem to be a "fit" for us. Do we want to go overslot and allocate most of our pool to a guy who showed major whiff problems this year? His whole hype/fall reminds me a bit of Jaren Kendall from the 2017 draft who went right behind our pick of Logan Warmoth. Kendall was a CF from Vanderbilt who entered the season at one point with #1 hype, showed major contact issues, and then dropped to the Dodgers while being praised as a "huge steal" (lots of Jays fans wanted us to take him too, not that Warmoth turned out any better). In the minors, Kendall has basically been a continuation of his final season at Vandy. With Fabian, I'm not sure the risk vs. commitment required makes sense for us.

There have been a number of links to Joe Mack as well - both guys seemingly being the best HS hitters in that range while also just so happening to both play catcher. It seems like overkill (especially considering that their top IFA signing in the next class is ALSO supposed to be a catcher) but I think they're likely considering BPA at that pick.

Can anyone post BA's newest mock from today?

Hagen Danner as a pitcher so far in High A... 9 IP, 5 H, 2 BB, 12 K 2.00 ERA, 0.78 WHIP

But exactly what "wisdom" is he going to share that is going to make it worth carrying a useless player on the roster? Just one page ago someone posted a video of him getting thrown out trying to tag up in a 2-run game - a guy who's ancient and can barely move does something so asinine that had it been a rookie or lesser known player, they would have been berated by the coaching staff. But because its "Albert Pujols" we need to come up with non-quantifiable "qualities" he's supposedly bringing to the team. Shouldn't someone of his caliber/experience KNOW that he can't do something that stupid? So if he himself can't make that judgment call, how/what is he supposed to "mentor" a younger player on?

LMAO. Hall of Famer enjoys getting his ego carressesed as young players come up to him to proclaim their admiration and respect for him. You think THAT makes him a "great guy"? Literally anyone in his position would LOVE to "interact" with random young players who are essentially treating you as some sort of "godlike" figure. That is your barometer? He talks to young players and ipso-facto, that means he's a great clubhouse guy and "mentor"?

Is there any actual PROOF that Albert Pujols is ANY of these things? "Great clubhouse guy" - seems to me that he's a guy who knows he's actually ~45 years old, has been a complete detriment on the field for 5 years now, and yet he's complaining about whether or not he gets to play? That seems to paint him as a guy who can't even accept reality and is likely strong-arming the team into losing games by feeding him at-bats instead of accepting his "new role" on the team as he should have done. I loathe this auto-assumption that every old has-been is a "great mentor" or "leader".

Their top signing in the upcoming IFA class is also going to be a catcher.

Of course he gets credit for that, but the post I quoted pointed out his "DRAFTING" as being really good (of course it also wasn't HIS drafting). In reality he accumulated a TON of high picks (genius move) which through sheer numbers produced some good prospects. It also produced a ton of biblical flameouts (see: Tyler Gonzalez or whatever his name was lmao) and a horrendous "process" to drafting which saw us repeatedly fail to sign top picks. The below average player development during his tenure also plays into that as well, as obviously some of those busts may well have developed differently under a better system of development. AA really got a ton of credit for drafting/minor league building after JPR's failure in that sphere, but we're actually much stronger in this area under the Shapiro/Atkins regime. All you need to see is the extremely calculated and precise way they execute drafts: they make sound picks following an obvious process, take risks where presented/needed, and sign EVERYONE. Their drafts come down to spending almost every dollar allotted to them, and you can really tell that they're vetting players significantly and doing their work. Draft results under AA declined significantly once the MLB closed the comp-pick loophole and he had to play with the same base number of picks as everyone else. His drafts in Atlanta haven't been very noteworthy either, IMO.

Drafting under AA was really propped up by the billion high picks we had. In reality we could have done even better with a more process-driven approach that combined his "high upside" plan with more background analytics and planning to better maximize those picks.

Keith Law is actually extremely high on Martin lol.