metafour

Ethan Salas is trash and has to be the most overrated prospect in recent memory by a long shot. He got all sorts of undeserved hype because they promoted him hyper aggressively despite the fact that he has never hit for s*** apart from a 123 wRC+ stint in low-A (even that isn't amazing by any stretch of the imagination). It would be like the Jays promoting Nimmala straight to AAA and going "see, he's 19 and already in AAA! Don't worry about the fact that he's hitting .170 with zero power, he is in AAA!"

Sure, but this kid is clearly a full step or more above guys like Polanco, Meza, Beltre, De Castro, etc. on a talent/hype scale. Its obviously early, but this kid falls in the range of uber-prospects that we see every few years. Obviously no guarantee that he amounts into anything either, but the tools are much louder and definitely resemble Vladdy more so than guys like Beltre, Meza, etc. While the Jays have had horrible luck with their high-priced IFA's recently, it is worth mentioning that C Franklin Rojas (who signed for just under $1M two years ago) and 3B/SS Juan Sanchez (who signed for just under $1M last year) are looking good this season in the DSL. Rojas is repeating the level, but Sanchez is crushing it and has an OPS of ~1.000 with 6 HR's.

His FIP is low because his HR/9 has dropped a lot over the past two months, and he generally doesn't walk a lot of guys. But he is still getting hit hard (well above the MLB average rate) and he is still getting barreled hard, so the huge drop in HR/9 may have a lot of luck involved in it. The main thing is that he still isn't striking anyone out, and he is still getting hit hard - hence why he has outings where he gets shelled. I don't like defaulting to FIP and ignoring balls in play for guys who are giving up runs because they are simply getting hit hard. Those results aren't flukey.

Alcantara makes more sense as an offseason acquisition. While he shoved today against the Padres, his previous 4 starts were not good at all. The problem here is that Jays are in a playoff race and they cant be throwing him out there on "re-find your groove" outings and hoping for the best when the results this season have largely been really bad. One start doesn't mean that he is "back".

What the hell is a "big arm", and what is a "big bat"? Max Scherzer is every bit as probable (if not realistically more so) to outproduce Manoah for the remainder of the season. You consider Manoah to be a "big arm"? He throws 93-94 and nobody knows what his command is going to look like post TJ surgery. I can assure you that no one in the front office is seriously praying that Manoah comes back and magically starts pitching like a "big arm" lol. Vlad Guerrero has a .404 xwOBA this season, which is just 4-points shy of his xwOBA in last year's elite 164 wRC+ season. Yes he is always a guy who seems to go on stretches where his numbers don't match the expected batted ball profile, but there is a bigger likelihood that he goes on one of his hot-streaks in the second half than there is that the Jays are going to acquire a BETTER "big bat". His xwOBA is 7th highest in the league,

He may have rejected offers earlier and then gotten lost in the shuffle, who knows. At the end of the day he has a shoulder injury which is considered worse than an elbow injury and there likely weren't any teams willing to invest big money into that over just a 10-game sample given that prior to this year he was mainly a reliever with poor command in a non-power conference. Its not like this is a proven 2-3 year starter who just so happened to get hurt as a Senior. He was walking 5.6 per 9 innings last season at Indiana State with a 4.75 ERA. So he is a Senior, has a hurt shoulder, and is a project/small sample size performer.

He is injured and is a Senior. What's his leverage? Go to Indy ball?

Hey guys, did you all know that Guerrero is in a really big slump? I just turned my TV on and this guy isn't hitting anything! WTF!

No, Bullard had a deal arranged, hence why he was drafted in the 12th round. There was a Texas A&M account that announced he was signing pretty much right after he was selected. Peeples was just your typical emergency/"use the last pick on a ranked HS kid" pick. Nobody from the Jays seriously expected a scenario where Peeples is signed, and not Bullard. They drafted Bub Terrell in a similar spot as Peeples last year despite it being known by everyone that he wasn't going to sign bar some extreme scenario.

Lets go! $600k under!

The initial scouting reports on him from writers didn't even correlate with what he actually is. When he was signed it was made to sound like he was ~6'3 and projected to be a lumbering corner OF with huge power and a big arm. He actually isn't that big (6'1 ~190), has more speed than what anyone wrote about him at the time said, and he has played CF for most of his pro career. They rotate him in the outfield this season, but he still plays a lot of CF. His alleged power also obviously never materialized into anything, and I don't remember anyone really pointing out his exit velocities as noteworthy either. Its a pretty interesting case study in trying to evaluate and gather info on these IFA kids who are coming to agreements with teams as early as ~13-14 and then not really competing in publicized games.

Sure, but look at the rankings to gauge the player's negotiating power. Ronny Cruz signed for under-slot because he was an off the board HS over-draft who didn't even make MLB Pipeline's Top 250, but he was drafted 90th overall. Its not a surprise that he took a haircut to secure his draft slot. Flewelling ranked #236 on MLB's Top 250 and #153 on ESPN. Piasentin is #160 on the MLB Top 250 this season (76 slots higher than Flewelling). However, Pipeline is actually the lower end on Piasentin: Just Baseball - #105 BA - #108 ESPN (Kiley McDaniel) - #117 I comped Piasentin to Flewelling because they are similar stories in the sense that they started rising up boards as the Canada team was making its rounds and playing in tournaments and against Complex teams, and then they both put on big displays of power at the Combine. Both are power-over-hit guys. However, Piasentin is actually ranked higher than Flewelling was (from the lists that I have access to; I don't know where BA ranked Flewelling last year). Piasentin is also a University of Miami signee, which means that his bargaining chip is a Top 25 baseball school in all of NCAA D1. This is another advantage that he has over Flewelling who was signed with Gonzaga. When you combine all of those facts and look at past-precedent, it is very unlikely that we got Piasentin under the pretense that he is signing for slot (which is ~$500K at his pick) or somehow below that amount. Keep in mind that we signed Carson Messina (the HS RHP we got in the 12 round last year) for $550K, and he was ranked #222 on Pipeline's list (ie: also considerably below where Piasentin is ranked this year).

Piasentin is an easy over-slot kid and may end up getting upwards of $1 million. Its 60-power, 60-arm for two plus tools on a 6'3/6'4 frame from a relatively young ~18,3 year old. He crushed it at the Combine and is already hitting balls near 110mph EV. A similar-ish HS prospect from Canada (Nathan Flewelling) got $750K from the Rays in the 3rd round last year.

Landen Maroudis doesn't belong on this list for the time being, unfortunately. His stuff is way down (like 90-92 on the fastball) with wavering command. He is in the TBD camp with Barriera and Tiedemann.

RossAtkins4PM.com

Here come the guys who spent all year claiming that Horwitz was a AAAA non-asset to now tell us how we got ripped off by trading him.

He is 26 and makes $15 mill per year until 2029. There is nothing egregious there.

I hope our team becomes the AAA affiliate of the Dodgers!

What do you mean yes? I just checked, and Strasburg made 11 starts for 55 IP's before being called up. You are only speaking in retrospect because you know after the fact that Skenes (like Strasburg and Lincecum) was a true phenom and could have gone straight to the MLB. But at the time it is still sensible to have him to go out and make a few multi-inning starts to see WTF he looks like over more than 1 inning against professional hitters, regardless of how good he looked at LSU. There were people who thought that guys like Spencer Torkelson and Austin Martin could slot right into an MLB lineup right out of college too, and that turned out to be not the case at all.

Skenes threw less than 7 innings in the minors last season after being signed. I don't really get this critique - were they supposed to throw him directly into the MLB rotation without showing anything? His 7 starts equated to fewer innings pitched than Tim Lincecum had when he exploded his way into SF's rotation.

Here is how razor-thin these "rankings" are: 2022: Blue Jays: 92-70 Twins: 78-84 2023: Blue Jays: 89-73 Twins: 87-75 2024: Twins: 82-80 Blue Jays: 74-88 2024 record post trade deadline (ie: after we SOLD): Twins: 23-32 Blue Jays: 23-29 So in your mind's eye, the Twins are ~10 spots ahead of the Blue Jays because they won 8 more games in 2024? Pointless rankings are pointless. Apart from ~4-5 teams, everyone else can wildly swing 10+ spots overnight.

Development of draft picks has been a clear negative, but some of this is obviously just situational noise. Roden and Kasevich would absolutely have been brought up this year for at-bats, but they acquired Loperfido, Wagner, and Clase at the deadline. The only reason why Roden isn't up is because there was no reason to start his clock. So yes, on paper it is "zero". But its not because there was absolutely nobody to warrant bringing up.

Why would including Horwitz be "generous"? This is why this s*** is always so melodramatic: you are by default hyper-critical of what you see yourself from your own team, but excessively complimentary to other teams. Horwitz just put up 1.9 fWAR in under 100 games played. His 127 wRC+ was the 39th best in the entire damn league among players with 350 or more plate appearances. There is nothing in his hitting profile that screams "luck": he walks, doesn't strike out a lot, and the power is growing. His wOBA was only 7-points higher than his expected wOBA. He raked his entire time in the minors. But hey, he never made a Top 100 list so he is "AAAA". Meanwhile you are giving credit to the Rockies for what? A 0.3 fWAR reliever in Vodnik LMAO? Wow what talent! He put up a 4.28 ERA and a 4.18 FIP. He throws hard though. Vodnik shouldn't even be a talking point at this stage. Feltner is barely any different from Francis on the surface; the only difference is that he got to start the entire season. Francis was a better pitcher than Feltner once they put him permanently into the starting rotation. Could Francis be a complete mirage? Sure, but Feltner wasn't anything even worth mentioning until this season - so its really not any different as he can just as easily go back to sucking. He was a near 6 ERA pitcher the previous two seasons my guy, but his fWAR last year was inflated to 0.9 because he had an obviously flukey 0.42 HR/9 (it was 1.11 this season). Someone like Orelvis Martinez can very easily come up next year and pop off a 2-3 WAR season. The guy didn't disappear from the planet; he came back after his suspension and hit .304/.360/.522 in 11 games in September. Meanwhile, Nolan Jones is a "bounce back" impact guy? Sure, in the same sensed maybe Manoah comes back and re-enters the Cy Young race. Nolan Jones was atrocious this year, and his 2022 sample was pedestrian as well. Nolan Jones' wOBA was 30+ points higher than his xwOBA last season.

Guerrero, Kirk, Horwitz, Jimenez, Jansen, Biggio, Schneider, Berroa, Bichette, and Lukes combined for 13.7 fWAR. I'm counting Lukes because he was signed as a minor leaguer and never played any MLB games with any other organization. They had a total of 22.7 position player fWAR on the season, so slightly over 60% of their position player WAR was "home grown". You are correct that on the pitching side everyone apart from Francis was signed or acquired as an existing MLB player from outside the organization, however the team only had 8.1 total combined fWAR from the pitchers. Guerrero and Kirk alone combined for 8.3 fWAR. So no, your premise isn't correct. I think someone brought this up already, but the Padres entire team apart from Jackson Merrill, Matt Waldron, and a couple relievers was brought in from elsewhere.