metafour

That viewpoint has changed. There is now a clear Top 3 (Torkelson, Martin, Lacy) and Hancock/Gonzalez are kinda defacto 4/5 with varying opinions across the league which means that there are other guys (Veen, Meyer, etc) who could be argued to belong in that grouping as well.

The exact same infrastructure is in place as it was when Sanders was here. A pick that high is going to be heavily influenced by senior executives anyways - notably Tony LaCava who would have been preparing for this pick while Sanders was here, and with Farrell as well. Shane Farrell will not be left in a room by himself to make this pick, period.

How is no one talking about this lol? To put it more bluntly: Kiley has us taking Zac Veen at #5.

The "losing athletes to NBA and NFL" angle is overstated. All three sports require vastly different athletic skill-sets and physical attributes to make it at the pro level, and while there is SOME overlap of legitimate crossover athletes having to "choose" which sport they go to, this is hardly some new phenomenon - as the sports have "lost" talent amongst themselves since forever, and it isn't relegated to just baseball losing talent (Joe Mauer was supposedly not only the #1 QB recruit in the country, but arguably the top football recruit period in his Senior class). The vast majority of athletes within these sports cannot transfer their physical skills and achieve success at the top level of another sport - just think about the majority of basketball players who are simply too tall to do anything in baseball; or the 330+ pound guys in football who's entire skillset revolves around pushing another human being around, a talent which has zero transfer over to baseball. Now, there IS a specialized pool of athletes who have the physical tools to "make it" among the different sports, but even then the determining factor in baseball has NEVER been sheer athleticism, and the amount of guys who can actually hit the baseball or pitch the ball for strikes is extremely small. The reality is that baseball doesn't have a shortage of high-level athletes - every team has a dozen guys in the minor leagues who can run and jump at an elite level...and can't hit the ball. Absolutely, if you increase the size of that talent pool there will be more guys who make it, but the fact is that these sports are all so vastly different that there is no legitimate fear of losing THAT much "talent". The game might die due to fan interest declining; but that has more to do with problems within baseball itself - not because there is talent leaving baseball to other sports. There isn't a shortage of talent in baseball at all.

The draft is 20 rounds next year; but Callis just said he's speculating it to be less (based off no inside info).

Ewwwww.

No, Todd. Thats not what it means.

A HS bat is not in any shape or form a "lower risk" than a dominant SEC starter. Veen isn't even the consensus best hitter among his HS peers.

You guys are taking this to an extreme that doesn't really reflect reality. Yes, there is a higher usage of relievers which means less value in starters in general, however, that just means that there is even more emphasis placed on finding GOOD starters because no one has enough relievers on their team who can eat an entire season's worth of innings for a team year in and year out. The fact that there are so few starters who throw 200+ innings nowadays just means that there are less AVERAGE starters who are being left in for too long to "eat innings"; it doesn't say anything about the value of GOOD starting pitching which will always remain a premium. The Washington Nationals just won a World Series with Scherzer, Strasburg, and Corbin putting up 6.5, 5.7, and 4.8 WAR seasons playing against a team who's best starting pitcher signed for over $300 million as a free agent with the Yankees - so where exactly is this notion of starting pitching being "less valuable" playing out in reality? The drop in HS pitching going in the first round doesn't really say anything about the value of starting pitching in general, as HS pitchers (especially right handed HS pitchers) have ALWAYS tended to "fall" on draft day - that isn't a new trend, it is probably just emphasized nowadays by the fact that College players in general have gotten better (as you mentioned). Shifting to the discussion at hand; from a pure baseball standpoint I fail to see how a Type-1 Diabetic who has never hit for in-game power (Mitchell) is any less risky than a guy like Hancock who realistically was a 1-1 talent who might only be getting to us because the situation at hand meant that he had a few bad starts and then the season ended. The same can be said for Veen who obviously carries added risk due to being a HS player, regardless of how nice his swing is. In the case of Veen, there is also something to be said about the timeline of our team/needs when looking at a college pitchers vs. a HS position player. That fact would be negated if Veen was legitimately just a better prospect than someone like Hancock/Lacy, and if you feel that way its fine, but that isn't something that is considered to be dogma within the actual scouting community/front offices. Obviously there is also the hypothetical of getting Veen underslot or whatever, but that is a different discussion altogether. Either way I don't think we can really f*** this up no matter what which direction we go.

He left FG to join the Braves and then went back to FG. I didn't get any sense that he was "fired" by the Braves, but that move also wasn't that memorable for me so I could be wrong. He took Keith Law's position at ESPN when Law moved to The Athletic.

I don't see any of those "risks" as being legitimate with Lacy. He has proven to be right up there with Hancock. Its three plus pitches (overpowering stuff) from a LHP who has absolutely dominated the best conference in the country. He throws strikes and isn't wild by any means. We're kinda getting into nitpick territory when you start talking "reliever risk" or "pitchability concerns" when the actual data doesn't back that at all IMO.

I don't see it. This draft has 5 or 6 (with Mitchell) potentially elite college prospects sitting at the top. We're in a very good position sitting 5th. I don't see a need to complicate things and pass up one of those players, especially when the next "group" is filled with HS players who don't match up as well with our current timeline of contention. Normally I wouldn't say to factor in college vs. HS; but in this case I don't think it makes sense to pass up an elite college player who can help sooner to draft a lower tier HS player (or a lower tier college player) to save money.

The Little League World Series is a complete novelty event that is barely serious at all - its just fun to see a bunch of little kids get the spotlight on TV. At the end of the day all of those kids go to school and live a normal life like any other kid their age. The "sell" of female professional athletics is that it is a professional endeavor no different from men's athletics. The women are professional athletes whose job is to excel in their given sport. It's a little harder to take that "sell" seriously when you realize that in virtually all of those sports, the best women on the planet would, and DO, get beaten badly by teenage BOYS. Not "men" as you put it, but BOYS. The US Women's NATIONAL soccer team (the best women's team on the planet) lost against the FC Dallas Under-15 boys team. Not the "Under-15 National Team", but a regional team of what? 9th graders? The same is true for the Canadian Women's National Hockey team who have played, and routinely lose against random squads of boys barely past puberty. So this isn't even a question of comparing a top female athlete to a top male athlete - it's literally a situation wherein you can say with confidence that there are hundreds of 15 year olds in America alone who are better soccer players than Alex Morgan - or whoever the best professional female American soccer player is. This is what makes their ridiculous cries for "equal payment" even more ridiculous. Not only do their sports make next to no money, but the idea that they should be paid equivalent to their male counterparts is even harder to fathom when you consider that all of these women are at the equivalency of about a good high-school boy.

She wouldn't even be a Top 1000 player. He was actually being too kind, and when you have female "sports reporters" (and cuck-level beta male co-hosts) questioning that factual analysis, it actually makes people legitimately question ANY female who gets a similar job in sports, because how could anyone who is paid a salary to report on sports actually pose the question that Serena Williams is somehow the "best player in the world"?

This is a lame-ass comparison. Jonathan Elrichman was hired to an extremely specialized position (Process and Analytics Coach) and his qualifications - a degree in Mathematics from Princeton University - correlate perfectly and entirely to that position. KevinGregg's point was that her qualifications comparative to what the Giants are saying her role is going to be are muddled. It is entirely probable that she proved herself worthy of the position over her years spent within the organization, and she deserves that distinction, but throwing Jonathan Elrichman as some sort of counter argument is clown-s***, bro.

Yeah but you're a f***ing idiot, so who really cares what you'd rather have. Amirite?

Jansen sucked dick until the player development system was revamped by Shapiro, and pretending like Bryan Parker was the only person involved with selecting Bichette is comical. Who's the area scout that covers that region? I bet he still works here. Bryan Parker and AA couldn't draft position players worth s*** LMAO, so I seriously doubt that these were the lone geniuses involved in championing that pick. What, Tony LaCava had no input in that pick? I love how Law's Tweet there is basically insinuating that we "screwed up" by replacing Parker, when in reality Steve Sanders has killed the draft. Big whoop; a new management team came in and brought in their own guy. AA did the exact same f***ing thing in Atlanta LMAO, and the guy he canned was WAY more established than Parker.

How dare they like a player, amirite?

Sorry that I'm not dumb enough to buy after-the-fact claims by rivals teams that they supposedly made all these "much better" offers but are flabbergasted that we just wouldn't listen. Use your brain dumbass. The Twins F.O. is facing their own scrutiny. Its called deflecting.

No offense, but the fact that some you can't sniff out rival teams' BS is pretty puzzling. Use some common sense. These teams are facing their own heat for NOT making moves. The Twins needed starting pitching and were after starting pitching, and they came away with nothing. It is incredibly easy for them to, after the fact, state that "we really wanted Stroman and had an even better offer that we were willing to make! We can't believe they wouldn't let us beat the offer they ended up taking!" Its a horseshit attempt at spinning the narrative so that it looks like they wanted to get a deal done, but we somehow blew it by taking less. That way they absolve responsibility for not adding like they were expected to add, as if it was "out of their hands" LOL.

Kendall Williams alert in the GCL. Dasan Brown has also been added to the roster, but hasn't appeared yet.

The deadline passed. We obviously weren't going to sign anyone left for a few thousand over $125K lol.

Masson got just under $300K.

1.5 years of Stroman is worth MUCH more than this LMAO.