metafour

The Top 5 from BA's early 2020 mock:

Nate LaRue already confirmed he's going to Auburn. The kid in the 11th round - Nick Neal - is super interesting. A HS pick taken in the 11th round is typically promising news as the team has a full night to iron out their budget/make calls to targets to get a deal in place. This kid is absolutely massive with plus-plus power upside. He is also very young for the class.

Are you wearing your Che Guevara shirt right now? You clearly don't understand this process at all. The players who sign for virtually nothing are 95% of the time guys who had zero hopes of even playing pro ball in the low minors. They accept the money and opportunity to play pro baseball for a bit because prior to receiving the call they were likely contemplating what real-world job they were going to go and work. Literally no one is putting a gun to any of these players' heads and forcing them to sign for nothing. If they were worth more, some other team would gladly pay them that.

No problem sonny. BRB Microsoft are cheap *******s because they don't pay the janitor a 100K salary even though they have the means to do so.

You must be a business virtuoso. Why would you pay someone more than they are worth? Are you claiming that you are cheap if you don't give some scrub drafted in the 37th round the full $125K? Players generally get paid what they are deemed to be worth, regardless of where they are drafted. A guy who only signs for $10K did so for a reason.

Being suspended probably helped him LOL. They likely spent that whole time working on his swing.

Why? We haven't done that in years. Just because that one kid has a Vanderbilt commitment, doesn't mean that he's asking for an absurd amount.

He played with the Canadian National team. Scouts have seen him play defense.

The regular amount lol.

Apart from both of them being tall, I don't see the comparison at all. Manoah isn't a sinkerballer, his fastball actually misses bats...and his slider is an actual wipeout pitch (which again, Zeuch does not possess). One guy is a pitch-to-contact type, the other is just a straight power arm. The K-rates reflect on this.

This looks "borderline obese" to you LOL?

LMFAO WTF was that?

Mock drafts give you an idea of who the team is actually scouting - as the legitimate writers have enough access to know what teams have been seen at what players' games. Even in last year's "surprise" scenario we picked a player who literally got linked to us beforehand. In the case of the Pearson pick, it is extremely impressive to correctly "link" a player to a team that late in the first round. How often does a team actually pick a player that actually comes out of completely left field? Not often. The Cubs drafting that one random pitcher (Hayden Simpson?) is one example.

So like every other one of his seasons in the majors?

Jordan Groshans did get mentioned pre-draft as a target of ours; albeit the surprise that they made that pick was still real. He didn't really come "out of nowhere". Both Warmoth and Pearson were 100% known targets - so this really isn't as much of a guessing game as you seem to think. Even with Bo Bichette, our high interest was brought up several times by Keith Law of all people, and Bichette was a 2nd round guy.

He has been in minor league spring training in Dunedin this whole time; of course he is starting in the GCL.

He pitched only 67 innings in 2011 and sat out the rest of the year with a shoulder injury. In 2012, he pitched a full season but his performance was noticeably down, as was his velocity (about ~2 mph lower than his typical ~95 avg during his actual dominant seasons). Strong indication that this was already a sign that he was breaking, if not outright pitching through another injury. Then we traded for him and in 2013 he got even worse and then got OFFICIALLY hurt again. Again, you have to look at what you are buying. The recent snapshot was showing clear signs to be worried about. Signs that should override whatever the hell he was doing 3-4-5 years prior with Miami.

There is an optimal way to spend money: its called not trading for guys who are 30+ with obvious injury risk who you will have to pay tens of millions of dollars to because the team you are buying them from just overpaid out the ass to sign them a year prior. Who in their right mind was "surprised" that Josh Johnson got hurt? If you knew anything about the player, you wouldn't have been. Kind of like how anyone with a brain should have been able to see that Troy Tulowitzki would pose a high risk of being a bad investment.

Again, read the remainder of what I wrote. The sheer amount of payroll they added there FORCED them to "get creative" (ie: desperate) to later improve the roster after those moves didn't push the needle as much as they thought. So no, it wasn't a good trade because it put us in payroll hell. A big reason why the Dickey trade was even made was because his age meant that he would sign for a team-friendly deal because he didn't have the leverage to ask for more...so the IDEA was that they were getting a "Cy Young pitcher" at a cost that could fit within Rogers' budget.

Uhhh, what? They both signed with a s*** team (Miami) in a non-tradition baseball market because they offered the most money. Neither of those two chose Miami because it is some "attraction" destination for MLB free agents. Using that logic, you don't think they would have signed here had we offered a bit more money? Guys like AJ Burnett and BJ Ryan DID sign here under similar situations.

He could have signed Buehrle and Reyes for nothing but money just a year prior, instead he PAID Miami in prospect capital to take a year of their surplus value and then dump the monstrosity of their contracts onto us. Reyes and Josh Johnson were known high-risk players: Reyes being a speed-driven player who was bound to fall apart at any moment due to his collection of injuries and age, and Josh Johnson who already had TJ surgery two-years prior and shoulder inflammation the year prior in a season wherein he was already showing cracks. They were poor risks to take; just like it was a poor risk to expect Tulowitzki to do anything other than completely fall apart. The ramification of that trade stretches far beyond just the assets given up as that deal alone added a hilarious amount of payroll that barely pushed the needle. This is the exact reason why he then went into that the following season (a "contention year") with clear desperation moves like pushing Osuna and Castro from A-ball to the MLB bullpen, rushing Norris into the rotation, rushing Pompey into the OF, etc. Those moves were made because we had holes to fill on the roster but no money to do so in free agency, because he spent it all the year prior and didn't get anywhere near his money's worth. Even Buehrle who was a "success" wasn't exactly giving much surplus value as he was paid something like ~$16 mill a year. Rogers wouldn't give him any more money to spend so he was forced to rush prospects up. Osuna ended up being a huge success, but the other three were flops predictably as they had no business being thrown into their roles (like Castro essentially being the 8th-inning set-up man LMAO).

Are you f***ing retarded? That proposed deal supposedly happened a full year+ earlier. Which kind of matters because it IMPACTS HOW MUCH VALUE DONALDSON WOULD PROVIDE TO HIS NEW TEAM. The more WAR a player is expected to contribute, the more a team is willing to give up to acquire him. Is this clicking for you? They only got Merryweather because Donaldson was traded AFTER the deadline, and hadn't even played in months and was coming straight off an injury. That means that he was actually valued even LESS than a typical rental...because he played in even fewer games for his acquiring team. They didn't actually think that Merryweather was a better package you idiot. They settled for the best return they could get. No s***, they should have traded him for more a year earlier. Brilliant deduction. The argument is whether or not they had clearance from Rogers to make that move when they clearly wanted to ride the attendance train as long as possible.

They found a "sucker" in Atkins - a guy that came out of the same f***ing organization - who would know all about Merryweather (he was even in PLAYER DEVELOPMENT in Cleveland LMAO) and apparently how much he sucks? Yeah, that makes total sense. The more logical conclusion is that Cleveland liked him for some particular reason, enough to not give a s*** about a whopping 70 f***ing innings in AAA, and Atkins being FROM THAT ORGANIZATION, would have known the same f***ing information. Is this too complicated for you?

Kirby is rightfully questioned because he plays considerably lower competition than the other top college pitchers - therefore his gaudy numbers are pointless to compare to the other guys.

Blaze Jordan just reclassified to the 2020 class - slots in at #21 on Fangraphs' current board. He becomes the youngest in the class (17.5) and features potentially plus-plus power, although he is supposedly a 1B only type.