metafour

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.

Well said. It was Teoscar (impending FA) for 3.6 fWAR and Adam Macko. They don't/can't sign Kiermaier with Teoscar still on the roster, so those moves are entirely connected. Retroactively using Teoscar's 2024 season is hilarious. Under that same narrative I'm sure the Dodgers wish they would have signed him to a 2 or 3 year deal now that they know that he'd have his 2nd best season ever, but they didn't. Gee I guess Friedman isn't so smart after all.

Why is it a joke? He was worth -0.7 WAR last season, and -0.5 WAR this season. They kept him on their MLB roster (with all the benefits that goes along with that) for nearly a full season and allowed him to keep getting MLB PA's, which is essentially a gift in and of itself for a guy who is trying to extended his career. There are hundreds of guys in AAA who don't get that opportunity - they are up for 2-3 games and sent back down a week later. They could have cut him MONTHS ago and made him ride the bus in AAA for some other team. He received his bonus already: its called being on an MLB roster for a full season and gifted 400+ AB's despite the fact that he is a 1B who can't hit, can't field, and can't run.

$200K bonus for a -0.5 WAR season LOL. Tough s***, sonny. $3M is too much itself.

Lopez has 2.2 WAR carried almost entirely by defense. He has an 86 wRC+ this season (Biggio is at 84 while being cut by multiple teams). Biggio hit for 102 wRC+ last year and 97 wRC+ the season before that. Its whatever. A no-hit defender at 2B isn't really what this team is missing.

Rutschman: 2.9 fWAR in 614 PA's Kirk: 2.6 fWAR in 364 PA's LOL. Rutschman is down to a 105 wRC. Huge, monumental decline offensively.

Josh Kasevich just hit a 409 foot HR. .336/.390/.414 heading into today's AAA game. Roden hit his 9th AAA HR yesterday: .320/.407/.515 (141 wRC+).

I agree - a better GM never would have signed him. What were they thinking?

Yeah, I'm very confused by the "it's not that big a deal" comments. The guy signed for nearly $300K - he is playing professional baseball. The idea that he is helping the other team win because "he wants the season to end" is batshit absurd. If he doesn't want to play, he should fake an injury. Has he considered that his teammates may in fact want to potentially play in the A-ball playoffs? And like you mentioned, him tipping pitches is literally f***ing his pitcher on the mound. I have no idea who Ryan Dunn is or what his prospect status is, but imagine this guy is on the cusp and this bad performance plays into him being released (had nobody found out that the catcher was tipping pitches).

His strikeout rate has also dropped significantly. His hard-hit % is up to a whopping 46.9%. His barrel % is up over 5% to 14.3%. So he is basically just throwing the ball in the zone (lower K rate, lower BB rate) and its getting hit hard. But the ball so far has been going right to defenders (.152 BABIP) or its being popped up at an unsustainable rate (automatic outs). Pitchers who give up a ton of hard contact don't carry an absurdly low BABIP. Its obviously a fluke. He is also carrying a 100% LOB% which also will normalize eventually.

Pearson is getting hit just as hard as he was here. He has an absurd 21.7% IFFB rate with the Cubs (it was 13.3% prior to trade). He is posting a .152 BABIP. This is clearly just batted-ball luck in a small sample size.

Avg EV Wagner: 90.4 mph Horwitz: 88.5 mph Max EV Wagner: 109.1 mph Horwitz: 108.1 mph Wagner hits the ball hard, but his batted ball profile is what limits his power - he hits too many ground balls. He has just a 25% FB rate in his short MLB stint (it was 28.1% in ~70 AAA games with Houston). If you look at Horwitz who has a very similar skill-set/profile to Wagner, you will see that he has been slowly raising his FB rate. Its at 35% this season which is the highest its ever been in a full-season sample. This is what has allowed him to increase his power output this season. When he was in AA/AAA he had the exact same "label" as Wagner as a guy who "didn't have any power". The point here is that Wagner has the tools to hit for more power (he doesn't swing a noodle-bat), the question is whether they can tweak his swing without breaking it.