metafour

The Cubs and Indians traded for star closers and they got that production as expected. We traded for a star shortstop and instead received a guy that was pretty good for 1.5 seasons and is now a -0.3 WAR player with $78 mill left on his deal. Jose Reyes was even better than what we've gotten out of Tulo in his 2 "good" seasons for us before he blew up. It was a fail trade.

You also have to factor in that Tulowitzki was looking like s*** the entire half season he spent in Colorado before we acquired him, on top of being an aging SS with a terrible injury history and a monstrosity of a contract. I'm well aware what the risk of prospects is; I'm also aware that every former great player who is struggling isn't simply "in a slump", which is why you have to target more sure-fire players like Adam Eaton if you are trading A-grade prospects. Anthopolous seemed to have a raging hard-on for former star players who were already in decline under the pretense that it was all just a "slump". If you remember we were also tracking McCutchen under his "team", you just know that had he stayed he would have done something stupid like traded Vlad Jr. to get McCutchen under the notion that he was "buying low". Again, it was simply poor asset management. We got poor value, period. Tulo barely outproduced his salary in the ~1.5 years prior to this season; and we're on the hook for ~$78 more million counting this year of value that may not even be REPLACEMENT LEVEL. He's at -0.3 WAR so far this season.

Exactly. It was piss-poor value no matter how you try and slice it. I don't care about dealing top prospects, but you have to add worthwhile pieces if you are going to do that. The Chris Sale and Adam Eaton trades are examples of that. Trading a potential 4-5 win starter for one/two "pretty good" years of Tuklowitzki and then a handful more wherein he's basically Jose Reyes (the guy that facilitated the deal in the first place because you had to get rid of him) is a stupid idea.

I disagree. If you make the decision to trade a talent of this upside, you better be getting a player back who is at least in their prime. If Hoffman pans out then Anthopolous will have traded two front-line starters for what amounted to be R.A. Dickey pitching at a #3-5 starter rate and the literal shell of Troy Tulowitzki with a half dozen years left on his massive contract. If prospects are currency, I'm not going to pay $50,000 for a Honda Civic and then pretend like it was a good move because my previous car was dying and unreliable. I also don't like the "well we got deep into the playoffs with Tulowitzki" argument because it implies that there were literally no other trade options available, which seems unlikely. Yes, Tulo was an important upgrade over Reyes, but he was still what, the 4th or 5th most valuable position player in the lineup on those playoff teams? Its not like he was carrying us in the playoffs.

17th rounder HS C Kolbie Russell is signing. http://khon2.com/2017/06/14/eight-players-with-hawaii-ties-selected-on-day-three-of-mlb-draft/

So Sam Carlson got his s*** pushed in today in the Minnesota state playoffs lol. Didn't make it out of the second inning and gave up 7 runs.

Pruitt was not a top talent dumbass, dont compare him to the players you are on here whining about not drafting. Wow, a player I thought would take ~$700-800K ended up signing for only $500K, CLEARLY ANY OF THESE GUYS CAN SIGN!! YOU ARE SO RIGHT! The discussion is about top talents who tell everyone not to even bother drafting them, not f***ing Reggie Pruitt who can't do anything but run fast. Reggie Pruitt was the 119th ranked HIGH SCHOOL player by Perfect Game. Not overall, HIGH SCHOOL. Yes, clearly Reggie Pruitt and Tanner Burns (unanimously ranked ~Top 50) are the exact same case. You know how we got Pruitt signed? We gave a ~6th/7th round talent 3rd/4th round money.

Anyone drafted within the first 10 rounds is expected to sign. We are the only team from the past few years who somehow made it a habit of failing to sign high draft picks.

Yeah, but its more in case of something going wrong elsewhere so you've got some fall-back options. Some of the fringy HS kids can obviously sign, but no "top HS kid" who's price tag is top 2-3 round money is going to all of a sudden say "$300K? You know what, sure!". That doesn't happen.

Ryan Borucki: 7 IP, 4 H, 1 R (0 ER), 1 BB, 10 K He's suffering from really bad BABIP and LOB% in some games but is otherwise posting elite peripherals on top of strong stuff. He's really still among our best pitching prospects.

None of these teams have enough roster spots for 40 draft picks anyway.

Kevin Smith will sign. http://m.timesunion.com/tuplus-sports/article/Columbia-High-graduate-begins-his-professional-11219319.php?cmpid=twitter-mobile Physical of Friday, expects to sign by Saturday.

You didn't say anything else of value. What? Maybe they sign him, maybe they dont? OK...cool. He's not signing.

It took them 29 rounds to figure out a way to sign him? What could they possibly have figure out? If there was a "way", they wouldn't have waited until the 29th round to take him, as some other team could have easily taken him for shits and giggles. Look at what they're doing: they took 6 "ranked" players from rounds 24 to 37. They're obviously just drafting these kids for the hell of it.

LOL. You can use some common sense. You are advocating taking guys who will take ~$2 million+ to sign (Beck, Burns) when you know damn well that we haven't saved that money anywhere. No, I don't know what every pick will sign for, but you can use logic again to estimate things. Guys like Kevin Smith, Riley Adams are not saving you any real money. The guys taken rounds 6-10 have such small values allotted to them that you literally only save considerable money if you take guys who will sign for ~$5000 , and we didn't take any guys who clearly fit that profile. The guys we took may not have been ranked 'X' high, but none of them are "I'll sign for a bag of balls and a chance to play" guys either. Maybe you save enough from there to sign one HS or JUCO kid for ~$300K over, but there isn't any real saving there to go after a kid who is dropping because they want seven figures. That isn't even taking into account the fact that we have no idea whether Danner will even take slot to sign. This same thing happened last year when a number of you "concluded" that our ~7th-10th rounders were well under-slot guys when they clearly weren't, and in fact they all ended up signing for around slot. By the way, the single biggest tell as to how much a team has left to spend comes from what they do in the 11th round. They have all night to re-evaluate their board and re-gauge price tags. If they had significant money saved, this is where they'd pop that big HS kid after negotiating the night before. What did we do? We took another College JR.

They were applauding in the background? It was announced earlier today that Beck was going back to Stanford to play with his brother.

To get guys like that signed your have to save significant money somewhere, which we have not done. None of the first 5 picks are underslot selections. I told you guys last night that there were no obvious punt picks to finish yesterday either. They more or less played the first ten rounds straight up. They may have saved a bit of money, but we have no idea if that is going to pay Danner or even Peterson slightly over slot. Again, you keep thinking like we have the money to pay some kid 10x over slot when I've told you a million times that we have not saved significant money anywhere.

No, the "rankings" become largely useless after the first few rounds. Teams draft by their own board, not by what BA generates by picking names out of a hat. Some of these guys might be a bit underslot, but "punt picks" are really obvious: SR players. The one pitcher we took is 6'7 and threw a 14 strikeout game late in the season...they probably like him for where he was picked.

None of these guys except maybe the Clemens are obvious punts. Maybe they save some money, but likely nothing serious.

Even his K and BB rates are only OK, nothing special. People are really reaching to try and make it look like he hasn't been terrible. He is hitting for absolutely zero power. Zero. I don't buy "BABIP AIDS", a slugger should at least show power even if he's being generally unlucky otherwise. Yeah, its still early to write him off, but as a base clogger with zero defensive value, this isn't looking good. This is why that profile very rarely pans out: the bat has to be super special, and by that metric he looks like a turd.

Keith Law is right sometimes. Gotta give him credit for calling Tellez trashy.

Atkins isn't picking players. How many times does this honestly need to be explained?

Frankie Piliere‏@FPiliereD1 #BlueJays take Riley Adams. Like launch angle? You'll like this Adams - swing modeled after Bryant (not a comp) but needs work. Easy power

And? Beck is throwing around a 1st round price tag. Obviously going back to Stanford. Burns obviously isn't signing for 3rd round money, therefore another silly player to hope for. Realize that at this point any HS player we draft will be a "reach" type pick with upside, not a guy who was supposed to go a round ago and is still sitting there undrafted.