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drivlikejehu

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Everything posted by drivlikejehu

  1. drivlikejehu
    Well that's the point though, college prospects generally are drafted and signed as juniors . . . Williams was drafted last year but not until the 31st round and presumably was not offered much of a bonus then either. Under the slotting system, good college seniors are highly valuable as part of an over-slot strategy, so you can't really compare Williams with Dozier in that sense. Of course, sometimes fringe prospects improve after the draft and turn into great finds. Dozier didn't have his breakout minor league year until his 2nd full pro season at age 24. It would be great if Williams dramatically improved in the same fashion, but nothing he's done so far has moved him up the charts.
  2. drivlikejehu
    He got a $10,000 signing bonus . . . his power is legit but obviously scouts have never seen him as having the full set of skills needed to make it at the MLB level.
  3. drivlikejehu
    Anyone that thinks the Pohlads would allow the front office to bid competitively on Machado or Harper simply does not understand how things work, at all. No legitimate analysis can proceed from false assumptions about how decisions are made within the organization.
  4. drivlikejehu
    Rooker isn't going to be in AA next year, but in any case his age weighs on his prospect status too. The difference being that Rooker has better tools (particularly power) and is 2 years younger than Wiel at the same level, which is why Rooker is a solid (but not elite) prospect and Wiel is a fringe prospect.
  5. drivlikejehu
    Being a good AA hitter at age 25 doesn't make someone a prospect, particularly when he lacks defensive value. Wiel doesn't project as a Major League contributor and therefore he is not considered to be a noteworthy prospect.
  6. drivlikejehu
    I looked back the other day, and it seems like most every Twins DSL season has included a player or two that went on to become legit prospects (if not Major Leaguers). Having said that, you can't read into the stats too much.
  7. drivlikejehu
    I don't think this is really the best way to look at the trades. Clubs have to operate under various constraints . . . directives from ownership, happenstance so far as which teams are interested in a deal and what prospects they are willing to part with, etc. It's fair to consider whether a player should have been traded at all, though even then our analysis is severely limited by a lack of knowledge about what was offered. Instead, I think the better course is to consider the overall results. In particular, whether it made sense to be sellers and whether the acquired players fit into a sensible strategy (e.g., certain positions, relevance to the 2019 season, and so on). It seems to me that the front office decided on the correct approach (bail on the lost 2018 season) and executed it fully. The club's upcoming free agents were dealt for what they were worth and the ability to compete in 2019 wasn't compromised in a meaningful way (though that aspect does make the Pressly deal the most complex to evaluate). The fact that Pressly was seen by the market as much more valuable than Dozier does not make the Pressly trade "better" in any objective sense. The Twins would have gotten even better prospects by dealing Gibson, but that likely would have been a mistake. I'd give the series of transactions an A-, docking them for holding onto Rodney.
  8. drivlikejehu
    Unless Dozier goes nuts again, starting soon, there is no way the Twins would make a QO. He's going to be a relatively low-cost free agent signing . . . the Twins couldn't even get anything for him in his prime, his value right now is marginal.
  9. drivlikejehu
    I was thinking about this - if a player is aggressive on the basepaths, it probably makes sense that the aggression will occasionally backfire even if overall the impact is positive (e.g., if you try for the extra base every time your chance of making it is 90%, that's worth the risk but does result in getting thrown out sometimes).
  10. drivlikejehu
    Yeah, I mean there are definitely strong similarities to Rosario . . . left-handed hitter, corner outfielder, line-drive oriented swing, ability to make hard contact all over (and sometimes outside) of the zone. It's pretty rare for that last bit to work in the Majors and it did take Rosario 800+ plate appearances to figure it out, but either way I'm not concerned at all with Kirilloff . . . I think he's just a natural hitter who will make whatever tweaks he has to as he moves up.
  11. drivlikejehu
    This is a very dubious line of reasoning. The Twins wouldn't have drafted Lewis #1 overall if they didn't believe in him strongly (they only saved a few hundred thousand compared to the alternatives). He was the best high school position player by most accounts. They could have drafted one of the other top 5 guys (Gore, Wright, McKay, Greene) and then gone under-slot with another pick, for instance the slot they took Rooker or Leach. Or just not drafted Enlow in the 3rd round - even if they paid out the top bonus in the draft, they still could have gone well over-slot there, just not to $2 million. That's also some historical revisionism on Mauer - there's no chance they take Mauer #1 if he was from Los Angeles or whatever . . . he was an elite hometown talent. And it's not "luck" when you pass on a pitcher and then that pitcher gets hurt - that's what happens to pitchers. That's like saying it's "luck" that the Twins turned down the Dodgers offer for Dozier . . . by that definition, every decision ever made on Earth is "luck." So far as Nick's article, honestly I think the topic requires more depth - Rosario and Polanco aren't even mentioned, for instance. The Twins' payroll situation (i.e., $0 committed for 2020) is a topic unto itself. There's a ton to unpack.
  12. drivlikejehu
    I'm not sure what 'shopping him hard' really means because no other clubs are going to change their interest in Gibson due to lobbying from Falvey and Levine. The other clubs either want Gibson or they don't, and they are either willing to offer significant value or they aren't. If someone wants Gibson enough to make a tempting offer, the Twins are going to get the message. Undoubtedly they've been hearing from other clubs for a while now. He's pitching at a different level than most of the other options out there . . . but even rich teams are very reluctant to give up solid prospects. Between the deals for Soria, Oh, and Happ, not a single prospect changed hands that would be top 30 in the Twins system, per Fangraph's rankings. Gibson is considerably more valuable than any of those three, of course, but top 30 is a pretty low bar.
  13. drivlikejehu
    Few upcoming free agent starters are significantly younger, and the Twins would get some kind of discount by assuming the risk of the extension (i.e., that Gibson doesn't pitch well in 2019). Also, the Twins have tons of near-term payroll capacity and there's zero chance they'd use it all up with free agent signings and/or extensions for guys like Berrios and Rosario. The main reason I'm against trading Gibson though is 2019 . . . the Twins play in a bad division and absolutely should be able to compete.
  14. drivlikejehu
    Kirilloff learns quickly: OPS by Month April (CR): .740 May (CR): 1.063 June (CR): 1.156 June (FM): .799 July (FM): 1.066 Also, he's raking same-handed (lefty) pitchers to the tune of a 1.064 OPS in CR and now .848 in Ft. Myers. He probably needs to be a bit more selective at the plate, so it will be interesting to see what happens when he does get the call to Chattanooga.
  15. drivlikejehu
    The prospect returns on most of these guys has been very marginal, so I can't say that I'm jealous.
  16. drivlikejehu
    Wells has such extreme flyball/groundball splits . . the FSL is a league where pitchers can get away with that, but I strongly suspect that he is going to get hit hard in AA. Maybe he can adjust or move to the bullpen, but because of the uncertainty I think the aggregated ranking is more sensible.
  17. drivlikejehu
    There's nothing wrong with Rooker spending the full year in AA. His late pro start was always going to make him a bit old by prospect standards, but every year a pretty decent number of late bloomers arrive on the MLB scene. Realistically, he probably needs a full year at AAA in 2019, with a cup of coffee at the end if the opportunity arises. By all accounts, he's a hard worker . . . the potential is there but it's not a traditional prospect profile.
  18. drivlikejehu
    Rookie ball stats are pretty worthless for college guys. In the past 15 years, the best E-town hitting season was by Max Murphy (far superior to Jeffers' current stats), and he didn't even hit in A-ball. Other E-town superstars have included Romy Jimenez, Angel Morales, Doug Deeds, etc.
  19. drivlikejehu
    I think Rooker is hard to evaluate statistically because he was an older draftee . . . in terms of age alone, his performance is mediocre and really not encouraging. On the other hand, AA pitching is far superior to what Rooker saw in the SEC, and so some difficulty adjusting is not necessarily cause for alarm.
  20. drivlikejehu
    It's hard to define "right choice." Does that mean the best choice that could be made given the available information at the time, or the best choice with the benefit of many years of hindsight? Either way it's a problematic exercise. I think the early returns do offer some support for the Twins' decision. They clearly preferred the reduced injury risk of a position player, with the trade off being that they might miss out on slightly higher upside (Greene, Gore) or more immediate help (McKay, Wright). The early returns are fairly consistent with expectations across the board.
  21. drivlikejehu
    I get the feeling that E-Town might not have faced particularly good pitching so far, even by Appy League standards.
  22. drivlikejehu
    I imagine he will sign for a bit under slot, but that wouldn't be the motivation for the pick. The Twins presumably think Jeffers is good at baseball.
  23. drivlikejehu
    You're the one that commented on my earlier post, so I can't help you there. All I said was that pitching prospects are too unpredictable to think we'll see several of them move up quickly.
  24. drivlikejehu
    That would count as 'a bunch.' More likely is one or none.
  25. drivlikejehu
    St. Louis is an anomaly. And regardless, Kansas City is pretty low on the list of clubs that I'd expect to hit on a bunch of college arms in one draft.
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