ChosenOne21

Maybe if he scraps the slider and focuses on the curveball it improves a little? Doesn't sound like he's that far away from being a decent starting pitcher

Backup catcher of the future...now I've heard everything

Yeah, it's really kind of telling how close these guys seem to be and all it took to get Shaw was a waiver claim. I was fairly high on Stewart, but this is eye-opening

I get that. I'm just not sure how the scouting report of 50s and 55s across the board leads to a 40 overall in the evaluation. Obviously he's a different pitcher now, my question was more about how those kind of scouting reports work

I read a Fangraphs article the other day that said really good things about Means's slider: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/can-john-means-build-on-a-strong-rookie-season/ The article was written before last season, though

I've always wondered how a guy can have 50s and 55s across the board and be a 40 overall Also, I'm pretty sure present-day Means has better grades than that. There's no way his changeup is currently a 50

If a "Top or the Rotation starter" is a #1 or #2 on most teams, and we define #1 as in the 80th percentile for starting pitchers and #2 as the 60th percentile, I don't think it's wrong to call Means a Top of the Rotation starter. I know people use those definitions differently, but I think my definitions are more stable I call those shutdown guys you want starting three games for you in a seven-game playoff series "Aces." Means certainly hasn't been that, and I wouldn't say it's likely he becomes that either

I think it's likely Pop has a better career than the two guys we drafted, but I don't even have 1% of the information on those guys Elias has, and he and his team aren't fools. They could still be wrong, as projecting players is an inexact science, but I certainly wouldn't want to put my track record up against his

I don't want a stop-gap outfielder when we have young guys who could be part of our next winning club who need the playing time out there. It's not like the guy has massive upside and could be traded for a haul either

Yeah, he's not going to win a Gold Glove out there, or even be much of a plus defender, but with his bat he's definitely valuable as a left fielder To those making Trumbo comparisons, come on. Mountcastle isn't nearly that bad, and I'd be shocked if he ever gets that bad while in his 20's. Mountcastle is probably like a -2 left fielder, Trumbo was probably a -18

If either of these guys turn into an ML starter, even a backend one (not likely), this will have been worth Pop and Fenter. I'm higher than most on Pop, but I doubt it's a foregone conclusion he spends the season with the Diamondbacks. IIRC, they're contenders right now, not rebuilders. As for Fenter, I doubt he's anything special. Solid middle reliever at best, almost certainly coming back to us

He's looked pretty good in the minors recently. Could be some actual upside here. Doesn't cost us anything to find out. I like this more than most waiver claims

It's nuts how good we were in 2014 without Machado, Davis and Wieters. We still lose if the McClouth home run is called fair I think it was fine to use Ubaldo there, but Buck should have had a quicker hook It's down to Machado and Keeping Cruz over Davis. I think you have to believe we're World Series champions with Machado in 2014 to make that choice, and I can't say for sure that we would have been. I think I have to go with keeping Cruz over Davis, because it might have prevented the 2016 Ubaldo fiasco since Davis was awful in that game and Cruz might have scored us an extra run. Also, it would have been better for the teams long-term flexibility and could have helped the rebuild since we'd likely have been able to ship Cruz out for some good prospects

Mike Piazza?

I'm guessing bottom half of the 20's or off the list