LookinUp

I do like his actual write-ups. He provides a rationale for his thinking on everyone. I'm not sure about his ranking order to be honest. It feels like he didn't reassess after doing the write-ups. I guess that's a hazard of working on 30 teams. For example, Mayo essentially had a great bat profile but is listed at #9. Bradish being #10 and 99% chance to be a reliever. Baumann at 12 with an ok fastball, no secondary to speak of and below average command. Hall basically getting a full pass because he's a long time favorite. That said, he does come across as informed, but I want to see something that makes me believe Henderson can have a 70 glove anywhere on the diamond and I also want to see if he's right that Stowers' contact rate is just too poor to rank higher.

How do you take a guy like Law at this point? He's clearly either biased for/against certain guys (Hall) or just not informed on recent results and/or some of the system depth. Neither is a compliment. Then you have Ortiz at 7. I was really high on him too, so I want to believe Law, but the blind spots are so obvious that it feels like he's taking a swing on a guy with small sample results in hopes of being "right" when he hits it big. I wonder if he does that with every team.

It would seem, just based on where they're expected to start, that Norby is last in line. Vavra, if healthy, probably first is my guess.

They all seem to have a shot at first glance. Tony does as good a job as anyone at discussing their relative strengths and questions. I do like that Vavra brings some speed. That gives him some potential versatility that the others might not have.

My recollection is people were shocked he was drafted at all because they were sure he was going to college. Basically, teams knew there was upside, knew there was a gap in performance due to Covid and knew there was a big number. The O's knew enough that they could still get him and essentially gambled on upside despite there not being a senior year to evaluate.

Sure, but my doubts on Lowther are very different than my doubts on Hall, for example. I have no idea if the stuff will be enough to succeed over time.

As it relates to Lowther, I think his performance was uneven enough last year that it's fair that even two informed evaluators differ on him. While I still like him and generally agree with Tony that there's a lot of meaningful context and it's not time to give up on him, he's definitely a guy who needs to prove it.

I assume Fangraphs has more blind spots across all orgs than local experts. They may get more intel from orgs with more people (e.g., Dodgers/Rays/Yanks with more scouts), and thus be "on" more of their guys. I think it's just a natural risk of trying to do this for every team as opposed to for a single team. And without that scout or coach saying, yeah, but this Basallo kid looks special, they just see age, bonus, statistics and limited film/in person and place them in a general spot.

Looking for breakout seasons in 2022...

Exactly the point. The O's identified a guy to target with over slot and may have hit big. They will certainly not hit on all of them, but it shouldn't be discounted purely as luck either. Not that SG's saying that. Sure there's some luck, particularly if he turns out the top offensive prospect in baseball. I think he has a long way to go before that's the case either way, but it does say something about the organizations ability to target people and develop them as well. I'm really high on Crede Willems for essentially the same reasons. I think they targeted a power profile that can be molded into a badass hitter.

If Elias gets the best offensive prospect in baseball in the 5th round...

Yeah. I'm not disagreeing. Teams usually do have to crawl before they walk and run, for sure. The Marlins teams were outliers. That said, I don't think it's impossible to time things better and have a more meteoric rise. In fact, I think that's Elias' plan and I think he thinks he can do it better with modern data than anyone before him. Still, history is history and it doesn't happen. Almost ever.

Upside guys who could really improve our rankings next year: 1. Mayo (most don't have him where Tony does. top prospect upside) 2. Hall (healthy is top prospect) 3. Westburg (top 100 upside next year) 4. Kjerstad (top 50 upside next year 5. Basallo 6. Pinto 7. Hernandez 8. Baumler 9. Ortiz 10. Willems 11. Norby (honorable mention...bat could make him jump quickly) I think 5-11 will have a very hard time making top 100 lists after this year. They're more likely 2 years away, though you could argue Ortiz could shoot up really fast if he has a big year since he's a SS and he'll start the season at AA. Note, I didn't include Cowser or Henderson because I feel like the rankings are already on those guys. You could argue they're already on Hall too, but he's got top pitcher prospect in baseball upside, so I included him.

In 1995, the Marlins won 67 games. They won the world series in 1997 In 2001 they won 76 games. World series in 2003. In 2019 they won 57 games. Made the playoffs in the 2020 Covid season. In 2014 the Cubs won 73 games. Won the world series in 2016. These were some extreme examples for sure. Most teams were in the 80's at least the couple/few years before winning big. I didn't check runners up, etc.

No idea if this is true, but...

If they change the service time rules, you might see more of them either way.

While I don't disagree, only Bradish is really knocking on the ML door. The rest of those guys might be a year away from really impacting rankings.

Pretty flaky indeed. I'm not sure what it takes to drop Diaz out of the top 20. I'm almost surprised Hunter Harvey wasn't still on his list.

My quick math says exactly 2 of our top 5-6 prospects was a top 5 draft pick. Kjerstad and this year's will hopefully be in our top 5 at the end of this year, so that number would go up to 3, but the system is far from top heavy with top 5 guys and the guys we're hoping make a big step (aside from Kjerstad) are all either international guys or bottom first and later round guys.

A lot of guys we're enthusiastic about still need to prove it over a real sample size. Think Mayo, Kjerstad, Ortiz, Baumler, Basallo, Hernandez, Norby and some of the recent international guys. We're not losing a ton of guys from our list this year and they'll be replaced by at least 1 highly touted draftee. The depth of the system should look better in 12 months.

Yep, and I'd wager that it would have been VERY expensive to even sniff 81 wins in the last few years. Same with this year. Next year, with a bunch of young guys on the come, it makes more sense.

And what amount of free agents would have made any of this year's or previous year's teams competitive?

There are report after report after report about the top 6 in our system that are just gushing with praise. And that doesn't count Kjerstad, the #1 pick this year or any of our international guys. Please be right. This is the way.