LookinUp

I'm not saying Patrick Corbin is a guy we should target, but if we do target some team's salary dump/reclamation project and something is required in the trade where the other team would obviously be eating money, Diaz is a logical trade chip/flyer for such a deal. He could be a classic change of scenery guy.

Inauspicious start for a guy we passed on. Have to wonder if this is been or if he had scary medicals. Either way, hope he comes back strong.

Maybe not in some kind of cumulative statistical sense, but our farm system will be optimized when: 1. International prospects are at every level. 2. We have balance between hitting/pitching. 3. We have top flight prospects. We'll take a step back in #3, most likely, but should be able to replace at least one of the top flight guys with the #1/2 overall pick. The international prospects will begin working their way into the FCL/Low A range, so that will improve. The question is pitching and whether Elias has a working plan for that. I don't have a clue whether his approach will work. We can only hope.

Insert Moose nickname like EncycloFrobbia or something like that. You do pull some deep information.

As a reminder? Lol. Who knows that?

Agree with most of you, but Henderson is in a higher level and showed very nicely in the lower level too. My hope with Henderson and most of the guys who have struggled this year is that they're struggling because they're being introduced to new concepts and are thinking instead of playing naturally. That's something that should go away in time, I'd hope.

I think by this time next year Mayo will be considered a similar or better overall prospect to Henderson. Part of that is my opinion that Henderson is/was slightly overrated as a hitter. I love his power, but am not sure he'll barrel as much as we hope. I think Mayo's bat might be better. But it's premature and guys change, particularly over offseasons.

There are reasons, but a contending team would have let him take a few lumps in the majors while helping them contend.

If the guys we have now are your definition of CF depth, I wonder when we didn’t have CF depth. Maybe not 4 guys like this, but I’d wager we usually had a couple. To be clear, while there’s always a chance one of these guys clicks, the odds of this type of prospect being a first division starter aren’t all that high. But hey, I’d have said that about Mullins last year so what do I know?

CoC...do you just look for nits to pick all day? The dude you responded to is 1) a good poster, 2) wasn't blaming Duquette and 3) wasn't implying that Elias is scrambling 3 years out to fill a roster. It's a message board, not a legal brief.

For the rebuild to be a success, Elias will have to figure out what went wrong this year, reverse it for a few guys, and not let it happen again. I'm sure his data is good, but getting pitchers to produce through his data-centric approach seems to have had some hiccups. Maybe they need to bring in someone from Tampa that can teach people.

The implication from what I've read is they'll take away (actually, just diminish) incentives to tank and the offset will be some additional funding of poorer teams. Really, without something resembling more equitable finances, this is all smoke and mirrors. If you want my lower 1/3 revenue team to compete on the regular, put me on a much more even financial playing field with the top 1/3 revenue teams. It's that simple. Everything else is noise.

Yeah. Makes me almost, almost, want to keep Rodriguez in AA.

I'm all for the rebuild, but I still think we're 3 years away from really getting to the point where doing it the right way on a low budget (e.g., in house) can produce a winner. The new CBA will likely change the incentives, but even with a very similar CBA Elias will be forced to at least pretend to compete. He will also have to look in the mirror to see if the managers/coaches we have in house deserve to be here.

http://www.tankathon.com/mlb

I think the chances of this are very small unless he ends the year on a tear and starts next camp on a tear. Even then I'd be surprised, tbh.

I'd generally look to claim guys from bad orgs rather than good ones. It's less likely that the Dodgers and Rays are missing out on talent than the O's and Diamondbacks. So it's not surprising to me that I've been reading about three top teams (White Sox, Dodgers and Rays) picking up our cast aways. I wonder if that says something about their assessment of our player development?

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but you can't even point much to AAA success this year. Guys have just had a terrible year, for whatever reason.

And the guys we have who really command the ball seem to have taken a step back in that regard this year, for whatever reason. Command is probably the number one thing associated with this year's failure. Even Rom has been losing command lately. But it was there in the past, so what happened? Are they taking a Driveline type of approach focusing on max effort/velocity and it's hurting command? No idea.

Either that or the data about drafting pitchers is really scary.

There was for us this year. That's for sure. My personal guess is they were over-reliant on spin rate, which is easier to achieve in the lower minors with the stickier ball and harder to get at AAA and in the majors with the slicker ball. Then MLB cracked down and a key success factor, and maybe their player acquisition strategy, just went poof. But it really can't be just that, can it? There's the Buck style and the Elias style. What we want is a combination of the winning style of Buck with the smart style of Elias. What if these guys really only understand the data part but not the human part? Or maybe it's the protocols we followed during Covid that had our guys completely unprepared for some reason? Just speculation. Hope they can work through this failure no matter the reason. They really need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

But beyond the bad state of pitching right now, the biggest question is why? People in this thread have pointed to Lowther, A. Wells, Akin, Zimmermann, Kremer, Baumann, Smith and others as part of the solution, but most of them are the reason it's been such a terrible year. Elias needs to figure this out. He needs those guys who are dominating in AA to be good major leaguers. They don't need to be elite, but we should be able to fill out a solid rotation from, say, #'s 4-7, and have a very competitive bullpen. It's not like Elias didn't have a plan to accomplish that, it's that his plan went up in flames. An unmitigated disaster. That's the real story and we kind of just have to hope that he can figure out how to make it work.

2021: You're going by pre-draft rankings. First look at Cowser makes us feel good, but it's way too soon to know. 2020: You're judging by a freak ailment that happened after the draft. Could have happened to anyone. What if we drafted Martin and he produced like he is or Lacy and he got the myocarditis? If anything, that justifies taking Kjerstad and seeing what we have with Mayo (very nice so far) and Baumler.

I too am confused. There are 3 things confusing me. 1. R5 2. 0 3. Dec '21 My best guess is R5 means they're already eligible for the Rule 5 draft; 0 means they have no options and will either have to be on the ML team or DFA'd and clear waivers to be kept, and Dec '21 means they'll be eligible for the Rule 5 draft this December, which means they'll have to be on the 40 man this December. Is all/any of that right?

See the tweet from Roch I posted on page 4.