WalkWithElias

How much salary should Elias be willing to eat on Cobb to be able to get a decent prospect? Is it worth covering $5-7M of his 2021 contract if it means a higher quality return? Would that be enough?

Players drafted in later rounds sign for more money than those drafted before them on nearly every team, every year. So yes, you got that right.

https://www.mlb.com/news/2020-mlb-non-drafted-free-agents

If MLB and the union can't find an agreement and don't have a season this summer, do we default to the same draft order?

Negatives: Doesn't walk enough, limited to corner outfield, not named Austin Martin.

Blaze Jordan or Bust

Don't you know that consensus draft order of online publications is the best predictor for major league success. You never see a guy drafted behind another guy ever become the better player. It never happens.

https://arkansasrazorbacks.com/roster/heston-kjerstad/ https://www.mlb.com/news/heston-kjerstad-draft-prospect-arkansas In Elias We Trust

Austin Martin's number must be crazy is he's dropping now. I look forward to the reporting on this.

Ah we got a professional scout here! I didn't know.

This is very important distinction. Whomever they take, Elias will say unequivocally that he believes they were the best player in the board. I struggle to think anyone would justify Gonzalez being BPA ahead of Martin since Martin can seemingly do everything Gonzalez does with more defensive versatility and he did it at a higher level of competition. I could see an argument for Veen on pure, rose-colored glasses upside.

I’m usually very against that strategy on principle but.... dang Correa and McCullers? I’d say it worked that time. Totally depends on the evaluation of the players considered. Looking at the 2012 draft, I remember Buxton being pretty clearly the consensus top guy and taking Correa was a gutsy pick. I’m going to trust Elias no matter what, but I’d be much happier with Martin. Hopefully he’s seeing the Bregman comps, too.

Any rumors that the Tigers aren’t taking Tork sounds like the usual smoke screens/negotiating tactics that happen the closer you get to draft day. In the end I think we’re picking between Martin, Lacy and Gonz.

Well when people say his comp is Mookie freaking Betts, I think people are getting carried away with upside projections. I hope I look back at this post in 6 years and Martin has an MVP and multiple top 5 finishes.

Not sure if he'll know what to do when he doesn't have his standard go-to move of "Hey Jeremy, make that one funny voice you do!" followed shortly by "That's so great. Jeremy, do that other funny voice you do!" Glad to see Jeremy get his own show. Drive time is always much better when it's Jeremy and a fill-in because they can actually get into the topics rather than cover for the fact that Scott doesn't know anything more than what he's told or something that happened 20 years ago.

With the number of guys the club is going to inevitably try to squeeze a handful of starts out of, just trying to get through the season 4-5 innings at a time, it is nice to hear we're going to commit to letting Harvey do what he does best: Throw Gas. Had high hopes for him early but this is absolutely the right decision.

Position flexibility + plate discipline + option years = Sure, why not?

If this is true, that means Elias remains the de facto Scouting Director which isn't all that surprising.

This feels like a sibling thread to "They All Break." The big takeaway here is it's really, really hard to find reliable starting pitching talent. Most pitchers aren't good or inconsistent at best.

They still have that trophy, though.

Agreed on "hot" classification. I'd say things are "percolating" to flashback to a prior era. I expect Givens to get moved. Mancini I'm less sure of. It was one thing to deal Cashner for a few scratch-offs, but nobody in town had much attachment to him as a player. Not that ticket sales are great now, but trading Mancini for a couple C+ prospects would be a PR nightmare worse than what we'll already be seeing: "Orioles 2020: We Suck Again."

I was going to send CoC a gift card for some of the leftover international signing money, but I couldn't find his address in the phone book under "Corn." Even looked for "O'Corn."

We've reached the point of self parody.

It makes sense for showing why Elias didn't want to pay $10m in arbitration for Villar, but we won't end up with a veteran free agent. It'll be some combination of Martin, Alberto, Wilkerson, and maybe another league minimum guy who may be Rule 5 or scrap heap pick up.

Let's hope whichever team Elias is talking to is also looking at these stats. Back of the baseball card it looks like Bundy is a common, replaceable arm. When you say "54th ranked SP" makes it sound like he's a valuable asset. I guess we'll see with the return. I'm curious which side is leaking this info.