For a reason that not a soul from the Yankees front office will admit to, Josh Van Meter ( horse whinnying in the distance like in Young Frankenstein) has been signed by the Yanks to a MiLB contract……
Apparently, Rodriguez to the Blue Jays is official. if I had to guess they were hesitant to offer what the Blue Jays did because of the relief risk. After all paying that sort of money to a reliever would interfere with the inevitable Bednar extension.
I'm with the bucs on this one, we need a starter thats an established innings eater
Waste 8M to stretch him out so he might be a possibility next year
Who knows these knuckleheads might have forget and threw him out there every 5th day and ruined him like OVIEDO
I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE HIS JUSTIFICATION
Shelton:
"He never complained of any issues during the season"
Deja vu: two years into my first house which had 25yo roof,
my dad said, son you don't have to wait for the SOB to start LEAKING
They watched the kid literally throw 2000 more pitches over 120 more frames from one year to the next
He was on a 80 pitch count in games when throwing a two hitter
but 3000 for a lost season was ok, just winging it like no news is good news
meanwhile, Wolf already on 40 had taste hungry to get back,
Jones whether worthy or not at the time, did enough for a cup
no one is ruined by this, if anything prepare them for the real stay
Oh wait Jones would have forced a move, Alika Mendoza,
Shelty's glove first starting SS last year and present for P- FEST was signing shit for charity at $20 a pop looking more like 2024's immediate back up to Cruz
Did they have that sit down when Brubaker went down?
You know where the FO gather and agree Ovie is in rotation but under certain restraints to avoid being over used
Only 3 possible responses, all are hideous but not unlike them
1. The unfits never thought to have a meeting
2. They did but forgot
3. Well aware but didn't want to finish the season with only one available starter
Shelty can take this squad down to 65 wins as a floor,
possibly lower if he fills in the end of the line up card w/
too much Williams, Bae and Delay
Also Joe's two year batting .167 over 210 times with RISP while Shelton hurts the team by refusing to pencil him anywhere but a run producing spot
Love the fact that we have so many possible good young pitchers but think a few could be dealt along with say Gonzalez to acquire a decent hitting outfielder..
And the Pirates do not always follow the smart choices - they sometimes think they know more than they do. The selection of Nick Gonzales stands out. 3 years of college prep and 3 years in the minors and his outlook for 2024 is still not good, IMO. Rule #1 for college hitters is to gamble on the ones who played in the top college conferences - they see a lot better pitching. And, after you pay attention to Rule 1, you also follow Rule 2 which means you do not look at their overall stats - you look at their in-conference stats only.
Two things I worry about with the Cape Cod stats--they're based on a small sample size and it's been widely reported that the quality of pitching has declined in recent years (which makes sense--why would a major college program want their top pitchers putting that extra stress on their arms?). Yet Cherington's draft record suggests that he puts a lot of value on Cape Cod performance for position players, maybe somewhat biased by his New England background.
All competition applies but no competition - top college, Cape Cod, travel ball for HS - can come close to replicating MLB and being sure of future success. That's why when you look at past drafts there are so many, even in round 1, that don't sniff MLB. Development is a part of it, but I always argue at some point you can coach until you are blue in the face and fail. It is a unique skill hitting a baseball or precisely controlling your pitches and even 'uber' athletes may not have those skills.
I'll disagree with the Gonzales and SEC narrative. Pirates did not go off script at all with the pick and if auto-draft was running he was the pick. Their were a group of 6 considered for the top of the draft and Nick was in the 4-6 of most of those lists. Orioles went off script at 2 so somebody of the top 6 was falling to the Pirates. So arguably they took the smart choice.. maybe ultimately may not have been right, but it was consistent with the 'experts'. Part 2 SEC: Torkelson, Austin Martin, Bleday, Pavin Smith, Haseley...all top of draft 'sure' things out of the SEC from Nick's draft and several prior drafts and Torkelson may be the only one that survives and he is still scuffling. To be fair Jonathan India succeeded although post rookie year he has digressed. SEC is the most competitive conference no doubt and provides more clues, but is still not nearly AA or AAA so I get your point but IMO you made it way to simple. Jake Burger (Missouri St) may be the best college hitter out of round 1 in 2017. Hitting a baseball is hard, so scouts even for players in top college conferences have to some how predict how skills translate when they aren't seeing flat 95 MPH fastballs or hanging sliders.
Great points SouthernBuc. Nick’s draft is hard as well because it’s not like a ton of talent has come out of the top of that draft thus far. Looking at the list players taken immediately after him.... maybe I’m taking Detmers? The back half of the draft looks a little better with Jordan Walker, Garrett Mitchell, PCA, Bobby Miller, but most, if not all those guys would’ve been big reaches at 7.
I think it goes beyond conference to how a player performed against Friday night starters and in some cases Saturday starters. And beyond that even, the quality of the Friday night starter. I.e., conference should be considered but it needs to go farther because an SEC batter, for example, can put up big numbers by putting up 3-5's and 4-6's against Sunday pitchers and the weaker teams in the conference.
I agree but they should do that everywhere. So to me it is not SEC or small college or summer league. If scouts are doing there jobs they are doing everything you described whether the person is in the Cape facing the one stud who showed up or mopup dude, Friday night (against a struggling ace), Sunday against next years Friday starter who happens to be pitching well, etc. While I had a long post, my general purpose in me response to Mel was really defending (good or bad) the Nick pick. I was saying scouts likely did all you described when drafting Nick as apparently a lot of people did because he was thought highly of way beyond just the Pirates so it was not some wild hair Pirate choice looking at a spread sheet of batting leaders from the Cape. All the small sample statements apply throughout.
I think that's fine as a post-hoc rationalization of the pick, but certainly not as of justification for continuing to use the priors that led to a bad eval.
Pipeline's pre-draft blurb for Gonzales could not have possibly been written as a better post-mortem. They acknowledge the warranted skepticism behind the numbers produced from quality of competition before wandwaiving them due to his success on the Cape and then further justified the prospect based on a comp of Keston Hiura.
In reality, the Cape should've been given no such clout (nobody pitches there anymore, competition sucks) and Hiura (plus others) are evidence that what scouts thought they were seeing was flat-out wrong.
I don't relitigate the 2020 draft mostly because all the other potential picks at that slot pretty much suck, too, but I sure hope they're not just planning to make the same poor eval over and over again. Mick Abel was the best dude available and yet he slid almost certainly due to the priors that led scouts et al to value guys like Gonzales as "safer".
I agree.. but in many ways that is consistent with what I said. There is no 'end all' place and I am hoping (assuming?) that with the competition less, the value will be less in what happens at the Cape. But in many ways my list of players just shows how far away even 'sure' thing major conference players can be from contributing. There of course will be outliers. I slightly cringe when I see excitement over possibly drafting an SEC first baseman with the Bucs 9th pick thinking they may contribute as a legit starter in 2025. It might be the right pick... just think 2026 at the very earliest and assume 50/50 odds at best.
My mistake... but he would still qualify as a major college conference player and was thought to be almost plug and play. Who knows.. he saw steady improvement last year.
Two of the area's I like looking at, is a hitters in zone contact and out of zone plate discipline. Knowing the strike zone and being able to hit pitches in it are a good foundation to start. Vision and pitch recognition are a part of this. Swings and approach can be adjusted to a large degree but the real separation starts when the pitching gets better like you mentioned. A lot of guys can punish mistakes in the middle but can't make it past A-ball if they can't adjust to or recognize the edges.
Can approaches be adjusted? Or how are you defining that is what I’m asking. I tend to think that if a guy is a hacker, that’s what he is (Marte). Whereas if a guy has discipline already in his approach, it may grow as he matures. I know a common term I hear now is swing decisions, which feels like a catch all term for discipline and pitch recognition. Is that what you’re describing?
Definitely agree that swings can change and the in zone contact.
My use of approach was vague, but certain areas of an overall approach is very changeable. For example laying off certain areas that the hitter just can't hit (Mike Trout and high fastballs). Laying off the first pitch if you're prone to chase out of the zone. Showing the fake bunt occasionally just to show something different and unexpected. Really anything that can make the pitcher have to go off script.
Thanks. I was curious what the credentials for the writers are on that site. And why I’m a bit more skeptical of those write-ups as opposed to BP and BA.
When I saw Shim, I did a double-take to see whose list this was. I'm really high (unreasonably so) on Shim, so I'm now a fan of Just Baseball, whoever they are!
They did a fairly good podcast, I came away impressed by their knowledge of the system. One of them does Indy games so he has seen a lot of the guys at that level.
That's money, always thought announcers should do stuff on the side as they are watching 100+ Milb games a year......there's no better substitute for evaluating talent and potential.
That Just Baseball write up was the best quality one I’ve seen this offseason. I learned 10+ things. BP and BA mailed in their Pirates review this year; nice to have someone seriously dig in.
I also agree, like the tidbit about Meuth's stuff ticking up just before the draft. That's not surprising given he was seen as a bit of an "overdraft" at the time, but I had not seen that reported elsewhere.
Found them last year, and if you like podcast they have two great ones that cover prospects and the MLB teams. One of the podcast guy is or was an Indianapolis play by play guy (the younger of the two!)
The Baseball Prospectus write ups were pretty sobering. They raised some red flags about Skenes and Termarr. They liked Bubba and Jones but had doubts that the Pirates could maximize them or the other pitching prospects.
Agree, that seems like a strange comment…. If there is one thing I feel like we have done reasonably well more years than not, it is assembling a useful or better pen.
For a reason that not a soul from the Yankees front office will admit to, Josh Van Meter ( horse whinnying in the distance like in Young Frankenstein) has been signed by the Yanks to a MiLB contract……
Apparently, Rodriguez to the Blue Jays is official. if I had to guess they were hesitant to offer what the Blue Jays did because of the relief risk. After all paying that sort of money to a reliever would interfere with the inevitable Bednar extension.
4years $32 million being reported.
You can't get a good reliever on a post-arb contract for $8M per! This FO gives fans very little reason to pay attention.
I'm with the bucs on this one, we need a starter thats an established innings eater
Waste 8M to stretch him out so he might be a possibility next year
Who knows these knuckleheads might have forget and threw him out there every 5th day and ruined him like OVIEDO
I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE HIS JUSTIFICATION
Shelton:
"He never complained of any issues during the season"
Deja vu: two years into my first house which had 25yo roof,
my dad said, son you don't have to wait for the SOB to start LEAKING
They watched the kid literally throw 2000 more pitches over 120 more frames from one year to the next
He was on a 80 pitch count in games when throwing a two hitter
but 3000 for a lost season was ok, just winging it like no news is good news
meanwhile, Wolf already on 40 had taste hungry to get back,
Jones whether worthy or not at the time, did enough for a cup
no one is ruined by this, if anything prepare them for the real stay
Oh wait Jones would have forced a move, Alika Mendoza,
Shelty's glove first starting SS last year and present for P- FEST was signing shit for charity at $20 a pop looking more like 2024's immediate back up to Cruz
Did they have that sit down when Brubaker went down?
You know where the FO gather and agree Ovie is in rotation but under certain restraints to avoid being over used
Only 3 possible responses, all are hideous but not unlike them
1. The unfits never thought to have a meeting
2. They did but forgot
3. Well aware but didn't want to finish the season with only one available starter
Shelty can take this squad down to 65 wins as a floor,
possibly lower if he fills in the end of the line up card w/
too much Williams, Bae and Delay
Also Joe's two year batting .167 over 210 times with RISP while Shelton hurts the team by refusing to pencil him anywhere but a run producing spot
And he's not tanking, he's just stupid
Yariel Rodriguez to Toronto is being reported.
I’m sort of relieved, can’t start in Japan but is expected to start in the MLB????
#planewatch
Love the fact that we have so many possible good young pitchers but think a few could be dealt along with say Gonzalez to acquire a decent hitting outfielder..
You used two dirty words there: hitting and outfielder.
Also: decent.
Well that makes exactly one guy struggling to get into the country heyoooo.
Well, if its the Blue Jays it would be Canada, right? lol
Your first mistake was applying too much intelligence to my poasts.
Why would anyone apply much intelligence to any of our posts? I for one fully admit that I am constantly teetering on the edge of insanity so………
If you aren't on the edge you are taking up too much space. So keep sliding closer.
Everything but falling into the abyss. My 3 kids will all vouch to my issues 🤪🤪🤪
More listicles than parting gifts at a taping of Oprah.
Clearly im slow moving this morning because i was wondering why you combined lists and testicles rather than the more obvious lists and articles lol
Another coffee incoming
I e been awake for hours and came to the same conclusions!!!🤪
Add another one jumping to the same conclusion (Somewhere, Tom Smykowski is happy that we are playing his game 🤪)
When I saw that Aram Leighton was the writer at Just Baseball, his name rung a bell. Surprisingly, it only took me two Google searches to find out why--there was this interesting interview with him at PP a couple of years ago: https://www.piratesprospects.com/2021/09/prospect-analyst-aram-leighton-on-nick-gonzales-matt-fraizer-the-pirates-2021-draft-and-more.html (by Jason Gindele).
It's a good article, but also a reminder that many prospect evaluations look way too optimistic in hindsight.
And the Pirates do not always follow the smart choices - they sometimes think they know more than they do. The selection of Nick Gonzales stands out. 3 years of college prep and 3 years in the minors and his outlook for 2024 is still not good, IMO. Rule #1 for college hitters is to gamble on the ones who played in the top college conferences - they see a lot better pitching. And, after you pay attention to Rule 1, you also follow Rule 2 which means you do not look at their overall stats - you look at their in-conference stats only.
Rule IV - Cape Cod League Stats Don't Apply
Two things I worry about with the Cape Cod stats--they're based on a small sample size and it's been widely reported that the quality of pitching has declined in recent years (which makes sense--why would a major college program want their top pitchers putting that extra stress on their arms?). Yet Cherington's draft record suggests that he puts a lot of value on Cape Cod performance for position players, maybe somewhat biased by his New England background.
All competition applies but no competition - top college, Cape Cod, travel ball for HS - can come close to replicating MLB and being sure of future success. That's why when you look at past drafts there are so many, even in round 1, that don't sniff MLB. Development is a part of it, but I always argue at some point you can coach until you are blue in the face and fail. It is a unique skill hitting a baseball or precisely controlling your pitches and even 'uber' athletes may not have those skills.
I'll disagree with the Gonzales and SEC narrative. Pirates did not go off script at all with the pick and if auto-draft was running he was the pick. Their were a group of 6 considered for the top of the draft and Nick was in the 4-6 of most of those lists. Orioles went off script at 2 so somebody of the top 6 was falling to the Pirates. So arguably they took the smart choice.. maybe ultimately may not have been right, but it was consistent with the 'experts'. Part 2 SEC: Torkelson, Austin Martin, Bleday, Pavin Smith, Haseley...all top of draft 'sure' things out of the SEC from Nick's draft and several prior drafts and Torkelson may be the only one that survives and he is still scuffling. To be fair Jonathan India succeeded although post rookie year he has digressed. SEC is the most competitive conference no doubt and provides more clues, but is still not nearly AA or AAA so I get your point but IMO you made it way to simple. Jake Burger (Missouri St) may be the best college hitter out of round 1 in 2017. Hitting a baseball is hard, so scouts even for players in top college conferences have to some how predict how skills translate when they aren't seeing flat 95 MPH fastballs or hanging sliders.
Great points SouthernBuc. Nick’s draft is hard as well because it’s not like a ton of talent has come out of the top of that draft thus far. Looking at the list players taken immediately after him.... maybe I’m taking Detmers? The back half of the draft looks a little better with Jordan Walker, Garrett Mitchell, PCA, Bobby Miller, but most, if not all those guys would’ve been big reaches at 7.
I think it goes beyond conference to how a player performed against Friday night starters and in some cases Saturday starters. And beyond that even, the quality of the Friday night starter. I.e., conference should be considered but it needs to go farther because an SEC batter, for example, can put up big numbers by putting up 3-5's and 4-6's against Sunday pitchers and the weaker teams in the conference.
I agree but they should do that everywhere. So to me it is not SEC or small college or summer league. If scouts are doing there jobs they are doing everything you described whether the person is in the Cape facing the one stud who showed up or mopup dude, Friday night (against a struggling ace), Sunday against next years Friday starter who happens to be pitching well, etc. While I had a long post, my general purpose in me response to Mel was really defending (good or bad) the Nick pick. I was saying scouts likely did all you described when drafting Nick as apparently a lot of people did because he was thought highly of way beyond just the Pirates so it was not some wild hair Pirate choice looking at a spread sheet of batting leaders from the Cape. All the small sample statements apply throughout.
I think that's fine as a post-hoc rationalization of the pick, but certainly not as of justification for continuing to use the priors that led to a bad eval.
Pipeline's pre-draft blurb for Gonzales could not have possibly been written as a better post-mortem. They acknowledge the warranted skepticism behind the numbers produced from quality of competition before wandwaiving them due to his success on the Cape and then further justified the prospect based on a comp of Keston Hiura.
In reality, the Cape should've been given no such clout (nobody pitches there anymore, competition sucks) and Hiura (plus others) are evidence that what scouts thought they were seeing was flat-out wrong.
I don't relitigate the 2020 draft mostly because all the other potential picks at that slot pretty much suck, too, but I sure hope they're not just planning to make the same poor eval over and over again. Mick Abel was the best dude available and yet he slid almost certainly due to the priors that led scouts et al to value guys like Gonzales as "safer".
Oops.
I agree.. but in many ways that is consistent with what I said. There is no 'end all' place and I am hoping (assuming?) that with the competition less, the value will be less in what happens at the Cape. But in many ways my list of players just shows how far away even 'sure' thing major conference players can be from contributing. There of course will be outliers. I slightly cringe when I see excitement over possibly drafting an SEC first baseman with the Bucs 9th pick thinking they may contribute as a legit starter in 2025. It might be the right pick... just think 2026 at the very earliest and assume 50/50 odds at best.
Isn’t Tork a PAC-12 guy? Tho he by he went to ASU.
My mistake... but he would still qualify as a major college conference player and was thought to be almost plug and play. Who knows.. he saw steady improvement last year.
Yep, agreed with your overall point.
Two of the area's I like looking at, is a hitters in zone contact and out of zone plate discipline. Knowing the strike zone and being able to hit pitches in it are a good foundation to start. Vision and pitch recognition are a part of this. Swings and approach can be adjusted to a large degree but the real separation starts when the pitching gets better like you mentioned. A lot of guys can punish mistakes in the middle but can't make it past A-ball if they can't adjust to or recognize the edges.
Can approaches be adjusted? Or how are you defining that is what I’m asking. I tend to think that if a guy is a hacker, that’s what he is (Marte). Whereas if a guy has discipline already in his approach, it may grow as he matures. I know a common term I hear now is swing decisions, which feels like a catch all term for discipline and pitch recognition. Is that what you’re describing?
Definitely agree that swings can change and the in zone contact.
My use of approach was vague, but certain areas of an overall approach is very changeable. For example laying off certain areas that the hitter just can't hit (Mike Trout and high fastballs). Laying off the first pitch if you're prone to chase out of the zone. Showing the fake bunt occasionally just to show something different and unexpected. Really anything that can make the pitcher have to go off script.
How good does a guy have to be to make those changes though? Trout laying off high heat is a pretty big gap from Nicky not knowing what a slider is.
Thanks. I was curious what the credentials for the writers are on that site. And why I’m a bit more skeptical of those write-ups as opposed to BP and BA.
When I saw Shim, I did a double-take to see whose list this was. I'm really high (unreasonably so) on Shim, so I'm now a fan of Just Baseball, whoever they are!
They did a fairly good podcast, I came away impressed by their knowledge of the system. One of them does Indy games so he has seen a lot of the guys at that level.
That's money, always thought announcers should do stuff on the side as they are watching 100+ Milb games a year......there's no better substitute for evaluating talent and potential.
That Just Baseball write up was the best quality one I’ve seen this offseason. I learned 10+ things. BP and BA mailed in their Pirates review this year; nice to have someone seriously dig in.
I also agree, like the tidbit about Meuth's stuff ticking up just before the draft. That's not surprising given he was seen as a bit of an "overdraft" at the time, but I had not seen that reported elsewhere.
Agree with this. I had never heard of “just baseball” but will definitely be back. Well written, well researched.
Found them last year, and if you like podcast they have two great ones that cover prospects and the MLB teams. One of the podcast guy is or was an Indianapolis play by play guy (the younger of the two!)
The Baseball Prospectus write ups were pretty sobering. They raised some red flags about Skenes and Termarr. They liked Bubba and Jones but had doubts that the Pirates could maximize them or the other pitching prospects.
Certainly a fair observation, given the struggles of Quinn, Ro, and Luis. That shouldn’t affect the rankings.
2022
Altoona's 5 Starting horses might end up 5 relief ________
Burrows
Priester
Nicolas
Mlodzinski
Ortiz
PONIES
- whatever it takes, we haven't had a solid pen in years
Zero chance of a tank this year, with only one bum, Falter,
who IMO, is holding a spot for Heller an underrated signing
Our pen was better than solid last year
Our pen was better than solid when compared to the last 4 years 2019-2022
Sorry solid pen to me is under 4.00 ERA
Agree, that seems like a strange comment…. If there is one thing I feel like we have done reasonably well more years than not, it is assembling a useful or better pen.
Agree if this was 2017
2023- 4.27
2022-4.72
2021-4.55
20204.62
2019-4.91
2018-4.03
your almost back to the Obama administration
Zander Meuth?? Didn’t hear a peep about him after he signed last year...
It seems that most arm they signed don’t play actual games that year, all complex instructions.