Transmogrified Tiger

no one wants to watch the moon landing anymore

My favorite thing they did, which also manifests itself in my favorite pick outside the top 5 rounds, was gamble on the unknowns with players that had recent TJS. If Horton had TJS a few months earlier, it's possible that he's considered the next Jon Gray come draft day, which might mean he doesn't make it to 7 and certainly means he doesn't come under slot. This also extends to Frisch, who was good and ready to step into a big role at a premier program while having strong SP building blocks before needing TJS. To get him in the 6th I think is shrewd business.

we can have one shortstop, as a treat

The Nationals roster is pretty bleak to look at. Here's the list of Cubs who are playing at a 2+ fWAR rate, and are under contract for next year: Hoerner Happ Suzuki Morel Wisdom Steele Thompson Stroman Now here's the same list for the Nationals: Soto Ruiz And if you keep Soto they have about 90 million committed next year just to him, Strasburg(31 IP since 2019), Corbin(5.84 ERA over last 50 starts), and Cruz's buyout.

Yeah my (obviously biased) gut says the addition of Corbin means it should be either/or on Davis/PCA not both. I wonder if they're not properly accounting for Soto's top of the scale impending arb salaries. Yeah my assumption is they have a very generous accounting of his expected output and are using some aggregate placeholder to estimate arb salaries, plus some other stuff like their year-to-year inflation. Maybe more to the point, I find it really hard to see a team hitting all 3 of those requirements(young MLBers, top 4 prospects, Corbin) unless there's some very specific circumstances(weak farm, marginal young MLBers, peak competitive window). 2 out of 3 feels very possible for an aggressive team winning a deadline bidding war, but all 3 crosses into absurdity. Or said another way, by taking Corbin you're paying for Soto at FA rates right away, Soto's production isn't so cartoonish that it's worth locking that in for 2 years at the cost of 150 million in young player capital.

Starting to struggle a bit with the surplus value calculations that lead to that much of a package. Soto's best season was 7 fWAR, if we assume 10 million per win, that's about 175 million in value before he hits FA assuming career highs straight through. Then you pay him 55-60 million for those 2.5 years and pay that much again for Corbin to provide less than 20 million in value himself. The best case scenario for an acquiring team is you're getting about 85 million in surplus value for Soto and Corbin, probably a bit less. That's like 2 very good prospects or one good major leaguer and one prospect territory, not really godfather offer territory. Yes the deadline raises prices, Soto's value consolidation is notable, and maybe you pay more for the right to try to talk him out of FA, but I struggle with any team that's not already a contender with a pretty specific roster hole/prospect/young major leaguer combo coming out ahead with a price tag like that.

Julio's runs were very fun, and the final was pretty good, but the format is incentivizing stuff that make it hard to follow and appreciate. The split screen plus rapid fire pitches because of the timed rounds meant that you barely could follow the flight of half the home runs. Unless it was said on the broadcast(which I muted after BCS came on) I have no idea what home runs were the furthest or who had the best average distance. Some of my best HRD memories are of guys hitting the ball impossible distances, and that's been replaced by a made for TV format that pays lip service to majestic bombs and instead makes it an impressive test of endurance through speed swinging. That's not objectively bad, but I think it's fair for some to prefer more emphasis on the extremes of how far a ball can be hit instead of a speedrun. Especially with the camera work/tracking that objectively is difficult to follow at times.

That's how many Jacksons were born in his birth year

A couple to full season ball(Horton, Birdsell) a couple to the complex league(Ferris, Mule), a couple of the senior signs might be relievers real quick(Hull), and a couple probably need pitch lab/dev list/rehab time(McGwire, Frisch).

From PG's class of 2022 rankings:

Joyce going to the Angels is so on brand feels like MLBs writers are getting lazy.

Yes. The Cardinals have been successful with trading for big players, but their overall conservatism and frugality means they target already extended players so the contract brings the trade market and player cost down. They don’t win bidding wars in FA or trade.

It got mentioned last night, but the Day 1 picks make it clear that they really trust their pitching development work. With the amount of success they’ve had with top 5 round talents(Thompson, Steele, Wicks, Herz, several relievers), and Kantrovitz’s track record, I find it hard to get too upset with that path, especially with none of the moonshot HS bats available at 7. I also like that they apparently (with media talk caveats assumed) got their top choice with pick 2, since you can never tell what’s gonna happen with 40 picks in between. What I don’t like is the seeming intentional under slot strategy. The optimistic version of this is that their grades on Horton were as good as any of the other options so they get a similar talent at 7 and get better talent later on. But (to use round numbers) if they went for two 45s instead of a 50 and 40, I really don’t like that approach when you’re picking in the top 10. There’s a small part of me that kinda wishes Horton goes for slot or close to it, because I don’t care about them matching media consensus and it would reflect a likely better process.

Love this pick. What’s his name? What position does he play?

I imagine Hawkins’ reaction would basically be “you can do that?!?!” I’m not gonna imagine for a second this would happen, but if you did you also would have a pretty quick opportunity to restock with Happ and Contreras trades plus a top 10 pick(and probably another next year). That might seem contradictory in intent, but they may just not want to keep Contreras for his 30s, and trading Happ rather than DHing him or Soto could be a preferable path. Soto might be enough to encourage a Correa signing, which you pair with a SP and all of a sudden you’re cooking with gas.

If you use Baseball Trade Values as a crude starting point, you're basically at “Washington picks their 5 favorite players in your org and maybe that gets in the ballpark”

Per the article, the offer was for 15 years(29M AAV), but didnt specify if there were any deferrals the Lerners love.

wow good for Riley Martin

Devers has been piggybacking Wicks so they may not call up a MB starter.

it's not being done in a very sustainable way but it's nice to see Bote hitting well after that long layoff

I don't listen to a ton of Boog and JD but I haven't picked up on a lack of harmony. Especially if you compare to Boog's rapport with the lesser JD replacements he's had to deal with recently. I forget the specifics but remember laughing at how animated and nearly exasperated he got with one of the side convos he had with Sutcliffe last week, certainly not on the same scale compared to keeping up with JD's witticisms.

wow congrats to an all-time great

The Athletic did an interesting article where they asked the beat writers of most of the current contenders to weigh in on the likelihood of trading for Contreras: https://theathletic.com/3415733/2022/07/13/willson-contreras-mlb-trade-deadline/?source=dailyemail&campaign=601983 Almost all of them are basically RIGBYs, "Willson is great, but he'll cost too much/the team likes their crappy catchers/etc". The one that hedges the least, and this may just be the writer's style/interpretation, is the Padres. So time to fire up the Willson + his salary for Myers and Campusano framework again.

It just makes way too much sense compared to other options. Alderson also was specific about saying how they don't want to deal from the top of the farm system(name-checking Alvarez and Baty) and lamenting the loss of PCA from last year, so there may be a pretty thin line to tread. Fangraphs finally got the Mets prospect list updated, which means we now have that to look from and it's including very recent reports/rankings so it should be more relevant than a November list for deadline purposes. A quick rundown of players that are interesting to me: - 3B Brett Baty - 55 FV - Big power corner infielder w/ .370 wOBA at AA. Seems like it's going to be very difficult to talk them into using him for Contreras, possibly even if Robertson was going too. - OF Alex Ramirez - 50 FV - Think a lot of Alcantara(young OF with tools and great Low-A performance) and a little bit of PCA(already at High A, possible CF). I like the value he represents but it's not a great fit with the Cubs org depth - SP Matt Allan - 45+ FV - Mets spent a ton of draft budget signing him and he has some big potential, but he's still rehabbing TJS and hasn't pitched since 2019(10 IP at R & A-). Not a great fit as a primary return and maybe ambitious as a secondary/more distant piece - 3B Mark Vientos - 45 FV - A rumored return for Bryant last year, Vientos is a probable 1B with big power and big swing and miss in the Wisdom mold, with a good not great AAA line. His report namechecking Bobby Dalbec is not inspiring, but it also points out he's much younger at same levels, and the Cubs have had some success reforming this profile's swing for greater viability. - SP Eric Orze - 45 FV - Orze hasn't started a game in his pro career but Fangraphs thinks he has the repertoire for it. He's already to AAA, but since he dosn't need to be rostered until next December you could take your time building up the innings - SP Jose Butto - 45 FV - SP with a solid fastball (sit 92-94) and a good changeup acquitting himself well in AA. Would make a nice bridge of potential rotation options between Kilian and Wicks/Herz - C Nick Meyer - 35+ FV - A plus defensive catcher with a .258/.381/.367 line and 23/31 BB/K (157 PA) seems like a really useful throw in for the current state of the org's catching

Wicks last 6 starts: 26.2 IP, 21 H, 8 R, 37/6 K/BB, 2 HR Wicks last 3 starts: 15 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 21/3 K/BB, 0 HR