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drivlikejehu

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Everything posted by drivlikejehu

  1. drivlikejehu
    Haley does ok for a guy with no stuff or command.
  2. drivlikejehu
    Tyler "High Leverage" Duffey.
  3. drivlikejehu
    I never said he would lose it, I just don't think he currently sits in the high 90s throughout his games, and don't think it's likely he would in pro ball either (as a starter).
  4. drivlikejehu
    He's not.
  5. drivlikejehu
    Park has a .713 OPS in AAA. He's not going to be in Minnesota any time soon. Palka isn't much better.
  6. drivlikejehu
    It really wouldn't make sense for more than that to be under consideration. They've obviously scouted all the top players and to have a bigger group would mean they can't tell who is the cream of the crop.
  7. drivlikejehu
    I don't think he averages 98+. You could share a link if you've read that. But in any case, high schoolers don't necessarily add velocity when they transition to pro ball. Some do, some stay the same, some decrease. As a general rule though, velocity peaks young - so young that just measuring MLB players isn't sufficient.
  8. drivlikejehu
    The thing about Vargas is that he's actually never been a particularly good hitter, even in the minor leagues (considering his lack of defensive value). He had 609 PAs in AAA with an OPS of .809. His .746 career MLB OPS is perfectly in line with that, as was his .859 AA OPS in 556 PAs. This would all be fantastic if he was a good defensive shortstop or something, but for a DH it's basically replacement level. There's no reason to think he's capable of more -- he's been the same guy for at least 3 years now.
  9. drivlikejehu
    You continue to make straw man arguments, which really is not helpful to supporting your viewpoint. No one in the world has ever said the Red So knew how good Youkilis would be. The point is that they had him higher than other clubs. Mathematically, more accurate player rankings result in better picks and more WAR. That's a straightforward statement of fact. How good every team was at ranking players is obviously a difficult question, since you have to account for draft position, compensation picks, etc. But saying it's a crapshoot is just factually incorrect.
  10. drivlikejehu
    I think Duffey would probably provide more value in the rotation, but I don't see it happening.
  11. drivlikejehu
    What was his velocity?
  12. drivlikejehu
    I don't think he's starting DH material, which limits his utility off the bench as well. The bat is great to have around but it's tough to carry him unless the starting DH can play in the field (aside from 1B).
  13. drivlikejehu
    Fort Myers to Chattanooga is also a transition from an extreme pitchers' park to an extreme hitters' park. Combined with the level change, that is fairly tough for a pitcher. Even if they pitch well their numbers won't be as pretty, given the environment.
  14. drivlikejehu
    He doesn't sit 100 now, or really hit it very often, and he'd be throwing a lot more pitches as a pro.
  15. drivlikejehu
    You're not paying attention to what I'm saying. The Red Sox rated him the highest - they didn't know that for sure, but it turns out that was a very good thing. Say they ranked him #200, and the next highest rating for Youkilis was #230 or whatever. The Red Sox underestimated him - but they still were the high team, selected him, and reaped the reward. The exact same is true for Gregerson or anyone else in later rounds. The Cards underestimated him by less than everyone else. They were the most accurate. This is not a difficult concept, I'm not sure how else to explain it. Better rankings = better picks, even though teams can't be sure of any individual outcome. It's a numbers game.
  16. drivlikejehu
    Of course the Youkilis selection was skill. The Red Sox rated him higher than the other clubs, that's why they got him. For another poker analogy - you always want to go all-in if the other player is giving you odds (e.g., you know that you're a 60% favorite in the hand). 40% of the time you lose, but from an expected value standpoint, it was a win - and over time it results in significant gains. The Red Sox implicitly valued Youkilis at some level, call it 0.5 WAR or something, but maybe the Twins had him at 0.3 WAR. For that one pick, the shift in draft production was apparently huge. But you are ignoring hundreds of other picks where clubs gave themselves a better chance than the Twins did, even if it was 2% instead of 1%. You aren't thinking about the probabilities and therefore are treating successes and failures as some kind of fluke, which plainly is not the case.
  17. drivlikejehu
    The biggest risk factor for all players is that they aren't good enough to play in the Majors. Pitcher injury risk gets a lot of attention, but I think maybe even more important is the fact that pitchers develop somewhat differently than hitters. To me, the only thing you can even partially bank on with a pitcher - assuming health - is what he can already do on the mound. Command does tend to improve slowly over time, velocity tends to decrease slowly over time, but beyond that pitcher development is highly volatile. If a HS pitcher is the better pitcher today than a college pitcher, I want the HS pitcher. If the college pitcher is better, I want the college pitcher, with maybe a very rare exception if it's close and the HS pitcher is a superior athlete.
  18. drivlikejehu
    Well, change-ups aren't bad for your arm. But in any case, Greene's currently mediocre off-speed stuff is a huge risk factor. A lot of touted HS arms in the past already had a signature out pitch - Cole Hamels and the change-up, Josh Beckett and the curve, etc. I have nothing against HS picks, I just don't see 1-1 with Greene. In pro ball he'll sit mid-90s, which is fine but nothing that special these days, and very few prospects develop elite off-speed pitches unless they already had a natural feel for it as an amateur. Plus I think Greene is a particularly bad fit for the Twins, given their pitcher development track record - for sure Greene needs a ton of development, even if you like him as a prospect. I'm not a scout, so I don't say what the Twins should do, but passing on Greene makes complete sense.
  19. drivlikejehu
    You're understating the sample size by a huge margin. Each draft includes a large number of picks, each year includes a large number of international free agents (considered both individually and also collectively in terms of resource allocation), and every team is part of trades that include minor league players. The clubs have more control over all three of those areas than poker players do over the cards they receive - the analogy was only in terms of the relationship between outcome variance and time frame. Over a ten year period, a ton of decision points occur for each club - thousands of them. Now, in some extreme circumstance you maybe could argue that a particular organization was lucky or unlucky, but there would need to be really unusual circumstances. The Twins don't have anything like that to point to . . . they simply failed to acquire & develop talent at an acceptable rate. You can point to one particular area or one particular time period and make excuses, but the cumulative results are legitimate measures of front office competency.
  20. drivlikejehu
    Your logic is flawed. A better-drafting team has improved odds to hit with each pick, but prospects are still high-risk individually. Most fail. The cumulative drafting results are nonetheless a reflection of an organization's ability to identify and develop players. It's sort of like poker - for one hand, luck players a large role, but over time the role of skill is increasingly predominant.
  21. drivlikejehu
    The level of experience is a huge difference between Greene and McKay. Greene is not really a two-way player in any meaningful sense because <a> he's obviously a better prospect as a pitcher and <b> by the time a switch could be made, he'd be at least several years removed from facing even HS-level opposition. At least McKay faced SEC players. He'd be rusty but the baseline experience would still be a huge help.
  22. drivlikejehu
    I wonder what a fair over/under is for Twins games started by Slegers this year. 5?
  23. drivlikejehu
    For patient hitters, you can't totally separate on-base from power. If pitchers aren't worried about the hitter punishing them, they will just throw the ball over and take their chances. Wade has enough raw power that I think he has a decent shot at something like .270/.350/.420 - which begs the question of how good of a defensive corner outfielder he is/will be.
  24. drivlikejehu
    They need to start auditioning the internal options, sooner rather than later.
  25. drivlikejehu
    Obviously a great outing, but I wonder why he didn't throw more change-ups. It's a great looking pitch.
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