Danchat

With SWR and Paddack in the rotation, a long reliever would be nice to have.

Don't you think at least one team would have tried this by now and proved to the rest of the league that they're the "smart one"? Dumb groupthink can absolutely be a thing keeping teams stubborn, but methinks if a team thought it'd give them a competitive advantage they'd try it. Isn't the Rice University notorious for having their pitchers go excessive innings / no pitch counts and none of their prospects can reach the majors healthy? Or so I've heard.

Is Stewart as good of a reliever as he's been hyped up to be? Dude's at > 8.00 ERA now...

His numbers were solid last year, but that didn't stop him from collapsing down the stretch enough to earn a demotion to AAA. So it's not just the past 12 appearances that he's been struggling.

Just checking in... Clemens HR to RF in Fenway park, wouldn't have predicted that. It is a hard stadium to hit HRs that way. Nice to see Ober cruising. Correa needs to swap spots in the lineup with Bader, he's cost this team enough runs with his un-clutch hitting.

I'm not, we gave up on Cano only after 10 appearances in the majors compared to Alcala having 144 and 5 years of service time. Even if Alcala reverts back to his peak performance, he's still a guy with a career FIP over 4.0 and his strikeout rate never reached his truest potential. He's a lost cause now, and sometimes to have to bite the bullet and let a guy go even if he randomly overachieves later on. Sometimes players need a change of scenery and he won't get that here.

And to continue this comparison, the Rick Spielman equivalent was just given a promotion and I don't foresee them hiring the Mike Zimmer equivalent who will get them to be "good not great", since this roster and organization needs a reboot. Those Vikings squads would at least go back and forth between overachieving seasons and disappointing ones, compared to the Twins who are on track to have 4 of the last 5 years be major disappointments. Rocco would do well to follow the Leslie Frazier path of being an important coach on a really good team (Bills DC) after getting canned.

Falvey could be desperately trying to get something more out of Alcala as he's what's left from the Pressly trade.

This team was bad at baserunning with Molitor as the manager. That was something that was much discussed here back at the time, didn't seem to matter how good of a runner he was back in his day because his rosters were not good at it.

Don't want to overreact to a small sample size, but I think Bride can be a solid bench player going forward. Gasper and Clemens belong in AAA and should be the first to go once the hitters start getting healthy.

Jax's last 5 innings: 0 runs allowed, 11 Ks, 3 hits, 0 BBs. 🔥

I see Will Holland is rehabbing... I think I'd take him over Clemens and Gasper once he's ready to go.

Props for the correct prediction!

I’m surprised the discussion here is more about the bullpen when the primary cause of loss is only scoring one run. The pitching staff going 8 innings with only 1 run allowed is a formula for success.

Welp. Not going to win many games scoring 1 run.

The bats were going to eventually get hot. And with the starting pitching playing up to our expectations, they're going to win some games. Just gotta hope we stay as healthy as possible.

I was going to attend it this year but didn't for health reasons, you don't have to pay to be part of the massive crowd. Only the seats in the draft theater and a handful of other special packages cost money. 99% of people there are attending the free festival.

And Sanders goes to the Browns... great value, but why did they waste a 3rd on Dillon Gabriel who is considerably inferior to him? Odd situation.

Fair enough, the draftniks I like think he was bad. I didn't realize he was barely 5' 11". Shough was a questionable one but I know some people who loved his tape. The only issue was he would go "blue screen of death" 1-2 times a game. Kinda reminds me of Darnold. Shough is also likely to be the last player ever to be born in the 1990s.

Yup, they chose to go with the likes of Armando Alvarez and Ryan Fitzgerald as their AAA infielders and don't have any low-end prospects to play there. Is Will Holland also hurt?

Felton was a bit of a reach on my board, but the production and measurables were very strong so I'll ignore the low grades from the draftniks and say that I like this pick. Maybe he can push Nailor for WR3 and add some depth, as I don't trust Rondale Moore and there's nothing behind Nailor/Moore. Even without the Sanders name, he's head and shoulders better than Dillon Gabriel, who is a borderline-draftable QB who is way worse in every respect that the Browns blew a 3rd on. He was at the very least worth a 3rd round pick, similar to how Malik Willis and Desmond Ridder wound up in 2022. If I had a 4th round pick, I'd bet on him, the kid will be motivated and have a massive chip on his shoulder. That's if they can keep the Deion circus away, of course, which is why he's still sitting out there.

Absolutely they have a ceiling, for pass blocking you can look at win rate / sack rate allowed and to get in the nitty gritty you could analyze how long they can last in pass pro. In run blocking, alongside of winning against the DL in front of him, you can examine how effectively he gets to the second level and can block guys in open space. My draft board is an aggregation of several sources - all my favorite draftniks had a 2nd round grade on him and his PFF scores in college are at a concerning level. There are some things to pick apart there, with his ratings understandably dropping when he played LT. At LG, he was a very good pass protector but his run blocking grades are at a level that could be a problem. That's why I don't see Jackson becoming more than a slightly above average starting guard but it's not impossible for a player to be a better pro than college player. He does have a 9.0 RAS on a limited scouting report which boosted him up, some noted that he is limited athletically but he should be good enough there. As for the other guards, Zabel had dominant grades (notably against poor competition) and has top tier athleticism. But his grades are way higher than Jackson/Booker. I actually have Booker at #60 as his PFF grades were worse than Jackson's and his RAS was very bad. He reminds me of Chance Warmack, who was a top 10 drafted guard about a decade back who was supposed to be a stud and completely busted. OL can overcome low RAS (see Orlando Brown Jr) but they are the exception. If the Vikings took him, I would probably get a lot of heat for hating that pick. Not to mention he's not a fit for their blocking scheme barring major changes.

Players I'd like to see the Vikings land in Round 3: RB RJ Harvey RB Damien Martinez RB DJ Giddens WR Savion Williams DT Omar Norman-Lott DT Joshua Farmer DT Vernon Broughton S Kevin Winston Jr CB Jacob Parrish CB Nohl Williams

I figured he'd continue to improve if they kept giving him chances. There may still be some more bumps in the road for him, but I think Varland will be a quality reliever for the next couple seasons. So far, another successful transition from starter to reliever.

His ceiling isn't as high as several other prospects out there. I think LB Jihaad Campbell can easily become a top 10 LB in the league and the Eagles were able to nab him at #31 (apparently they called the Packers and Vikings to jump up and land him in that range). And I think there are players at edge/WR/CB who will outperform Jackson who were on the board. I saw similar rationalizations to when they took Ed Ingram in the 2nd round in 2022 - they needed a guard and he was the last "startable" guy left in his group but he was a consensus 4th rounder, so they reached on him and big surprise, he's a bust. Jackson is a far better player and doesn't have the incredibly questionable off-the-field history Ingram did, but in my opinion they're settling for a guy with a lower ceiling in exchange for being able to plug him in at LG right away and be an every-down player. He was a 7th rounder. It would be nice if the Vikings could develop Day 3 players into starters, at least every once in a while. Or if Ingram could be an average starter, we wouldn't have needed to pick Jackson.