Blue Jays Discussion: Spring training! (next TV game: Sunday 1p ET/10a PT)

[BertCorbeau]

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[zeke]

I said he "should be traded before the season starts". Any "fretting" or "need" is in your head.

I think they should trade him because the alternative is that they lose him for nothing on waivers. That wouldn't be a huge loss, and there's always the chance that he passes through and they can stash him in Buffalo as depth, but I think at barely over a million dollars, someone would want him as a fourth outfielder or depth.

sounds like fretting.

 

[Hoverhand]

Change title to "Jays solidify bullpen, Lucas Harrell locked up"

 

[Discoverer]

sounds like fretting.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

 

[Eyedea]

Change title to "Jays solidify bullpen, Lucas Harrell locked up"

It would be more like "Jays solidify Bisons rotation, sign Lucas Harrell".

 

[BertCorbeau]

I was thinking "Stroman to learn how to throw left handed to solve bullpen issues"

 

[theaub]

Like the Harrell move but hope they keep him stretched in AAA

 

[deletethis]

Mock the minor league signings, it's the quantity of possibilities that hits on finding the support arms for 2017.

 

[The Nemesis]

Keith Law put out his Jays-specific prospect (insider article) breakdown today. Here's his top 15:

1) Vlad Guerrero Jr (overall rk: 48)
2) Anthony Alford (overall rk: 55)
3) Sean Reid-Foley (overall rk: 72)
4) Bo Bichette
5) Richard Urena
6) Jon Harris
7) Conner Greene
8) Justin Maese
9) Rowdy Tellez
10) Reese McGuire
11) T.J. Zeuch
12) Harold Ramirez
13) Pat Murphy
14) Ryan Borucki
15) Max Pentecost

 

[Canada4Gold]

Oh you don't have a 1st round pick? Because you signed Fowler? Oh well, I guess loss of 2nd and 3rd round picks will have to do.

Wouldn't shock me if the Cards knew this in advance so in essence they lose a 3rd for signing Fowler and not the 1st. As they would have lost their 1st and 2nd had they had them instead.

 

[theaub]

Losing only $2M in slot money does seem pretty light to me. Expected it in the $5M range.

Also I don't think the Fowler signing had anything to do with the penalty. MLB could have very easily taken 2018 picks if they felt it was merited.

 

[Patmac40]

Tellez at 9? Jeez...

 

[Canada4Gold]

Losing only $2M in slot money does seem pretty light to me. Expected it in the $5M range.

It's stupid light. They hacked another team for information. Even if the evidence only supports Correa being the only person involved(which is a ridiculous assertion in itself but I'll play along), then he was an employee of the Cardinals, the Cardinals are responsible for the stupid actions he takes on their behalf.

Should have stripped them of their next 3 1st round picks, and gave them a hard cap of $0 for the next 2 international bonus pools. This is a total slap n the wrist.

 

[theaub]

Should've just let Houston hack the Cardinals computer system tbh

 

[Canada4Gold]

Tellez at 9? Jeez...

Bo Bichette at 4?

I like the guy but he had what 1 month of raking the GCL? The GCL? After being a 2nd round pick less than a year ago? He should be around 10.

At this point I've accepted the Tellez stuff. I disagree and laugh at a lot of it, but this is clearly going to be a Jays fans v. rankings opinion thing on Tellez where 1 of us is going to be right. The scouts apparently see something in his swing Keith Law saw him for a handful of at bats in the AFL and now he won't be able to hit advanced pitching He mashed pitching more advanced than AFL pitching this year in AA and is fat or something. Hopefully he's the next in a long line of 1st base prospects who scouts get horribly wrong for no apparent reason.

 

[Discoverer]

Bo Bichette at 4?

I like the guy but he had what 1 month of raking the GCL? The GCL? After being a 2nd round pick less than a year ago? He should be around 10.

At this point I've accepted the Tellez stuff. I disagree and laugh at a lot of it, but this is clearly going to be a Jays fans v. rankings opinion thing on Tellez where 1 of us is going to be right. The scouts apparently see something in his swing Keith Law saw him for a handful of at bats in the AFL and now he won't be able to hit advanced pitching He mashed pitching more advanced than AFL pitching this year in AA and is fat or something. Hopefully he's the next in a long line of 1st base prospects who scouts get horribly wrong for no apparent reason.

Yeah, I'm pretty much in the same boat. I've accepted the Rowdy stuff, and all we can really do is what and see what happens when he makes the majors. As someone with no scouting background whatsoever, I'll always take scouting opinions into consideration, but I'm not willing to complete ignore the stats the way so many scouts seem happy to do. I mean... I'm fine knocking him down because you don't think the swing will translate, but in Law's case, the on-field results seem to mean nothing at all. That's ridiculous.

To me, it's a very clear Top 5 (Alford, Reid-Foley, Vlad Jr., Rowdy, and Urena in literally any order you want) with another bunch of guys on the outside for various reasons. I have no problem with Bichette being in that next group. The only thing he's missing is more experience.

 

[Canada4Gold]

I'm kinda surprised they aren't just stripping the picks but they're giving the picks to Houston. Not sure if that's the right decision or not but it's sort of unprecedented. Houston was the team affected so in that sense it makes sense but did it put Houston at a competitive disadvantage compared to the other teams? I'm not sure what type of information was taken and used by the Cardinals(oops I mean Correa, and only Correa, and no info used because nobody else was involved lol).

Obviously another team having access to your databases and information puts you at a competitive disadvantage with respect to that team. The Astros were clearly at a competitive disadvantage compared to the Cardinals here, but you could argue so were other teams as the Cardinals now had their own information and the Astros. But taking the picks away from the Cardinals is "punishment" for that situation. Awarding the picks to the Astros sort of makes you believe MLB believes that the Cards having the 'Stros information puts the 'Stros at a disadvantage relative to the rest of the league, otherwise there'd be no reason to give Houston the picks if they were already at an even playing field with the rest of the league.

Take an on the field hypothetical example. Say the Cards threw at Altuve on purpose, hitting him in the head, and he's out for a month with a concussion. The pitcher gets a 3 game suspension. This play put the Astros at a competitive disadvantage with respect to the rest of the league. The Cards pitchers illegal actions caused the Astros to lose their MVP candidate for a month. MLB doesn't say ok the Cards pitcher must serve his 3 game suspension in the next series against the Astros. Now obviously this would be a little difficult for an interleague matchup, but run with it for now. The Astros wouldn't get any benefit from the punishment handed out in this situation even though they were put at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the league by the actions of the Cards pitcher.

So basically I have 2 questions:

1. Do you think the Cards hacking the Astros puts the Astros at a competitive disadvantages with the other 28 teams or just the Cardinals

2. If you said yes to the above question then should the Astros receive benefit from the punishment handed out to the Cardinals by getting the picks the Cardinals lost.

 

[theaub]

There's a rather sizeable difference between injuring a player on the field and committing a felonious offense. This is an unprecedented situation and I find it somewhat refreshing the Astros were directly compensated for this.

I would ask the reverse question - how were the Astros not more adversely affected by this than the other 28 teams? If anything the publishing of the information was the only thing that made this an issue for a non-Cardinals/Astros franchise, in the sense that they had to deal with the aftereffects of certain players finding out they were being dangled in trade negotiations. But that to me is far more of a by-product of the true crime of having full access to anything the Astros did, than a reason to not compensate the Astros.

That being said, I do agree that there are probably two separate punishments here - one for the damage caused to the Astros, and a separate one as a punitive action against future acts being committed. I think $2M of slot money to Houston is fair, but I still would have liked to see a further $3M or so (loss of 2018 first round pick + $1M loss in international bonus pool) handed down as the punitive punishment.

 

[Discoverer]

There's a rather sizeable difference between injuring a player on the field and committing a felonious offense. This is an unprecedented situation and I find it somewhat refreshing the Astros were directly compensated for this.

I would ask the reverse question - how were the Astros not more adversely affected by this than the other 28 teams? If anything the publishing of the information was the only thing that made this an issue for a non-Cardinals/Astros franchise, in the sense that they had to deal with the aftereffects of certain players finding out they were being dangled in trade negotiations. But that to me is far more of a by-product of the true crime of having full access to anything the Astros did, than a reason to not compensate the Astros.

That being said, I do agree that there are probably two separate punishments here - one for the damage caused to the Astros, and a separate one as a punitive action against future acts being committed. I think $2M of slot money to Houston is fair, but I still would have liked to see a further $3M or so (loss of 2018 first round pick + $1M loss in international bonus pool) handed down as the punitive punishment.

Yeah, a $2 million penalty seems really light considering what happened.

 

[Neil Hamburger]

Yeah, a $2 million penalty seems really light considering what happened.

According to this article: http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/...ndrick-worth-risk-of-losing-draft-pick-012516 comp picks attached to free agents are typically worth more than $5m.

I'm not sure how a 2nd & 3rd round pick compare in monetary value to a comp pick, but it's definitely still a significant amount on top of that $2 million.

Still, it is light considering a team could potentially weigh the potential cost/benefit of something like this considering how likely it would be to get caught, and decide the benefits outweigh the likely costs.

 

[Canada4Gold]

According to this article: http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/...ndrick-worth-risk-of-losing-draft-pick-012516 comp picks attached to free agents are typically worth more than $5m.

I'm not sure how a 2nd & 3rd round pick compare in monetary value to a comp pick, but it's definitely still a significant amount on top of that $2 million.

Still, it is light considering a team could potentially weigh the potential cost/benefit of something like this considering how unlikely it would be to get caught, and decide the benefits outweigh the likely costs.

slot value of the 2 selections the Cards are giving to the Astros

$1,122,400, and $730,800, so under 2 million actually.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/draft/2017-mlb-draft-slots-bonus-pools/#hsEZ2M7ephyDdZcc.97

The pick value may be worth more to teams, in the same sense that teams value the old comp picks at around 10 million(or so I've heard). I think the 2 million being referred to was the slot value.

And I just realized that it's not the Cards 3rd rounder but a supplemental pick between the 2nd and 3rd round? How the hell do the Cards get one of those? Aren't those competitive balance picks for small market teams? Which the Cards are not?

 

[Eyedea]

Not sure it was ever mentioned here but Blue Jays on the ZIPs top 100 prospects list:

79 Rowdy Tellez
75 Anthony Alford
68 Vlad Guerrero Jr
63 Lourdes Gurriel
41 Richard Urena

 

[AllDay28]

Late to the party but everywhere ive read this is like a slap on the wrist. Say u hacked the info and got the next Trout.. thats probably worth more than a $2 mil fine and a couple lost picks.

 

[Eyedea]

Houston has five selections in the top 91 of this year's draft (STL's first selection is 94). That bumps the Astros up to the 11th highest bonus pool and the Cards to by far the lowest pool (1.6m lower than Cleveland). $2m is essentially a slap on the wrist but it's the maximum fine Manfred can issue.

 

[Kurtz]

Late to the party but everywhere ive read this is like a slap on the wrist. Say u hacked the info and got the next Trout.. thats probably worth more than a $2 mil fine and a couple lost picks.

Well, the guy who did the hacking has been banned from baseball and is going to jail, so that's also something.