“300″ Scoresheet Update – A Big Trade
Posted by Rob McQuown on Monday, August 17, 2009 at 10:23 am
August 10:
Got a big trade offer from the League Shark today, which will “help me rebuild”. I can evaluate the players, but he wanted one of my keeper slots, which seems reasonable, since the team is so bad. I don’t know how much to value a keeper slot, so I started looking for advice…
Typed “Scoresheet baseball advice” into Google, and found a site called “scoresheetwiz” (scoresheetwiz.tripod.com, actually). This mentioned that there are two good Yahoo groups to join, so I applied for both on Monday morning at 9:30 AM.
Making a long story short, I’m now on both of these Scoresheet forums, and the quality of advice seems quite high. One is “mcscoresheet”, and the other is “scoresheet-talk”. I haven’t been around long enough to know if there’s some sort of rivalry between the two, but the moderator of one recently warned people to not cross-post, so I’m sure there are many of the same people on both.
The trade offer was very strong for an opening offer: After saying I wouldn’t move him (easy to say until the trading juices start flowing!), what would you think about Bumgarner, Heyward, P. Alvarez and my round 15 for Vazquez, Troncoso, Feliz, and a protected spot?
I was pretty sure something was going to get done at this point, but I bounced it off of one of the forums I’d joined, asking most specifically about the value of a “protected slot”. These usually get traded for 15th-round picks, it seems (this is the 2nd round of actual drafting, since teams keep 13 players – I’ve had to get used to the Scoresheet lingo).
My thinking -
a) Troncoso, who I’d been hoping to keep, is a reliever and thus fickle. He’d been fickle-ing up his ERA and WHIP lately, so it was hard to be too attached with just 13 keeper slots.
b) 15 for the protected seems win/win to me… 15th will be better than the 13th-best player on this team anyway.
c) I still don’t believe Feliz can hit. He’s a great defensive player, and will probably help the League Shark win the league. But unless I wasn’t able to trade any protected spots, he’d have been hard to justify keeping.
d) Vazquez is great. The move to ATL seems to have been exactly what he needed. I scoffed at White Sox fans who were glad to see him go, here in Chicago. And moreso now. I still can’t believe how little acceptance he received here.
e) pre-season, I thought Heyward was the best prospect in the game, and unequivocally if the guys who would be in the bigs were dismissed (namedly Hanson and Wieters). That appears to be the common belief now among prospect evaluators, and I won’t be surprised if he ends up like Darryl Strawberry (hopefully for him, minus the off-field issues), who was actually sort of underrated, if such a thing is possible in NY.
f) Alvarez has been showing definite signs of life recently, after a terrible start to 2009. Bumgarner gives us another of the elite pitching prospects in the game. Hopefully, Strasburg will sign today!
So, I offered a choice of upgrades:
Add either A or B to your offer:
A. Wallace and a Lidge-for-Burnett upgrade
B. 16th-round pick
…and he took(A), but insisted that I throw in Elbert, who I’d been shopping. He was probably viewing Sean Burnett as the better of the two relievers at this point anyway, and figuring that Brett Wallace uses up a valuable “AL” slot (we get 2/season). Lidge is probably a cut anyway, but as crappy as the keepers are, he’s in the mix. 
Grade “A+” (2):
Bats: Votto
Grade “A” (5):
Bats: Salty, Gonzalez, Ethier, S.Smith
Grade “A-”/”B+” (6):
SP: Maholm
RP: Medlen
Bats: Infante, Dukes
Grade “B”:
SP: Perez, Martis, Balester, Detwiler
RP: Lidge
Bats: Cantu, C. Young
Grade “B-”:
Bats: Bonifacio
Minors (don’t count toward 13): Strasburg, Drabek, Bumgarner, Vitters, Lawrie, Heyward, Alvarez, Wallace
August 16:
Exciting day for me, as my first in-season draft will be coming up on Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday. I think I’m guaranteed of the 3rd pick.
I’d been figuring that pick would be RikVanden Hurk, who I have in all my Strat leagues, and who showed some promise early. Not that he’d be the best talent available, per se, but he’s very good, and is one of the few long-term pickups who would also be drawing interest from contending teams. While he’s just 24, and tore through AAA this year, and has a great 33:11 K:UBB ratio in 31.2 IP, the 9 HR allowed are scary – even if you adjust downward a lot for an unreasonable HR/FB ratio. Fangraphs.com says his fastball is averaging over 92 MPH, but a big part of why I liked this guy as a minor leaguer was that his hero was Bert Blyleven, and his game included the “Holland Hammer”, an awesome curve which he’s totally scrapped. He also reportedly hit 98 MPH. As a 92-MPH-throwing FB/Slider guy, he sounds a lot like a future reliever at this point, not a #3 pick in round 42.
Anyway, I’ve scratched Henricu (Vanden Hurk’s full first name) from the top spot, and am going with hard-hitting Freddie Freeman. The team is already loaded with back-end-of-defensive spectrum guys, but since they are often easier to project (you only need them to develop in 1 dimension, since you’re not counting on them for defensive value anyway), I’m hoping that if multiple guys turn into good batters, I’ll be able to “flip” them for guys at other positions. Other “just hit the ball” guys on the draft list: Ike Davis, Jaff Decker, Roger Kieschnick. And at the big league level, Jake Fox is available.
I have a lot of faith in Salty, but several catchers are quite intriguing in this draft. Jason Castro looks like he’s going to be great, Derek Norris is supposedly very good, though Jesus Flores is a good defensive catcher who can hit, so there will be temptation to move Norris. He just started catching as a HS Senior, and has thrown out 47% and 37% in his 2 seasons of minor-league ball, so it’s possible that he’ll simply eclipse Flores, too. Daric Barton has shown us that we can’t take “Johnson City” stats too seriously, but Robert Stock was rated as the nation’s top HS prospect entering his Sr. season, but left HS a year early to pitch and catch for USC. He didn’t post eye-popping numbers there, and the Cardinals scooped him up in the 2nd round, and he signed quickly, so he’s just 19 in his pro debut. Did I mention he’s hitting .345/.412/.578 at Johnson City in 131 PA? Can’t take those too seriously, but still….
The obvious hole on the team is shortstop. I have zero faith in Everth Cabrera, or he’d be a very natural first pick. The only other shortstop on my radar (and list) is Cubs farmhand Starlin Castro, who is a high-average type with little in the way of walks or pop. He skipped “normal” A-ball entirely, and yet earned a promotion to AA already after hammering high-A pitching. He’s just 19, and his youth sticks out in AA. I haven’t seen him play, but reportedly he makes some great plays but boots the easy ones, which is about what you’d expect from someone at his stage in the development curve. It beats having limited range and also booting the easy ones, at least.
The Phillies 2 outstanding outfield prospects are available – Taylor and Brown. I feel like the outfield on this team is loaded already, but I’ll rank these guys highly enough to get them in the 2nd round anyway. Knapp, who went to Cleveland in the Lee trade, looks like a very promising arm, as well.
Anyway, time to update the draft list… in writing this, I became more enamored with Norris. Using my MLP system, his 2008 stats translated to a .400 OBP guy in his prime, and nothing he’s done in 2009 has suggested otherwise….
Past “300″ reports:
7/27: http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/blogs/2009/07/27/more-scoresheet-300-updates/
8/10: http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/blogs/2009/08/10/300-scoresheet-update/
