Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1386: Amateur Hour

Episode Date: June 7, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Cubs signing Craig Kimbrel, ruminating about how he’ll help Chicago, why other teams may have held off, and why it took so long for his prolonged free agency to come to a close. Then (18:06) they bring on FanGraphs prospect experts Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen to […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1386 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, and I am joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. This is going to be a fun one. We talked later in this episode to Eric Wagenhagen and Kylie McDaniel of Fangraphs. I said we talked later in this episode, which weird tenses. We have talked to them, but it will be later in this episode for you.

We talked to them about the draft, and we broke it down on a player level, on a team level, but also on a more macro level. We talked about draft trends and how players are being developed and how players are being picked. So even for someone like me, who is not as into the nitty gritty of individual players, because there's so many and I can't keep track of all of them, I'm interested in the strategy and some of the larger trends. And we got into all of that. And I told you, I thought I only had a few questions. And then it turned out I had many questions. And so did you. So hopefully we will answer other questions people have.

But we've got to talk a little bit about actual baseball news. Craig Kimbrell is no longer a free agent. Dallas Keuchel still is as we speak, although perhaps not as you listen. But it seems unnatural to be talking about a prominent free agent signing in June, but that's where we are. Craig Kimbrell is now a Chicago Cub. He signed for three years and $45 million. He's going to be 10 this year and 16 in each of the next two years, and then there's a buyout at the end of it. So there's a lot that we could say about this. You have to edit some pieces for Fangraphs, so we may's a lot that we could say about this you have to edit some pieces for

fancraft so we may not say all that we could say but ken rosenthal just wrote about how this happened and he said why this took until the first week of june could fill a business textbook and i think that's true because there are so many considerations here from the team side from the league wide side just the way baseball's economics are working right now, the way players and agents are approaching free agency right now. So we can talk a little bit about that and just about what Kimbrell means to the Cubs. What's your main takeaway? I mean, it's nice that one of the best players at the thing that he does is now going to be playing baseball again. But it's not something

where you can just leave it at that. And hey, Craig Kimbrell's good and he gets to play and he makes the Cubs better because there are all these other factors that play into these extremely belated signings. Yeah. So Craig Edwards wrote about the Kimbrell signing for us at Fangraphs and noted that there are a number of bullpens that are underperforming right now, or at least are performing poorly on teams that are trying to contend. So we can even set aside the very bad bullpens on teams that are really far out of contention and didn't really have any intention of contending. That's weird to say.

It's hard to say. And I think Craig noted something that i think is useful here which is that there is a scenario under which teams being trepidatious about signing kimbrough in particular and relievers more generally is a reasonable uh it's a reasonable thing right it's the part of the roster that's the hardest to predict there's a ton of variation year to year that was sabermetric dogma a few years ago. Don't spend on closers. Don't spend on closers, right?

Because they will often be less good than they were. I mean, like the Mets are a team that invested not money, but prospect value in getting Edwin Diaz. And he has been fine, but not amazing, right? And then they went out and spent $30 million on Jairus Familia, who has not pitched well. So there is, you know, even teams that deploy some resources, whether they're prospects or dollars, can end up disappointed. But we do see teams spend money on relievers. That is a part of the market. And so for him to sit out for so long when he is such a talented pitcher, even if

he is 30, even if he has been very good instead of great of late, even if he did struggle in October, makes you think that this isn't really about roster construction or doing what is exactly right for the team, but it is, you know, being influenced, as you noted, by a ton of other considerations. I don't know how, you know, we will never know the full extent of Kimbrell's true demands of teams prior to now. And we will never know the exact sort of set of motivations that facilitated this, you know, waiting until June. But when you think about, you know, the Cubs in particular, their bullpen was very, very poor. And they waited to spend this money on a guy who, when you think about the value of the pick that they would have been giving up and some of the international money essentially equates to Daniel Descalso. Well, isn't it worth it to the Cubs to spend a Daniel Descalso

to not have the bullpen they've had? So I just think that they might end up sort of getting away with Juan. They're competitive in a division that is tight, but they are sort of holding their own. They're leading that division, albeit narrowly. The Brewers were another team that didn't end up getting Kimbrell, right? And the Cardinals didn't get Kimbrell either. But it is sort of disappointing that, you know, the thing that we might come away, when we look back on the season, we might be like, well, they righted the ship at the right time. And so it ended up being fine. And maybe they

spent a little less than they would have ultimately. And I think that that's probably the wrong message for us to take from this because, you know, they could presumably be doing even better in the central than they are now. They could have more cushion between themselves and the Brewers. They could have a clearer sense of their competitive sort of picture going forward if they had pulled the trigger a little early. So I don't know. Yeah. So the Cubs bullpen has been shaky. And Brandon Morrow, who was the closer for part of last year, he's coming back from elbow surgery. Pedro Stroop was just activated but has been on and off injured lists. And so you slot Kimbrel in there. And in theory, at least, you should have a pretty good back of the bullpen there with Kimbrel and Stroop and Ciszek and Brad Brock and Brandon Kintzler. So you could imagine that really coming together into a pretty formidable unit. Part of the reason that Kimbrel has been sitting out all this time is that Kimbrel seems potentially past his peak. He's dipped below

and climbed back up again. So it's hard to say from year to year with relievers. But of course, he was somewhat walk-prone last year and never more than in the playoffs, which was the last time that people saw him. And he didn't really lose games for the Red Sox, but he tried his best to and he gave up a whole lot of base runners and did not look like someone you would want to commit a lot of money to. So that may have been part of this. Perhaps part of it was him misreading the demand for him or hoping that there would be more demand. There were reports that he was seeking some giant six-year deal or $100 million at some point in the offseason. I don't know whether that's accurate. I know that Ken Rosenthal, I think, reported back in April that he was seeking at that time a contract that is pretty

close to the one he just signed. So it does seem like his demands came down and yet he was still sitting out. And it is probably not a coincidence that he signed immediately after the amateur draft, which means that teams do not have to give up draft picks to sign him anymore. The draft pick compensation goes away after the draft. So that is probably part of it. But I mean, if you look at like Craig Edwards draft pick values that he did early this year, like once you get down below the very top picks, that should not really be something that stops you from making a move. Like, I think the, like the Dodgers would have had to give up their 31st pick or something. And according to Craig,

that's worth almost $10 million. Like that's something. But once you get down, you know, he went all the way down to pick 70 and down there, it's like 3.8 million is the value in terms of, you know, future surplus production and various teams were in that range. And that shouldn't really be prohibitive if you think that Craig Kimbrell is going to make you better. So it's hard to say how much of it was Kimbrell's demands, how much of it was teams not spending when they should have. I think we know that the Cubs all offseason protested that they couldn't make any moves, that they were maxed out in payroll. And it's always kind of hard to believe that when you're talking about a team like the Cubs that has been very successful and has a nice media market and attendance and is

a very valuable franchise. And maybe that's a constraint that the front office is working under, but ownership has imposed for ownership's own reasons. And so I think you could look at this and say, why didn't they do it three months ago? But then you could also look at other teams that didn't do it now and could have and would have benefited from it, like the Brewers, for instance. And the Brewers aren't the Cubs, and they've spent some, and they're in a different position. But you look at teams like the Brewers or the Braves or the Twins and various teams that really seem like they could use Kimbrell, whether for the pennant race or for the playoffs. And ultimately, he went to the Cubs, and i guess good for them although who knows exactly how long it will take it seems like it might take a couple weeks for kimbrough to debut

and then you don't know whether there will be some hangover effect whether it'll take him some time to get up to speed so there's some uncertainty there too yeah i've i've wanted to find the right way to to formulate this question without making it sound like I don't think that a team should sign him because that isn't my intention with the question. And so I haven't come up with a great way to do it. So I haven't because it made me nervous on Twitter. But I have been thinking a lot lately about just exactly how long it's going to take him to get sort of ramped up. I mean, he is a reliever.

So theoretically, it's less difficult than, than say whatever program Dallas Keuchel is going to need to work his way through in order to be sort of top you know top shape for whatever team he ends up signing with which sounds like might result in him having to shave but yeah I I do wonder you know the the studies on this stuff seem to be kind of inconclusive with how much those long layoffs tend to affect guys. So I wonder about that. And we just have to hope he pitches really well because if he's bad, Twitter is going to be unbearable. It's going to be gnarly because we've all spent the last couple of months rightly saying, well, wow, there are some bad bullpenspens and while there's this good reliever out there and you can get him for just

money, all it takes is money. It doesn't even take prospects. So someone should go do that. So I hope that for all of our sakes, uh, most especially for Craig Kimbrell's, but, um, as a secondary knock-on effect for our own sanities that he's just like lights out and then they can be bashful and feel silly in and we can feel relieved. Kimbrell. And the other kind of unseemly aspect to this story is that if you read Ken Rosenthal's report, no one with the Cubs will come out and say this, but they are dropping hints. And, you know, it's a connection that I think a lot of people are drawing that Ben Zobrist is currently on the restricted list while he's dealing with a divorce and maybe out for the rest of the season and he's not being paid while he's on that leave and therefore the cubs are recouping that cost and maybe have decided that they will put that money that they are saving because of a difficult time

in ben's over his life toward craig kimbrell which is you know kind of kind of gross to think about that uh that this move may have come about because of a misfortune that has befallen one of their players. Yeah. I think my mom would call it tacky. She would say that was tacky, and I think that that characterization would be accurate. It does – I mean, the numbers do line up in a kind of uncomfortable way,

so I think it will be hard to avoid that assumption that people are going to make. But I hope that that's not. I think that the still silly but less tacky explanation is the draft pick compensation rather than this money suddenly freeing up in the budget because of Zobris' personal misfortune. So why don't we go with that? We'll just pretend that's true instead, because otherwise it's kind of yucky. Maybe this is the kind of contract in this whole off-season saga that we'll look back on after the next CBA, perhaps, and say, these are the kinds of situations that changes in this round of bargaining were designed to address. We'll see whether the players actually succeed in that respect, but getting this draft pick

compensation removed or getting players paid early in their career if free agents aren't going to make as much as they once would have. I mean, I think that this contract, it sort of sounds like a lot if you're still in the mentality of don't pay for saves But there are comparable contracts for comparable or even lesser pitchers That have been signed for the same amount or even more in not a distant time So it's not like out of nowhere And I think there is still the perception that you can just kind of go find bullpen guys And you can convert a starter or you can just develop someone who has

a good arm and suddenly he's a good late inning guy and that's true that happens but there are a whole lot of teams that still need bullpen help because bullpens are shouldering a heavier load bullpens are pitching a lot and the individual pitchers in those bullpens are not pitching as much you don't see guys pitching three or four days in a row anymore and mostly don't go multiple innings. So you need to fill those innings with arms. And some teams that have spent recently this past winter on free agent relievers are satisfied with the players they've brought on, Adam Adovino or Zach Britton. But as Craig pointed out in his piece, you've got Andrew Miller and you've got David Robertson and you've got Jerez Familia and you've got Joe Kelly.

And there's a long list of guys who kind of justify the old attitude about don't trust relievers, don't invest in relievers because they will break your heart. So we'll see which box Craig Kimbrell fits into. Yeah, yeah. Man, Joe Kelly's having a bad year. Yes, he is. yeah man joe kelly's having a bad year yes he is yeah but as jay has recently written for fan graphs uh it hasn't mattered the touches are amazing right yeah that's the thing yeah i mean i could have lumped in the red socks uh with when i was listing teams that could have potentially used craig kimbrell yeah turns out that ryan brazier uh you know, wasn't the solution that they thought he would be.

No, not really. Yeah, the bullpen as a whole has not been terrible. But there are some teams that don't have that designated stopper at the back. And there are fewer teams that are making it a priority to have that guy. Like saves are being distributed more widely across the bullpen. And I think teams are playing matchups and they're looking at usage. And it's not so much like you need to have

the fire-breathing ninth inning guy who gets all the save opportunities. That's not really the case anymore. But I think every team would benefit from having Craig Kimbrell. So there are a lot of teams out there that fans will be questioning why it's not their team opening up a brand new Craig Kimbrell today.

Yeah, brand new. Brand new at 30. Yeah, right. Would that we were all brand new at 30. Yeah, who knows? Maybe the time off will do him some good. Yeah, could be true. In the long run, at least.

But yeah, you know, it puts a lot of pressure on him, I think, to like justify the buildup, which is not his fault. But it's like we've been waiting for Craig Kimbrell for months. And it's like, has Craig Kimbrell been asking for too much? And if he shows up now and looks rusty or non-dominant, then as you were saying, everyone will think, oh, well, teams were right not to sign Craig Kimbrell. But this is a different situation from if they had signed him in December, let's say probably well i'll just agree well all of us who are writers about baseball will agree to if he struggles which will be a thing that we

have to write about we will agree to note the oddity of the situation and the part of it that is definitely not his fault and we'll just all agree and hopefully we can set a tone uh with that discourse that uh acknowledges a struggle should there be one, but does not. Yeah. Right. Okay. So I think we've covered the Craig Kimbrell situation as well as we can in 15 minutes or so. You could write a business textbook about it, but we don't have time to do that right now.

Business textbooks, you've probably read a few in your day, probably not really entertaining reads. You've probably read a few in your day. Probably not really entertaining reads. I actually managed to dodge the whole thing because the funny thing about finance is they just teach you what you need to know when you show up. It's wild. Okay. All right. So we can take a quick break.

Maybe next time we'll have a Dallas Keuchel contract to talk about. We'll see. But we'll be back in just a moment with Eric and Kylie to talk all about the draft and development and prospects. So sit back, relax, maybe browse to an online retailer and purchase a newly released baseball book called The MVP Machine, how baseball's new nonconformists are building better players. And by the time you complete that purchase, we'll be back. Reinforcements, reinforcements, I could use a strong regard. Reinforcements, reinforcements, I could use a strong regard. Reinforcements, reinforcements, I could use a strong regard.

Reinforcements, reinforcements, is done, and I don't personally know exactly what happened, and that is why we are doing this segment with multiple people who know exactly what happened. They are Kylie McDaniel and Eric Langenhagen of Fangraphs, and they have already reviewed the first round of the draft team by team for Fangraphs in written form. They've gone through the draft in podcast form on the UMP show on the Fangraphs audio feed as well. But today they're joining us to bring some draft knowledge. And I hope that they've gotten some sleep in the last 12 hours or so, possibly. Kylie, hello. Welcome. Hello. Thank you for having me.

I also have gotten some sleep in like the last you know the one last sleep that i had it has been okay but before that it's a little shaky excellent and eric how's your alertness level it is suboptimal ben but but i did the i did the melatonin thing last night so i crashed pretty hard sounds good does that work that there's scientific backing for that right i've never tried it it's My problem is not falling asleep. It's like deciding to go to sleep. So I don't know whether melatonin would be productive for me or counterproductive. There are some studies that show it's more or less placebo.

You can't do it every day. It is a thing I do like after a flight. Okay. Ben, I imagine you sleep suspended from the ceiling Upside down, am I wrong there? I imagine you don't sleep at all Well that's why I assumed it was weird if you did sleep When I do sleep, it's often during the day So I have both a face mask

That I wear and have recommended on the podcast In the past, and then I also Have like curtains around My bed so that I can Slumber during the daytime In vampiric fashion And it's pretty dark in there. All right. So my bat reference wasn't that far off. No, not at all. Not at all. Partly it's because I always just, I like an old timey bed that has the curtains and the four poster and

everything just stylistically, but also it's a practical manner. Anyway, this is not something that applies to most people's lives. Great draft some great draft talk right now, I think. Yeah, the draft. So how did your mock go? How did it hold up? Was this generally a predictable draft or an unpredictable draft relative to the typical draft, which is always unpredictable? I guess, Kylie, you can start. So I think every expert got the first seven picks right and some of them got the top eight picks right, which I don't think normally happens.

And my suspicion, having been on the other side of this before, is that the consensus around what the top six or seven picks would be, which I think there were multiple mocks that had this correct like a month out. I think the reason we heard a lot of, oh, they might be going under slot with this guy that's sort of not been considered that pick for a while is because the mocks were too accurate up top and if they're too accurate too long in advance agents know that my player will go here teams are boxed into we know you want that player and so prices go up and so like we know michael is used to be with houston they would always you know throw out a way below option they would always not communicate with the agent they would do whatever they can to create some leverage where it may not have existed and now i think with the sort of coverage of the draft getting a little more sophisticated i think now teams and agents and mock people and people that tell us rumors have all sort of figured out that if we are a little too zeroed in a little too early we're gonna hear some real wacky stuff

at the end which in the last 48 hours we heard some real wacky stuff so you two determined the draft order is essentially what you're saying. The baseball world is reading your mock draft and reacting to it. Some of it had to just be random to a degree, right? Like the fact that there is such clear demarcation between these top six or seven guys and the rest of the middle of the first round basically is just like, this is just how it played out, right? And some of it is that they fit with teams you know like Andrew Vaughn is to a tee what like the White Sox have drafted the last three drafts TJ Abrams is like a quintessential Padres type of prospect so like there are just some good fits here too that I think cause things to be very stable up top like like from a mock draft perspective.

And I would also say it's easier to find your universal appeal on players being in a tier and whatnot when there's no high school pitchers up there, and this year there weren't. So there wasn't going to be the, this team loves that guy, this team, you know, whacked him, took him off the board because of the arm action or something. Yeah, so speaking of those top six picks,

they were all position players, and I think only 10 of the 32 picks in the first round were pitchers. And Sam and I were talking about this yesterday from a completely uninformed perspective about whether this is a trend, whether this means something about teams devaluing pitchers at the top of the draft, or whether it is just a weakness of this draft in particular or a one-year blip or whatever. So Eric, do you have any thoughts on that? The college pitching group was bad this year. And we did not have, like last year we had three high school pitchers at the top of the draft and there just wasn't that tier of pitcher in this year's draft. So it was just a down year

on the high end for pitching talent, especially on the high school side and just overall for college. So I do think it was more or or less i think it was just more one year of like randomness as far as the talent pool is concerned but i think you're correct that teams are generally devaluing pitching i would also throw in that uh i want to say in like august september of last year we only had one pitcher in like the top 17 or 18 so we knew pretty far out that the college pitching was weak i think what happened uh with two in the top 15 was actually stronger than the early projections would have and And we have an article that we'll actually be going to make to edit right after we finish recording this that points out that

of our 2020 list, six of the top 11 are college pitchers. So I think it is much more of a blip than like, you know, if there's a bunch of ace possible level starters, like they will go toward the top. There just weren't any this year. And next year, there might be some. Do you think – we tend to trend toward attrition of the pitching pool during the spring. Guys get hurt or don't perform more often than they pop up, it seems like. It's just totally anecdotally. But in most years, especially the Duke pitching, Mike Montuela and Graham Stinson this year.

And Adam Lasky this year, too. Right. Yeah. Like there's just more regression. Like so I, you know, look at next year's like our 2020 ranking right now with like fear, you know, like which of these guys is not going to be here next year because there will be one or two or three of them. Yeah, I can almost guarantee one of them will blow up in the next 12 months. So I'm not going to, these next couple of questions are not inviting in any way a draft grade because those are dopey and we're not interested in being dopey

even if we are tired. But obviously this draft was particularly important for the Diamondbacks. So we're going to start micro and then go macro a little bit. And I'm wondering from your guys' perspective, did they end up taking the approach that you expected them to in terms of who they selected? What was that approach going in that you were kind of anticipating from them? Because we saw them seemingly at every game at the amateur level this year. And then just in general, how do you think they ended up doing on the day or days? I thought we expected them to do a mix of high schoolers and college players, specifically college pitching. That is where a lot of D-backs brass have been seen. Some of that is

like me being at ASU and seeing D-'s personnel constantly because it's right there. The whole Pac-12 came through. They ended up taking one Pac-12 pitcher in Ryan Nelson, the Oregon reliever, who's like maybe if we had to pick a guy who might be quickest to the big leagues if he were just thrown in the bullpen, it might be Ryan Nelson. And, you know, I think at 16 they just got good value with Corbin Carroll. I don't think they were boxed into any one particular player demographic. I think they were just going to take a value prospect who fell, which all the teams really from 16 to 19 were able to do.

And then they took high school talent and one of the better college pitchers, Andre Jamison, in that comp round at pick 33, at pick 26, pick 34, two prep arms and their first of several college pitchers. So it just seems like they probably had the high school arms higher on the board, right? Like this is sort of what we anticipated. Kylie, I don't. The high school pitcher spillover like into the early 40s this year was I don't know there's typically the early second round is when those teams can get another like three million dollar high school pitching

prospect and I think the quality in that area was down this year like this area is where the our top tier of high school pitchers was like the the comp round yeah I would say the anticipation we had is that with those top four picks in the top 34 so 16 26 33 34 we figured three of those four picks they'd take a high school player because they have more money than everyone else and you can sort of move high school players around much more easily than college players because of the leverage with college commitment sure three of those four picks were high school players that are i'd say generally the higher ceiling type and then they took sort of to do what most teams do,

what they call a portfolio approach, where you get like hitter, pitcher, high school, college. They then followed that with a bunch of college pitchers and then a couple of college hitters and just sort of got a little bit of each demographic, which I think we expected as they, you know, throw their weight around early, get the high school players they wanted,

and then kind of played a little straight from there on and kind of mix in different demographics, which is, I'd say, pretty close to what they did, at least in vague terms. Were there other teams in this draft where, you know, they took picks in the first round where you find yourselves either higher or lower than industry consensus on sort of the quality of those players or the value that they were getting at those picks? Yeah, I guess Braden Shoemake, the Braves pick at 21. We were on the low end, it seemed, compared to where a lot of teams were.

We had Shoemake at about 50. Most teams had him like 30 to 40, and the Braves took him 21. It's not like an indefensible pick or anything like that. It's just we see him as more of like if this is going to be a regular, there will probably have to be a swing change. He performed for three years of college, like basically peaked as a freshman so you know we think he's more of a utility type but at the back of the first round that's to be reasonably expected like that's a pretty good outcome for a late first rounder so that was one where there was a sizable gap early on uh and then i think we only had one hitter in the 40s, a college hitter, like in the 40 future value tier who wasn't drafted in Arizona catcher Matt Dyer.

And so that would be like the flip side of it, someone who we liked as a prospect who just wasn't selected. And then I guess were there sort of if we take it out to the team level, were there teams that just had days that you were particularly impressed with? I know that you guys were fans of the Arizona draft generally, but were there other ones where you're like, hey, that was a nice little day there. Everyone should have a coffee. of early picks they picked at 14 and then they pick again until 91 and i still thought that their day two like they had an excellent draft so they they got eric miller a lefty from stanford at pick 120 stuff was down throughout the spring like it was mid 90s last summer and early in the year and then was 88 92 down the stretch but was still pitching well like the secondary stuff is really good he can really pitch uh i think he's a candidate for bounce back, Velo bounce back, especially if they shut him down. This is what's happened with a lot of college arms lately is they get picked,

they get shut down for the rest of the summer, and then they come back next year throwing harder or at least return to wherever their peak had been. So I like Eric Miller at 120. They've got a couple of interesting high schoolers as well. And Andrew Schultz, a reliever at Tennessee, who throws really hard. I just thought for what the Phillies had

as far as picks go, that they did quite well. And I would point out the Mets. We really liked the first pick, Brett Beatty, who the rumors are that he's well below slot, maybe 500 or 600K under slot, which we had him ranked four spots ahead of where they got him. So that'd be great if they could pull that off uh josh wolf in

the second round is like a you know perfectly fine we basically had him ranked where they took him and then obviously in the third round like one of the buzzer picks of the draft taking uh matt allen there and we actually might have been the low guys on matt allen because we had him at 20 and i think most of the other rankings had him like 13 to 15. We're a little wary that when the stuff really ticked up, the command wasn't there. But in general, getting as many of those top tier players as you can is a pretty good strategy. And then because they did that, they were able to hit the sort of priority seniors in rounds four through 10.

And so they got sort of first pick at those guys. And it sounds like, you know, you can get a very good senior who might make a 40 man or a big league roster for 20k and get a guy that you don't really expect to do very much for 5k and if you get to those seniors early for just a little bit extra money you can get some of the good ones and they got three of the i don't know 15 or 20 we had on the board right afterwards whereas if they would have played it straight and just mixed in some seniors in the ninth and tenth they probably wouldn't have gotten those guys and that probably doesn't matter but like it's a nice sort of added benefit of spending all your money in the first three picks and then i'll add boston to the mix matthew lugo we had ranked 26th and it sounded

like teams and it thought he was going to go in the comp round and some of the teams in like the the teams were running into puerto rico to see him late we thought he had a chance to go like in the middle of the first round and and the Red Sox got him in round two. Cameron Cannon, who we mocked them to at pick 43, they ended up taking. And then at pick 49, they took Noah Song, who I thought was a late first round talent, but there's uncertainty surrounding his naval commitment. Have we heard anything more about that in the last couple of days? No, not that. No, I don't know if the Red Sox took him with any knowledge of what might occur or with anticipation of what might occur. to head to your camp and be a professional baseball player relatively soon. I thought it was a big swing at pick 49 that when you don't have a whole lot else going on in your draft, like the Red Sox just didn't have a whole lot

of picks up high, it's worth it to take this risk, even if the worst-case scenario is this guy doesn't get to put on a Sox-affiliated uniform until he's 24, and at that point he has very little chance of making it. You know, the worst case scenario is this guy doesn't get to put on a Sox affiliate uniform until he's 24. And at that point, he has like very little chance of making it. But if they can get him in sooner, then he was undervalued. So I thought that was an interesting pick. I mean, that explains the White House visit. They had to go sort out the Noah Song situation. There you go.

Finally, an answer. Ben, you should ask a question now. Sure. So zooming out a little, we talked a little bit about the fact that there were more batters taken before the first pitcher than any draft before, which might be indicative of a trend or might just be this year's class. What other long-term or short-term trends just on a macro level are you observing, if any? Like what's the hot tactic in the draft these days how are we weighing college versus high school or certain positions versus other positions like if we were to compare the draft as a whole or early in the draft today

to the draft 10 years ago or 20 years ago what would be the things that stand out so the one big thing this year is once you got past that first tier of high school bats, it should be Bobby Wood Jr., C.J. Abrams, Brett Beatty, and Corbin Carroll. That's where the consensus started to diverge. And the, I mean, we still remember the Randy Giselli studies from, what was it, like seven or eight years ago now about how high school hitter age really matters. Right. The hitters for high school,

which I have done further research on this, that high school hitter specifically in the top couple of rounds is where age matters the most. And teams are clearly making decisions based on this, that we got Keone Cavaco went 13th, which I think we had, uh, a little bit lower than that. We had,

we had a rank 22nd. So we thought that was like a little bit of a reach. Um, Matthew Lugo, who went in the second round, was 18.1, Cavaco 18.0. Draft average is like 18.2 or 3, so anything below that is considered, you know, advantageous in that regard.

Blake Walston, a pitcher, was 17.9. Brooks Lee did not sign, but he was 18.3. Had some buzz in the first round. It sounds like a medical thing may have pushed him to school. Spencer Jones also went to school, was young. Anthony Volpe, 18.1. Kyron Parris, 17.6 in the second round. Gun like a medical thing may have pushed him to school spencer jones also went to school was young anthony volpe 18.1 kyron paris 17.6 in the second round gunner henderson 17.9 in the second round uh there are a lot of high school hitters that basically made up that second tier that were all basically on the young side and even so the ones that went to

school that were in in consideration there were also on the young side and not all of them were in that group and they sort of i guess the idea behind the sort of age research is basically that these guys are facing guys older than them. And so it's harder for them to stand out. And also they sort of physically develop a little bit later. And so you would think during the spring is mostly when these guys would emerge and that's basically what happened. But then also we heard from multiple teams like, oh, we thought, you know, Will Wilson,

who age also matters a little bit for college hitters as well. He's one of the younger college hitters. And they're like, oh, we threw him in the model and he came out better than we thought he would. And then all of a sudden, these guys just sort of slowly hear them kind of moving up 10, 15 spots. Or if they're in the second round, maybe 20 spots. Once these models get to sort of weigh in and tell the scouts like, oh, you had him here. You should adjust him here based on this demographic's success or failure in the past? I guess on the pitching side, that it's clear, it's spreading like teams care about.

Things like approach angle and spin axis, they're just more pitchers with vertical arm slots moving up boards. You look at like Ethan Small, who was taken in the back of the first round by Milwaukee. That's another lefty who has that like Clayton Kershaw style delivery where he only throws 88-91, but gets a lot of vertical action on his breaking ball. And so he carved up SEC hitters for three years while sitting 88-91. And they're just this type of pitcher whose stuff works this way is becoming

more pervasive throughout the draft and just moving up boards in general. Teams are starting to suss out what about pitching makes it effective. This seems to be one of the things that's correlated with swinging strikes are pitches that move in these directions. And so there are just more guys like that going. A lot of the sidearm guys or traditional three-quarters types are moving down. Sinker ballers, except for the Rockies, which is kind of interesting that they're one of the only teams for whom it's advantageous now. And I wonder if they have an outsized advantage because fewer and fewer teams are targeting sinker ballers. But yeah, there's a certain type of pitcher that now seems more desirable. So do you think there's more or less

consensus across the league? I mean, do draft boards, internal draft boards look more similar to each other or less than they did when everyone was kind of going by naked eye and gut feel and makeup as opposed to now where they're going by technology, but certain teams are integrating that a bit more into their process than others. I think they look more similar now because back in the day, you could just have a scouting director and then a national cross tracker that didn't like a prospect. And that opinion would sort of spread throughout the organization and the whole team would be off the player. And there'd really no be, there wouldn't be a reason why it's basically two people's opinions made the team out where it was just you know sort of random those

guys are spread throughout the league that if you know 80 of them like a player 20 don't some team's gonna have two or three guys in a row at the top that don't like them so it was sort of random and hard to tell which teams were in or out on a player on type and now that models are all sort of you know they're using the same information i think people analyze the information differently but stuff like young high school hitters should be moved up like everyone knows this including people on the internet and we can look at teams track records and see that they're valuing this and so like some models like i've been told are more than 50 scouting reports and they just want to have all this demographic data to sort of round up or round down on the scouting reports and like

you know have some track man stuff round up or round down on the pitchers but use scouting reports and other ones it sounds like they just sort of stuff round up around down on the pitchers, but use scouting reports and other ones. It sounds like they just sort of slavishly do whatever the model tells them to, which obviously means they're going to take like, you know, the guys that fall right into the meaty part of the curve of the, you know, the young hitter or the trackman friendly pitcher or the guy with performance or the guy that was famous over the summer is ranked in all the public rankings or, you know, all those sorts of things. And so, because I think, I don't know, it sounds like if not 30, at least 25 teams have a model, and I would say 10 to 15 teams really pay attention to the model in one way or another,

that they're going to all be on similar sorts of players, especially if they like check three or four boxes, whereas the guys that check like one box, any one model could disagree with another, but the ones that sort of check all the boxes, but maybe aren't a scouting type, those guys are going to be rated almost the same by everybody. I think that boards look very different for orgs who are and are not confident in their player development. I think that the more measurable stuff, you know, peak exit VLOs, things that like Cameron Meissner, the Marlins, one of their early picks is a guy with like huge tools who needs, he's a college bat who needs a lot of work. That is a team who, or that is a player who teams like the Yankees and the Marlins have Yankees player dev staff.

Those are the teams that were on that guy. They knew they could fix that guy, or they were confident that they could. And so I think that the teams who are better at the player dev stuff, I think the way they look at the draft varies compared to those who are still a little bit behind. Were there any drafts where, you know, we've seen in recent years systems that are defined by a particular approach where we have sort of, there's a lack of variety in the ecosystem, right? The Astros have these guys with a lot of spin and big curve balls.

The Dodgers have hitters with big power and some strikeout issues. These guys with a lot of spin and big curveballs. The Dodgers have hitters with big power and some strikeout issues. Were there any drafts where you saw sort of related to what you just said, a player type emerging that might be of interest to them? Or is there too much variation for us to really draw any kind of conclusion like that? Cleveland consistently drafts like some of the youngest prospects in the draft. We've gotten like a bunch of cleveland mock draft picks correct the last couple years just because we're like okay who's the youngest guy on the board who's around this

range on talent and like just put them there with cleveland and it's been correct i think they ended up with three or four 17 year old players they took uh in the third round you know like very polished undersized high school bat like a six foot 180 pound first baseman from socal like projectionless just squat little high school kid who just mashed against pretty good southern california pitching all spring like he wasn't on any showcase stuff last year he's totally a spring like pop-up guy if you like him but everyone thought he was going to go to school like this is typical cleveland polished high school hitters who are also young and then they also do the famous high school pitcher kylie and i believe that like the cleveland's cleveland's model stretches over

two years uh they end up with a lot of sophomore performers who were down junior years or high school pitchers whose stuff was much better the summer before and was down a little bit that spring. And that was Daniel Espino, their first-round pick this year. He was like 95-99 last summer. He was more 92-95 this spring, two drafts ago. It was Ethan Hankins whose stuff was much better the summer before. They ended up with Brady Aiken at one point.

So Cleveland is the one that's easiest to sort of no scope in like the mock, in my opinion. Kylie, this one is for you. You wrote as part of our draft week coverage about swing changers, noting that you guys had seen sort of a trend or a rumor emerging pre-draft about prep arms who might be inclined to go to professional organizations for their dev instead of relying on colleges, which are somewhat behind on the hitting side compared to the pitching

side. And I'm wondering if there were any dudes who struck you as sort of fitting that trend in this year's draft. Did we see it like you thought you would? As you started that question, I sort of panicked because I was like, oh, yeah, I wrote an article about look for this in the draft, and now the draft is over and I never look to see. So while your question was going, I was scrolling through the fourth round because that's kind of the beginning of this range.

Sure. I think I noticed six high school hitters that signed or expected to sign in that range. Well, isn't that nice? Yeah. At least it wasn't way lower than I would have thought. That would have been bad. And I definitely, after I wrote that article, got contacted by people, you know, sort of around the scouting world and various parts of it saying like, oh yeah, I kind of noticed

this. I wasn't sure if it was just my area or just my region or just our team's board or whatever. So it seems like other people are seeing this too. And as I'm continuing to scroll through in the sixth round, it looks like there's a couple more of them. So yeah, I would say it at least held serve in terms of the number that had been in the past. It looks like there may be a few extra, but I think that dynamic definitely exists because obviously there could be four or five people that just chose not to go to school because the money ran out. And so I wouldn't let the results define if that's happening

because it sounds like it's definitely happening and it will affect high school hitters' decisions and it may eventually affect high school pitchers' decisions. Although one of the things we talked about with Arizona, about the, you know, and I guess Milwaukee also with Ethan Small, like the vertical slot. I noticed when I was at the SEC tournament for a day that I watched Arkansas and Vanderbilt

and almost all of their pitchers are big dudes in the mid nineties that throw from over the top slots and throw curve balls. So progressive pitching stuff that's in pro baseball right now has spread, or I guess already did spread to some of the elite colleges that are sort of on the cutting edge of things. I don't think there's very many more beyond those. Dallas Baptist is probably one of them. A couple other SEC, ACC teams, I think are considering these things, but like there's probably less than 10. Whereas when you talk about progressive hitting things in my article, I wrote that when you ask scouts, what college is best at developing hitters, the most common answer was laughter. Cause there's not only is there not one, but most of them are actively going the

other direction. So that's why I think pitchers are a little more likely to go to college, all things being equal. But yeah, I would say if you were to do like a three or four year study of like this year and the next three against the previous four, I think there would definitely be more high school hitters signing than there were in the past. We looked at the top of the next couple draft classes right after the draft was done. We started like moving guys who weren't going to sign into future years. And as we come through the rankings that we previously had, like we found we were moving pitchers down.

Like Mike Bassel, who we had in the middle of the first round last year went to virginia and his stuff was way down all year like he was very hittable so so yeah and some of it is just the way pitchers trend in general but i do agree that there's a problem of incentive in college baseball the coaches are just not they're incentivized to do things necessary to win and sometimes it's at the expense of player dev. Yeah, I wrote about the pitching side of that equation last week at the Ringer and also a bit in the book. And in that Ringer piece, I talked about a couple of guys at Dallas Baptist, and one of them went to the Mets and one of them went to the Mariners. And I mentioned a guy with Iowa who went to the Astros. And so I think that is happening at some D1 schools. And one thing I

heard from people was that we're going to start seeing pitchers, at least certain pitchers, move quickly through the minors because they'll have made these adjustments even before they get into pro ball and they'll just need a little seasoning and then they'll just quickly ascend through the minor league levels. And I wonder whether you think that will be the case because one of the surprises to me when I was working on the book and doing some research is that even though we're seeing this youth movement in baseball, even though player development is really advancing, the average debut age in baseball has not changed. And the average experience in the minors prior to making a major league debut has not changed. And that's, you know, going back 20 years, it's the same today.

And there could be multiple reasons for that, I think. I mean, there's service time stuff. There's the fact that some older players are making changes and are getting to the majors who might not have gotten there before. So they're sort of skewing the averages. So I just wonder whether you think we will start to see players move more quickly in general and whether we'll see some pitchers really ascend quickly and whether there's anyone who stands out in particular i think you mentioned one eric already but anyone who stands out and whether you think that will be a league-wide change i guess the what you the two things that you mentioned is as things that could be influencing that are the two things that came to mind as you

asked the question for me like yes the service time stuff is going to suppress how quickly individual players reach the big leagues. And as player dev has improved, like it's improved for everyone, not just the young guys in recent years. So yes, I think that that's what has happened recently. But at some point, there won't be old guys who are just finding out about this stuff.

You'll find out about it in college or when you first get into the minors and then you'll make whatever that adjustment is earlier. Or find out on Twitter stuff you'll find out about it in college or when you first get into the minors and then you know you'll make whatever that adjustment is earlier or find out on twitter when you're 13 right yeah uh so yeah i think that there's i think there's a chance that that is what you see occurring as far as especially as far as the pitching is concerned i think there are going to be huge changes to minor league baseball in the next cBA. I think especially if minor league player compensation changes, that the way we look at the layers of the minor leagues might change so fundamentally that it's completely unrecognizable.

Layers of rookie ball going away and stuff like that, I think, is in play, which is going to just change the way players are developed and their timelines to the big leagues. just change the way players are developed and their timelines to the big leagues. But yes, I think that when Kylie wrote about colleges being bad at player dev, there are definitely some exceptions to that. I think there's a reason we saw people hired away from colleges this past offseason. It's because some of them actually had been ahead,

and now teams are throwing money at the fact that they're behind. So I think, yeah, especially from certain programs. Yeah. And I think it's worth the number of programs that are capable of doing it are growing, but I think they're all over the place. I think some junior colleges are even good at it. And yes, I think that there's a formulaic component that the pitchers are getting to earlier. And yeah, I think we'll start to see players move more quickly, especially if teams aren't so disincentivized from moving them quickly. Yeah. And that'd be good from making the draft more interesting to a wider audience too, if you can expect to see some of these guys soon. I mean, baseball is never going to be football and basketball in that respect. But I think if you could add some immediacy where, I mean, Joe Sheehan ran a thing in his newsletter this past week just about how little major league impact we've seen, even like from going back to the 2016 draft, let alone the last couple. take so long for guys to get there and for them to become impact players that just from a you know

mass appeal perspective it would be nice if that timeline could be shortened at least a little bit i think now maybe evidence that what your your theory is correct is that the last couple drafts there's so many players already like at double a like i looked yesterday and cj alexander who was like a mid-round pick in 2018, was already at AA. So teams are definitely pushing guys now. I think challenging them and forcing adjustment via failure is also an important component of player dev. So yeah, it does take a while. And I agree that that's probably why it's hard to get casual fans into it.

I know that before the draft, we published our pre-draft farm system rankings. And I know that we have yet to complete the exercise fully where we adjust everything for the post-draft environment. But are there systems that jump out to either of you in particular as having moved the needle? I mean, it's one day and obviously, again, we're not doing grades because those are dopey.

A plus, B minus. Yay, everyone's a star. They are purple. But are there systems where you feel that there has been some movement perhaps of a significant variety with the guys that they've taken in this draft? You can tell me no, and then we can just cut this whole bit out. Well, Arizona's obviously won because they had a bunch of picks and we think they did pretty well with them. So there's going to be a lot of both depth and sort of higher end players added.

One that came to mind with me was Miami, who on the first 10 rounds, they basically had our third, 30th, 31st and 94th players. It looks like they'll be able to sign them all. And then some like interesting guys later. But I think the way you define if like a draft class is going to make a farm system better in like the short term you basically have to look at like the top you know 100 players basically how many did they get and the marlins had three picks in the top 50 and somehow they got you know four of the top 100 um so you can kind of you know move money around and make that stuff happen right other teams will get

like one of the top 100 because they just take players we didn't like quite as much and miami obviously hasn't had a sterling uh track record lately when it comes to player personnel stuff and some of it's been you know bad luck or whatever but it looks like they they did pretty well here with the first year director the systems that are going to move the most like just that the high-end prospects are the ones that move the systems the most so Baltimore I, I know it's obvious, but Baltimore. Adley Rutschman is a top 15 prospect in baseball, and they got a lot of other good players. Kyle Stowers, the center fielder from Stanford. If you guys see him swing, it looks like Cody Bellinger.

It looks like Jock Peterson. It's that type of swing. This guy is probably going to get to power in pro ball. Gunnar Henderson, some teams were considering at the back of round one. The Orioles got him at 42. They just got a bunch of good players, including the best guy. So yeah, I thought Baltimore did really, really well, both on high end talent and on depth. I don't know how predictable the following year's draft is just after this one was completed. Is it even possible?

You stole my question. Sorry. I guess it's the obvious one to kind of wrap up here. But is it even possible to look ahead and say this is the strength or the weakness of next year's class? Or like, here's the most interesting person who might be the top pick? Or is there just so much variance that it's just too soon to say uh in general i think you can look at it uh because if you look like the top of this

draft like uh adley rushman was in our top 10 and by the end of the summer he was number one bobby witt we knew two years before he was drafted andrew vaughn we had really early riley green we had early cj abrams we had like these were all those three high school players are probably three of the top 10 players for you know two years ago for this class Lodolo had a velo bump JJ Abel Day had a crazy season those guys were probably like comp rounders that moved into the top 10 but weren't like names we didn't have Josh Jung was on Team USA was in the first round Shayling Laird's in the first round so that was and then Hunter Bishop was probably a third rounder who had never performed and then went nuts this year so nobody really saw that one coming but like that was the

top 10 like we basically had all those guys identified and in, you know, the first day, except for probably Bishop, but like he probably shouldn't have been on the first day. So I think when it comes to like the top 10 to 15 picks, we're actually pretty good at at least saying, Hey, here's 70 guys that are all in the mix to go in the top 30 next year. And we're probably going to get, you know, 20 or 25 of the 30, but we're definitely not going to get everybody. Next year's group as far as the class as a whole can be evaluated like we just don't know yet that the period of time when we see most of the high school talent is upon us i'll be like doing an event next week

but like the top of the draft that georgia university of georgia has two guys who are like top five talents emerson hancock and cole wilcox, both mid to upper 90s fastball college arms. Spencer Torkelson is next year's Andrew Vaughn, multi-year elite performance, first base type. So those types, as long as the pitching stays healthy, this is the group at the top of next year's draft. And the first high score from this, was it, was the first high score we identified from this group? Was it Abel, Kylie,

Mick Abel? I think, I think he, yeah, I think he was basically two years ago. They were like, oh crap, this might be the best high school pitcher in this class. Right.

So it's an Oregon pitcher, six, six, one 80. Like you can see why when this kid was 15, everyone was already like, oh wow, look.

And he was like 88, 92 as a sophomore. And is now like 93,, wow, look. And he was like 88, 92 as a sophomore and is now like 93, 96 at his best. And he's been healthy and his velocity has just been climbing slowly for like the last several seasons. Like that was the first high score from this group. And he's been tracking well too. From a program perspective. So I know that the answer, the first answer to this is Vanderbilt, but apart from vanderbilt what what college programs do you think people should keep an eye on obviously we're a ways away from like there being college baseball again which is sad but as we look going on i know but like it's it's wrapping up you know we don't have a whole lot more time but next year uh there

are a couple of programs maybe that people should be especially keen on and i know the answer is vanderbilt but what's the second answer second one's probably florida i think they would have been close to vanderbilt if they got matthew allen which now it looks like they won't but i guess there's there's some chance and i actually um meg may know this have an article in the hopper for next week about this sort of topic yeah i knew that yeah you knew that um and then i think the rest of them is just probably like the sort of traditional powers which eric feel free to jump in but i feel like in general when you talk to scouts about like what are the best like jobs uh for coaches in college baseball or what are like

the most talented like pro prospect type teams it's almost always some mix of like lsu vanderbilt florida maybe north carolina louisville you, it had traditionally been Clemson, you know, Arizona State, UCLA kind of jump in there too. But it's like, there's a group of eight or 10 teams. And if you were to rank all of the colleges based on talent, like those eight or 10 would probably make up four or five of like, you know, the top half dozen at any given time. And it seems like Florida, Vanderbilt, LSU are probably like the perennial, like in the top five every year kind of teams. Yeah, I agree with, you know, Meg implies that college baseball is like a wonderful February appetizer when you haven't had baseball in four months. So everyone should check it out. Like next year, you all stream stuff. Use your parents' cable subscriptions and get on,

watch ESPN on your PlayStations. You know how this goes. But yeah, those are the programs to watch. Like ASU is losing two guys. They had a lot of prospect depth this year. They had like six guys who were top 100-type draft talents on the group this year. But two of them are leaving. UCLA, they're like the West Coast powerhouse, UCLA and Stanford.

Stanford typically has had better college players than pro prospects. I don't think that's the case anymore. So they have a pitcher, Brandon Beck, for next year who's like plus curveball, plus command, college righty. So they'll be interesting. Timmy Tawa their their third base shortstop like he's kind of played all over for them it was like a two sports star in high school who's playing baseball for stanford now actually they're gonna have a couple kids like that uh on

the team next year brock jones uh who i believe was a boris advisee this this draft who did not uh even i don't even think he was drafted but he was was unsignable since he was a high school sophomore, going to Stanford since forever. Stanford next year will be pretty interesting, too. here below that. And because they have such a terrible track record with pitchers and have such a regressive approach with hitters, they're actually getting less high profile recruits, which I don't wish bad things on any program. But like, I know multiple agents have asked me, Hey, I just got a kid. He's committed to Virginia. We're going to switch him. Good idea. Right. And I go, yeah, it seems like you've figured out what I would have answered. I'm glad you asked me the question rather than me proactively telling you this, but there's actually one kid this year that will go be going to school that was originally committed to Virginia and then his agent got him to switch and

now he's going to school. So like they lost a presumably pretty good player because they're perceived as being sort of backward in these ways. And this was the first year in a long time when the highest, like the highest ranked pitcher commit to that school was never seen as like a signability question mark. Everybody knew that Jack Kohanowitz, you know, Philadelphia area high school was going to sign. And he was a third rounder. I saw that Gerald Schiffman just wrote recently for Baseball Perspectives about pitcher usage in college and looked at pitch counts and recovery times. And he's previously written about that for the Hardball Times. And obviously pitchers are still an injury risk and pitchers are throwing really hard.

And of course, there's always the chance that they'll blow out an elbow or something else. But has that very egregious type of pitcher handling receded somewhat just via public shaming and gradual enlightenment? Like, are we seeing fewer, you know, 150 pitch outings where the kid's just like, I would have pitched all night. And the coach was like, I want to win and I want to keep my job. And that's all I care about. There's been a little less of like the 150 pitch thing. I think that got drummed out a little bit. And now it's, you know, 120 to 130 is kind of like the limit where there's still some

guys like I know Logan Gilbert last year and Alec Manoa this year, Stetson in West Virginia, both had like, you know, every other start was 120 pitches kind of thing, when you got a week a week long of rest if it's like a physically developed kid that has good command there's a lot of fastballs like you could see someone justifying that not being a problem but you'd rather not see it I think the real issue is when you see the guy go 120 pitches and then on like one day rest come out and throw 50 pitches and that still happens a lot like there was there was one instance this year i may have tweeted about it where um missouri had told scouts that this guy's either going to start on saturday or come in relief on sunday and he just did both and there was a guy with louisville recently that just got drafted named nick bennett

that i remember the details but i believe it was 100 pitches one day off and then came in and threw like 30 pitches um or maybe maybe even more than that i i think i think the coaches pay enough attention that they know that the like local like college newspaper will be like 150 pitches that seems like a lot but they're not gonna hold their feet to the fire when it comes to like oh well you use this guy you know twice in three days and you threw 100 pitches one of those days just because it's like a little a little more esoteric and also like in the postseason they're kind of set up to where if they only have if they have like a short bench of you know know, six pitchers, like they're going to do that. Now what they should do is get more pitchers.

Like Florida is a good example of this where they don't abuse pitchers. And I don't know if it's because Kevin O'Sullivan has like a very hard line. I won't do it. But he also has like a staff of 15 pitchers and 12 will be throwing in pro ball one day. So like he doesn't have to abuse them because he has too many pitchers. He oftentimes will, you know, bring in freshmen in instances where it doesn't need to be a pitching change because he doesn't want them to transfer because he has too many pitchers so obviously like that would be one way to avoid doing it but i think because these guys especially in the acc and sec are getting paid so much money like there's i think a half dozen guys making over a

million dollars now and almost all of them are making well into the like mid six figures like they're going to keep doing this because you can never tie a tj to you overuse this guy that one time and get yelled at and then lose recruits uh it'll happen maybe if you're Virginia and you're sort of like um using guys uh in a non-ideal way and teaching them things that don't help and then you have a 10-year track record of guys making the big leagues like that might affect it but like if the guy at UNC uh brings in some lefty for like you know too too often in one uh you know long super regional series like it's not really going to affect them but it might make him win and get an extension. So the incentives are still aligned in such a way that that's probably going to keep happening. And we're in the time of year when this stuff is happening. The college baseball

playoffs are occurring right now. This is when that type of thing is most likely to occur. I think, yeah, it still happens. I think the most I saw a college arm throw in a single start this year was 120. Ryan Garcia at UCLA. And then we're less than a year removed from Kevin Abel throwing 130 pitches in a College World Series game a couple of days after he had pitched in a previous game. And he blew out this spring. He blew out this spring, yeah. Now is the time, especially now that kids have been drafted, where who knows, all bets are off what could happen at like these super regionals and in Omaha. and development and what teams are targeting will have an effect of excluding more players,

people from certain economic backgrounds, whether it will be even harder to kind of catch teams' attention and whether there will be more gatekeeping because you already have the expenses associated with travel ball and showcases and perfect game and that whole industry. But if teams are looking at spin efficiency or attack angle and those things, then of course, if you've been to a facility or a school that has those sensors and knows how to use them and you get the proper instruction, maybe that makes you more attractive. a great privileged background, but now their talent is able to be recognized because people are able to quantify those things that they can do. So what's the effect there? Like, do you have to be wealthier now to get drafted high up or will we see a democratizing effect or the opposite of that? If you ask the average parent, they would say that they believe yes. But if you ask the average scout, they would say, would say no no if your kid like is in one

event where it was reasonably easy to see whether it's one showcase one tournament one matchup against a good high school if he goes to a poor high school or gets to one like mlb event or whatever that if it's enough for us to put him on a list we'll go back and see him and then we'll find out if he's good and if he somehow we are not on him right before the draft he goes to a decent college because he got on our radar we'll'll then draft him out of there. Like, I think the guys that are top five round talents that just aren't seen enough because they're, you know, not getting the encouragement to play. Like, I think that's kind of like a false dichotomy. I don't think that really exists, but I do think some kids think it will be more difficult or parents think it'll be more expensive. And so they go do

an easier or cheaper sport or, you know, go to the sport that has a full scholarship for college. And, you know, I'm not going to say that's the wrong choice, but I think or you're gonna go to the sport that has a full scholarship for college and you know i'm not gonna say that's the wrong choice but i think if you're good enough to get offered six figures out of high school like you will be found it's not it's not it is very hard to hide a player like there was a player this year uh that we thought was hidden that like 10 or 12 teams knew about and about a month later all three teams knew about um so it does not last that long do you guys think that there's going to be any push? I know that the commissioner has sort of hinted at this to move the timing of the draft. Because right now we're like in regionals.

And also we just saw a kid like get drafted right before he went. He was like in the on deck circle and hit a home run. So do we think that there's going to be any change in the spacing here so that we could maybe make the draft a little bit more of an event, understanding that the limitation is always going to be how far away these guys are from the majors and the fact that they're like high school kids no one has seen? of maybe moving it to Omaha and you'd have a ton of kids there and an actual live audience as opposed to this freezing airless MLB network studio where you're like piping in crowd noise and no one is actually there. You don't think Secaucus is sufficiently fancy for the draft? Well, the funny thing there, Ben, is have you known the NCAA to be logical or open-minded on any fronts?

Because they are the problem. There are not many things that mlb like you know manfred or whoever the spokesman is says we would like to do this it is a thing that we would like to happen and then the other entity involved says uh no effing way will this happen and that's basically the ncaa said is i think i think their stance is we don't want to be associated with these players not playing and making it seem like we're encouraging to go to pro ball and making it more obvious that we're taking advantage of their labor because, you know,

that one just got paid $5 million, but he's still got to play a few more games for us. And I think further on the MLB side, they would like to not have players be drafted and then go get abused in a game right afterwards. When it's very clear that he's definitely leaving, if there was ever a question. And also if you move it back,

then you can have a medical combine. You can have an actual combine. You can have like a, a mini competitive league that MLB runs where it's like, you know, all of the kids we deem top six round quality in the Southeast are all going to play each other three times before the draft happens. And then we'll, you know, have MRIs for all of them. And we'll have all of these different sort of sports science things done.

There's all kinds of things that can happen to both make MLB more money as a draft event, to have some cooperation from college baseball, maybe get some college baseball fans that don't like the draft to be interested, and then also to get teams more time to get better information, to have a higher ROI and make better investments. It seems like a universal good, but when has the NCAA been interested in that? And then as far as the timing of the draft is concerned, I know that yes, I have, I think in addition to what the commissioner said that people have been talking about moving the timing for various reasons for a while now. Then the problem is that you have these short season clubs

that fire up in mid-June that need players. That in connection with what I said earlier about how I think in the next CBA that the shape of the minor leagues might change, this is further evidence. I think these things are connected. The idea that the draft should be later and that there might be less rookie ball or a second fall league for younger players or some other player dev device, like a different, things are timed differently, might be in play. So yeah, I think that you'd have to see other things change were the timing of the draft to shift, but there are rumors that that stuff is changing anyway. And because it's fun to consider surprises and potential and unexpected

outcomes, is there anyone from last year's draft? Who's the person drafted last year who, if you were to redraft all of last year's draftees, would move up the most? Like who's the person who's, I don't know, not necessarily come out of nowhere, but maybe come out of nowhere or just bumped themselves way up because they performed in some way that was not anticipated? Well, Nolan Gorman, the high school third baseman from here in Arizona, fell all, we had him ranked seventh and he fell to 19. and he's just mashed like as a teenager in full season ball he hit a lot of home runs last summer after the draft at advanced rookie ball and like has continued to play well we were kind of confused as to how he fell as far as he did he definitely does not fall that far if you redraft last year's

draft right now and there were a couple other players that I think we were a little higher on than where they went that have all done pretty well. Xavier Edwards went 38th. We had him ranked 17th. He'd probably go somewhere around 17th if they redid the draft right now. Kyler Murray would probably go a lot lower if I had to guess. Logan Gilbert went 14th because his Velo was down and his Velo has come back. So he might scoot up a little bit. Daniel Lynch went 34th.

We had him 23rd. He probably goes somewhere around 20. He redid that one. Jordan Groshans went 12th. We had him 28th. Probably wrong on that one. He might even go higher than 12th now because he's been, he's had a pretty good pro debut. And Tristan Casas went 26th and we had him 33rd.

And he would probably move up a good bit from there also. I know there were a lot of teams in the 20s that wanted him. So I guess that was some indicator that he was seen to be a very good hitter which he has done in pro ball he's in low a now as a 19 year old and is really hitting a lot and i also think jaron duran the red sox the red sox seventh rounder who kylie and i are kind of we're coming back through the org lists and this guy's hitting he's they just pushed him double a he's played two games at double a now he was drafted a calendar year ago at high a before his promotion he was hitting 380 450 540 he's a plus plus runner the like someone sent me a track man reports

the contact is very strong so like this is a this is someone who we're like really suddenly very high on now like this might be a top 100 dude by the end of the year if he's performing in double a who was the seventh rounder last year so like as far as raw number of spots goes this is this is a strong candidate as well i'd also throw out brennan davis and cole roter with the cubs and alec thomas with the d-backs i think of all even if right after the draft or recently have been hitting enough that i think they'd probably go a little bit higher. All right. And last thing before we let you go so that you can file and post content on Fangraphs.com. I wanted to ask, this is a subject for a whole other podcast, The International Draft.

And fortunately, you have recently recorded one such podcast and I will link to it. You guys talked about it. Some would say redefining podcast on the topic. Yeah, the definitive one. Some would say that. At least the people on this podcast right now would say that. So Kylie, I'm sure you'll be turning your attention to July 2nd and the international market soon. So I just want like a, it can be a three word answer from each of you, I guess. A, should there be an international draft?

B, will there be an international draft? B, will there be an international draft? And C, what year will that happen if you think it will happen? So I guess, Eric, you can start. No, there shouldn't be an international draft. Figure something else out, people. Yes, there will be an international draft 2023. I think it'll take time. I think there are kids already in deals two years from now. And at some point, like MLB is going to have to pull the plug and make it happen. Even when some of those are probably some of those will have to be broken. But I think they'll be sensitive to it for a while.

Like we'll know what's coming before before you can make a bad decision i suppose as like as a scout internationally i don't love the idea of a draft for the sort of labor implications but both the draft and international are both hard capped already and i can't imagine them becoming unhard capped so the money is already fixed it's just which mechanism will deliver the player to the team. And I think while it probably should not be a draft in America, I think in Latin America, it does create some incentives that are good in terms of not making deals with 13-year-olds because you have picks. You have to wait for your turn to pick. So I think because of the specific sort of third world markets you're dealing with, a

draft may be a better mechanism to deliver the players if you're already set on having hard capped numbers like that it also may increase the amount of sort of games and competitive situations for those players which actually would make them you know in better investment for the teams and it sounds like as part of an international draft they would be raising the hard slotted pools so there would be more money in the market as well i think there will be an international draft and i believe it's it's whatever the next cba is is my guess which i believe is 2022 would be the year that's affected because it sounds like mlb wanted to try to do it earlier, but they have some, we'll say, tough federations to deal with in Mexico and Asia to actually make it a draft for all of the international players. So there's no sort of players scooting through and making loopholes and getting big deals and all that.

And also, like Eric said, there have been multiple international directors that have said, hey, let me know when you hear when the draft's gonna be because I'm like thinking about locking up a 2022 right now and I don't want to like lock up a deal that I have to walk out of what would that be like a 13 year old or something uh yeah Ben that's what's going on down there yeah you can act like it's not happening but it's happening great it's not good it's not good at all all right well that was many more words than three words, but they were good words. So thank you. So you can all find Eric and Kylie on the Fangraphs audio feed talking about prospects very regularly. You can find them writing about prospects and the draft on Fangraphs.com. You can find them on Twitter at Kylie McD and at Longenhagen. And I guess you guys can go and take your melatonin. Thank you for coming on. I'm going to go hit some caffeine real hard and then shoot a Red Bull commercial. All right. Bye, guys.

All right. That will do it for today and for this week. One last impassioned plea. Please go buy my book. It's called The MVP Machine. How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. The way bestseller lists work is that they count each week's sales separately. Our first week is our best chance to get on bestseller lists. So if you buy the book on Friday or Saturday, it will count toward that total. It will give us a better shot. I think we

do have a shot, but every copy counts. It would mean a lot to me and Travis, and I think you'll like the book. If you're in the market for a Father's Day gift, it makes for a fine one, but it can be any kind of gift for any occasion get it now and save it to bestow upon someone later it's 40 off on amazon as i speak so please do pick up a copy and let us know what you think and if you like it let the world know what you think leave a review on amazon and goodreads that helps us out too well as seemed likely it appears that the dallas keitel saga has also come to a close so i guess the off season is officially over now the news is just breaking as they prepare to post this but he he's going to the Braves. Looks like it will be a one-year deal

for a measly $13 million, albeit for less than a full season. That makes sense. The Braves could use him. Their rotation's been a little south of so-so this season. Sean Newcomb's been moved to the bullpen, which also needed help. Gossman's been bad. Fulton Nevich has been bad. Soroka's been good, but of course he's been hurt from time to time. Freed has tailed off a little. Tehran is eh, okay. So I think Dallas Keuchel makes a lot of sense for them, just as Kimbrel would have. I wouldn't describe Keuchel as a difference maker in most contexts now. If he were a difference maker, he probably wouldn't have had to wait until June to sign. He's not the guy he was in his Cy Young season, and he doesn't really fit the profile of a modern major league starter. Kind of a pitch-to-contact guy, relies on his sinker, which isn't in vogue these days, but with

the same caveats that we applied to Kimbrell and his possible rustiness, Keichel should be dependable, and that's kind of what the Braves need. Even if he's not a difference maker in the average rotation, he could be a difference maker in the Braves rotation, because they need someone like him, and they're locked in a very tight race that just got tighter with the absence of Andrew McCutcheon although of course the Phillies will be upgrading too but this is one of the places that Keiko could have gone and actually potentially swung a race so the destination makes sense and now we can close the books on the two outstanding free agents whose whereabouts were hanging over the season to some extent one follow-up to last week when Meg and I talked about Elton the Pacific Northwest fantasy player who was aiming to be good again by 2027. We talked about

why and how that could be true. Well, it turns out it's not entirely true. We got in touch with Elton, hoping to have him on the show, and he is actually Elton, and he is actually in the Pacific Northwest, and he is a fantasy player, but he is not actually targeting 2027 for his rebuild. Some of his league mates were trolling him because he is in a competitive down cycle right now, and so they were suggesting that it would take him that long to get good again. That was not nice to Elton, so we're sorry for playing right into the troll's hands, but Elton was a very good sport about it and seems like a very nice guy. And this story had a happy ending because Baseball Perspectives and Craig Goldstein and the folks over there

extended a free six-month subscription to their BatSignal service where fantasy players can ask questions of the fantasy writers at the site. So Elton got something out of this experience, which is nice. Elton, we're all pulling for you. And frankly, if your league still exists in 2027, that's pretty much a victory. There's a lot of turnover in fantasy leagues. And one more quick thing I wanted to mention. I've been enjoying watching Trout and Otani even more so than usual lately because they've both been raking. Each of them has hit three homers in the past week. Otani's looking really good again. And I saw a post on MLB.com's Cut Foresight about how Trout and Otani are the new Bash Brothers. I think that's an apt

comparison because you do kind of get the same feeling watching them. I think it's the purest thing in baseball is watching Mike Trout celebrate a Shohei Otani homer. Just bottle that sight and douse me in it. They're both so happy for each other. They seem like pals. They're so good at baseball. This is why I took the Angels first in the fun team draft, even though the rest of the Angels aren't that fun at all. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to keep the podcast going. Jeffrey Schwartz, Bill, Tom Lasko, Isaac Stevenson, and Russell Goldstein.

Thanks to all of you. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. And you can contact us via email at podcast at fan graphs.com or via the patron messaging system. If you're a supporter, thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Enjoy the MVP machine. If you're reading it already and we will talk to you early next week. It's the gift that keeps giving It's the gift that keeps giving Receivers keep receiving It's the gift that keeps giving Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh