General Discussion – Week of 2-3-2014

Weekly Discussion

A minor league second baseman just quarterbacked his team to a Super Bowl. The Eagles should seriously consider picking up Cesar Hernandez or Andrew Pullin.

Discuss.

26 thoughts on “General Discussion – Week of 2-3-2014”

  1. Bob posted a listing of the top 30 Baseball America prospects (for some reason it is under a May 2013 grouping). In any event, they had Sandberg at #25. Keith Law had him at #6, Fan Graphs at 13, and Chris Crawford had him at #5.

    Others may know the philosophy of BA more-so than I, but I found the disparity to be quite interesting. Additionally, BA had Encarnacion at #13, which is higher than any others I recall seeing. They also had Dugan at 17, compared to Law’s #4 ranking.

    This aligns with what many have been posting. After the top 3, it is a big crap-shoot. There are prospects out there that are intriguing to many, but much growth is needed for each of these 4-30 range prospects. Watching how things pan out over the summer will certainly be entertaining.

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    1. ya I was mentioning this earlier… the variance is pretty new to me since I started following the rankings about 8 years ago. The prospect age is upon us, so everyone has their own sources and opinions. For me id lean toward Keith Law.

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  2. this place is so friggen hard to navigate now and the spam bots ugh…

    Baseball America Top 30 is

    1) Franco
    2) Biddle
    3) Crawford
    4) MAG
    5) Tocci
    6) Martin
    7) Hernandez
    8) Altherr
    9) Sev Gonzalez
    10) Quinn
    11) Morgan
    12) Perkins
    13) Encarnacion
    14) Grullon
    15) Z Green
    16) Rupp
    17) Dugan
    18) Watson
    19) Pujols
    20) Giles
    21) Joseph
    22) Cozens
    23) Yoel Mecias
    24) Knapp
    25) Sandberg
    26) Jan Hernandez
    27) Collier
    28) Canelo
    29) Wright
    30) Dan Child

    expect Franco to be ranked around 16 to 23 in the top 100

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    1. A lot of discrepancies. Some have Sweaney, although I wouldn’t put him as high as they do. Huge difference on Knapp. Perkins seems very high. Dan Child above Drew Anderson seems strange. They must really think Morgan can get healthy again. Surprised Wright makes the list.

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    2. Yeah, I agree on the navigation issue. While I appreciate the effort that went into the redesign, I think the fact that the most recent posts don’t appear in the middle column, but only in the skyboxes, kind of obscures the newest material for the average reader. Most web publication use the skyboxes as a place to put their best/most popular posts–maybe that would be a more intuitive way to do it design-wise.

      On the positive side, I really like the way the categories are organized up top now, especially the more updated prospect profiles.

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      1. Glove, glove, glove. Also reportedly has some bat speed and contact abilities. Longenhagen at Crashburn Alley did a piece on WIL guys from last year and included a rave review on Canelo.

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    4. On the redesign – the site now complains about the browser, if it’s not the latest thing. I can understand this if I’m using Firefox 3 on an old G5 Mac – but running IE9 on a Dell that was new in November? (Please don’t say “upgrade” – that’s the box at work, and IT isn’t ready to upgrade again.) Coding to the latest bleeding-edge browser is generally not a good idea; it just annoys your users.

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  3. Cody Asche from philly.com: Marcus Hayes…..Usually a batting-cage rat who spent more time at the ballpark than the security guards, Asche could not pry himself out of bed before the last possible minute.
    “The main thing I learned last season is, when the going is tough you stick to your roots,” Asche said. “No matter how hard it is to get up at the same time and get to the field at the same time, you’ve got to do it, and you’ve got to love it.” To that end, Asche picked up a trainer and followed the prescribed Phillies program at Sports Enhancement Group in St. Louis. He became somewhat fanatical about his diet. He now is fitter and stronger and more flexible, but he won’t let himself push past 208 pounds. Not 215, or 210, or even 209; but 208.
    “Between 200 and 208 pounds,” Asche said. “That’s when I can still be agile, and quick, and run, and beat out some ground balls.”
    Already, Asche’s solution to failure is to ignore fatigue; to work harder; to improve at all costs. His objective is not necessarily to hit home runs, or to hit a big payday, but, rather, to make sure he can beat out a ground ball in late September.

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  4. youve guys have seriously got to look into a better wordpress theme than this. Theres responsive themes available, and even better ones if you want to spring 40 bucks. Contact me on twitter if you need me to tweak things, but my time is sort of limited so I cannot redesign the entire thing. A lot of whats going wrong right now is youre using incorrect image sizes and the hierarchy is incredibly confusing.

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  7. Apparently Ruben in passing on AJ Burnett, is more interested in signing Ryan Madson who is throwing for them this afternoon. If Madson still has it, then bring him on.

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    1. Burnett is probably too much money and if I were him I wouldn’t want to pitch for the Phillies anyway when a team like the Orioles was interested

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      1. Even though Orioles dropped out too apparently. Which leaves like the DBacks or Pirates which are still better teams for Burnett to pitch for. Should be interesting to see his final price

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    2. While I’m not the guy paying for it, I think that’s a BIG mistake. The team has a lot of annoying holes, but one massive holes, and that’s a viable #2/3 starter. Ruben is beginning to remind me of Andy Reid. Every year of Andy’s rein, the Eagles would start the season with some glaringly huge problem (like the year they decided to start the season without a kick and punt returner – brilliant!) and, initially, you’d think – he must know something I don’t know. After a while, you realized, he was just very good at putting his head in the sand and Ruben is starting to get like that too. I hope I’m wrong, but I think not signing Burnett could easily end up being the difference between a possible wild card run and no run at all – and let me tell you, with a park that’s not full every night and with the public losing interest in the team, that translates into a lot of dollars – putting aside the added interest for us loyalists.

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  8. Matt Gelb, philly.com: Sandberg on Ruf.
    Ryne Sandberg has promised to use his bench players in an effort to keep everyone sharp while securing important rest for his aged regulars. When asked whether he could find 300 plate appearances for Ruf, the manager said: “That’s possible.” He added: “I like him at first base depending on how things go. If we need a righthanded bat against lefthanded pitching, we have the lineup for that. That could be Ruf in left field. He could be at first base.”

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  9. Bill Baer writes:
    ‘By weighted on-base average (wOBA), Darin Ruf (.354) out-hit every Phillie except Chase Utley (.356). PECOTA, the projection system found at Baseball Prospectus, projects Ruf to be more valuable than All-Star Domonic Brown in 2014. And yet, most are expecting Ruf to start the season with Triple-A Lehigh Valley’.

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    1. Can you imagine how valuable a hitter Ruf could be if he lowered his K rate just 8/9%, from 31% (330-103) to say low 20s.

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  10. I like to see if Dugan can play CF. I am hoping the Phillies give him a shot. I am sure he is willing to try it.

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    1. Dugan is a below average runner (40 on scouting scale), the only reason he is an average to slightly above defender in a corner is because he gets great reads. He would be a huge defensive liability in centerfield

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  11. Someone to watch if JRoll stumbles. Freddy Galvis is coming off a strong winter-ball showing in his native Venezuela after hitting .306 with 11 doubles, two home runs, and 23 RBIs in 50 games.

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