Always A Commander Never A Captain

There's a lot to like about Luke. His late dominator score is odd as he changed positions from QB. But once he was a WR at Rice he immediately crossed the dominator threshold. I liked at the Senior Bowl 1on1's that he had some natural looking hand fighting for separation going on. Did not look awkward. I don't think he's as ready as Tank Dell was with having successful juke moves in his route breaks. But you can see enough to think he could develop it.

We're in the middle of tank time mode.

I feel like a lot of good TE's are either quirky characters or more straight laced do the job. It's an odd duck position. So Tony G was kind of both. But Gates (I think) and Witten were straight laced. Kelce, Kittle, and Gronk were a bit more odd ducks. Old school but Jeremy Shockey was an odd duck. At a certain point shifting from the hyper physical blocking in the mix to juking LB's and trying to out run safeties requires an unusual mindset.

Doctson vs Dotson. Both 1st rounders. One was a bust and out of the league, the other we hope is not.

He has a 1.000+ OPS, at this point we can't say he's being rushed. This isn't a Jackson Holliday thing where he gets moved up after his first 10 or so days of the season. Wood has played 38 games in AAA this season. As the last line of that blurb says, do we really expect to get any trade value from Gallo, Rosario, or Robles? They're all DFA candidates instead of trade bait.

He's certainly not RG3 trying to promote a (harmless) side hustle immediately of selling novelty socks.

I'll post the past 3 years where they think he had a large enough sample size: Uggghhh. At least today Riley Adams is catching (with Ruiz as DH)

I really hope Rizzo and Davey acknowledge the sunk cost and move on. In 2023, 96% of MLB catchers were faster in pop time than he was. That's awful, they made changes and... In 2024, now 99% of MLB catchers are faster in pop time. This is who he is. He's slow at everything he does. For reference, pop time is: "How quickly, in seconds, a catcher can get the ball out of his glove and to the base on a stolen base or pickoff attempt." He's not an MLB level athlete. 99% of hitters have a faster bat speed than him. If he was on the qualified hitter list, he'd have the 4th slowest bat speed in all of baseball. 99% of catchers have a faster pop time. 97% of baserunners have a faster sprint speed than him. Here's his 2024 statcast page. He swings so slowly that he's better at making contact with the ball. But that contact is terrible contact. So he doesn't strike out. Yay.

What makes you think ownership change would come with prying TV rights away from MASN? I would love to hear otherwise, but as far as I know MASN has full control.

MLB has new bat tracking data: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/bat-tracking?attackZone=&batSide=&contactType=&count=&dateStart=&dateEnd=&gameType=&groupBy=&isHardHit=&minSwings=100&minGroupSwings=1&pitchHand=&pitchType=&seasonStart=&seasonEnd=&team=120&type=batter Why am I not surprised that Ruiz has the lowest bat speed and Blast numbers? This really does make CJ Abrams look like an extension priority though.

For fielders, especially now that we're so aggressive on the basepaths, definitely excited. I'm hoping this shifts some of what we focus on scouting wise for the draft. I've said this before, but I think it'll be the new moneyball. For pitchers though? It's a bit more murky. We have a potential guy in A+, and a pair of intriguing 19 year olds that are about as raw as can be in A. What do we do with Trevor Williams? This seems like a classic Sell High moment in a month or two.

I saw that Hassell has been hot lately! As has House, but in a different way. House seems to be more consistently getting his raw power onto the ball. Is this just Hassell speculation, or are they actually talking about moving him up?

It didn't help that the beat writers gassed up Cole Turner too us too.

Anyone have any idea how to read this or the methodology for how they rank it? It's pretty different from what they would post for the Top 100, which makes it really interesting. https://www.fangraphs.com/roster-resource/minor-league-power-rankings/nationals For reference, here's the end of 2023's minor league rankings: Just trying to figure out however the stats are combined into this ranking system could be indicative of future success. Cause Jacob Young being 2nd in 2023 has certainly panned out. Does this portend well to Lara (who fell off most org Top 30 rankings in 2023) and Glasser?

You wouldn't think a Shutout would be led by an ugly outing from the Starter, but it happened. A WHIP of 1.8 and somehow it never happened. Helps that the Bullpen is turning into something nice.

For the Beebe lovers here, can be play Center? Cowboys fans are saying he'll compete for starting Center job.

The overhauled kickoff probably means you want more LB's and TE's than Safeties and Corners for those plays.

Slater needs to bounce back. His rookie season was his best season, and his lack of length/width becomes apparent at times when his pass protection issues crop up. I wouldn't count Slater as a success story yet.

Loving the base stealing extravaganza we have. Jacob Young is 3rd in WAR for us this season. If this is the best version of himself, then he's a pretty good starting CF in MLB.

That is an issue that I also hate. They estimate likely scores based on other measurements and use that to make the full RAS. Which isn't something that should be done. Just to clarify though, you do know Sinnott did every test except bench press right? Sinnott's SS and 3cone were a smidge better than LaPorta. He's also a tiny bit bigger, but probably not enough to matter for much.

I disagree with this. While Cosmi's athleticism was never in question his size was. His length and wingspan were always too small for an OT. It was always a knock on him as a prospect with a Guard conversion likely. If he actually had an OT body his athleticism would have gone in Round 1 instead of late Round 2. For reference, I believe Jordan Morgan's wingspan is closer to average, while Cosmi's is something like 15th percentile.

Oh, apparently our 10th rounder from last years draft, Phillip Glasser, was just promoted to A+. We've got 2 recently drafted guys highlighted in an article on the Athletic:

Speak for yourself, I simply overvalued both of them. My QB rankings were (and this might wind up egregiously stupid) Maye > Daniels > Williams for the Top 3.

I wasn't as enamored about Suamataia as most here, but for reference here's the RAS compare.