BP looks at Giancarlo Stanton vs. Franmil Reyes

BP unveiled its top 101 today:

"Look. Nobody reads the intro. Below are the 101 best prospects in baseball. Enjoy."

1.) Wander Franco, SS, Tampa Bay Rays

2.) Adley Rutschman, C, Baltimore Orioles

3.) Julio Rodríguez, OF, Seattle Mariners

4.) Sixto Sánchez, RHP, Miami Marlins

5.) Ian Anderson, RHP, Atlanta Braves

I like how the player with the most toxic contract in baseball is where the COVID thread lands.

Also, Davis managed to post his lowest SO % in years in 2020. So he has that going for him.

Tyler Kepner asked him a few years ago if Sutton minded that he never won the World Series (he played in four). His answer:

“Mine is an uncommon attitude, and you can trace it back to the fact that it wasn’t an emotional experience for me, it was a job,” said Sutton, who was born in Clio, Ala., and moved as a child to the Florida panhandle. “I grew up in an atmosphere in the rural South where if we didn’t work, if we weren’t all there, if we didn’t put all our efforts into it and if we didn’t take pride in it, we didn’t eat. It was easy to take that approach to life into baseball.

“It made baseball easy, because I saw my dad working 10, 12 hours a day during all kinds of conditions just to get by. So I could certainly put that same effort into an easy job, which major league baseball was. It was an easy job, made easier because my dad taught me how to work. It wasn’t like for the first time in my life I had to do some work. I just transferred that to baseball.

“So it wasn’t like I thought if we won the world’s championship I was going to become an expert on cars and space travel and this kind of stuff. All I was going to do was be an athlete whose team had a little bit higher record.”

... He was 20 years old in spring training 1966, when Koufax and Don Drysdale staged a holdout, an early tremor in the era just before free agency. Years later, Sutton would famously say, “I’m the most loyal player money can buy,” an honest, realistic motto for players ever since.

“The names and the faces and the uniforms could have been different,” Sutton told me. “But I would have taken the same approach if I had been playing in Leningrad or outer Somalia. I didn’t care. I was a major league pitcher; I was not a Dodger, I was a man playing for the Dodgers. It would be like if you went to somebody and said: ‘Are you a U.S. Steel? Are you a General Motors?’ No, I’m not, I’m a person. And that was my approach to it. It wasn’t always the most popular one, but it worked for me.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/sports/baseball/don-sutton.html

If he makes the team, he gets $1 million. If he gets into enough games and finishes enough games, he gets another 350 K.

Signed a one-year deal with the Twins for $8 million. $9 million less than the option the Yankees declined.

Inked a minor-league deal with KC yesterday.

Two years, $32 million to stay with the 'Stros.

The problem for us 99.9 percenters is we can't get our heads around the fact that the Mets could spend like drunken sailors if they wanted to. Even if they had to pay Cano this year.

The first of Joel Sherman's three reasons why the Mets folded their hand when they could have called or raised:

1. If Springer were signed would that preclude them from also retaining Michael Conforto? This falls into the realm of how much even Cohen is willing to spend. Conforto will be a free agent after the 2021 season, just like Lindor. In an ideal outcome, the Mets would retain both.

But if they do, they also have Robinson Cano’s $20 million annually returning to the bottom line for 2022-23. Additionally, they either have to retain or replace, likely, two starters because Steven Matz, Marcus Stroman and Noah Syndergaard all are entering their walk years. Cohen has said the Mets will spend like a big-market team, but “not like drunken sailors.” The Mets were wondering, if they have all of that on the payroll, would it be wise to have two outfielders making as much long term as it would have necessitated for Conforto and Springer?

https://nypost.com/2021/01/20/why-mets-didnt-sign-george-springer/ 

Can see nominating and taking at 1, but keeping my mouth shut if someone else nominates him, given that he's never played for a team in a hitter's park.

Don Sutton (1945-2021)

WAR: 66.7 Better than 55.7% of HOFers Black Ink: 8 Better than 23.4% of HOFers Gray Ink: 243 Better than 81.7% of HOFers HOF Monitor: 149.0 Better than 51.9% of HOFers JAWS: 50.31 Better than 26.2% of HOFers at P

It was announced yesterday that Hall of Famer and Los Angeles Dodgers legend Don Sutton had passed away at the age of 75. Sutton spent his first 15 MLB seasons with the Dodgers, as well as his final season in 1988. He was a successful pitcher for a long time, finishing with 324 wins in his career, 14th all-time, as well as 3574 strikeouts, 7th all-time. 1972 to 1977 was a notable stretch where he finished in the top 5 of Cy Young voting 5 times, and earned his 4 All-Star Game selections. Sutton was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 1998. In his post-playing career, he was a broadcaster for the Atlanta Braves.

See player page on Baseball-Reference.com

Today's dWAR is much more sophisticated (I think) than Total Zone FRAA. And even in dWAR, Andruw Jones is said to to have been a better center fielder -- both at his best and in his career -- than Willie Mays.

I don't believe it.

HOF Candidate Spotlight

WAR: 62.7 Better than 47.7% of HOFers Black Ink: 10 Better than 28.1% of HOFers Gray Ink: 47 Better than 5.5% of HOFers HOF Monitor: 109.0 Better than 29.4% of HOFers JAWS: 54.58 Better than 63.2% of HOFers at CF

Andruw Jones enters his 4th year on the ballot, hoping to make another jump after reaching a new high of 19.4% last year. Jones was in the spotlight from early on in his career, beginning 1996 as the top prospect in the minor leagues and then rising from High-A ball all the way to the '96 Braves' World Series lineup, where he became the youngest player to hit a home run in the Fall Classic.

He went on to become a dominant defensive presence for the late '90s/early 2000s Braves, rattling off a streak of 10 Gold Glove-winning seasons. By Total Zone Total Fielding Runs Above Avg, one of the main fielding sabermetrics and available back to 1953, Andruw Jones was more valuable over the course of his career than any other centerfielder in MLB history (2nd place in that statistic at center field is Willie Mays). Jones' defensive contributions in addition to his offensive moments, including leading the NL in home runs and RBI in 2005, led to him being 3rd in Wins Above Replacement from 1998 to 2006, only trailing Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds in that time span. Jones would go on to a steady decline by the time he entered his 30s, including posting a -1.6 WAR in his 2008 season with the Dodgers, good for 4th-worst in the NL that year. The shortened career led to failing to reach notable Hall of Fame milestones such as the 2,000-hit threshold.

See player page on Baseball-Reference.com

See Glossary of terms.

Will try to make the Diamondbacks this spring. No red ink in the five-year scan of any middle reliever is impressive.

Two years ending at 37, not 39, and more long balls add up to $6M I guess. Makes sense to me.

Will be coming to camp with the Diamondbacks as an NRI.

Signed a one-year deal with the Blue Jays for $5.5 million.

After surgery to remove bone chips in his elbow, "The range of possibilities are wide, from total comeback to total recurrence," Peter writes in the Rotoman Special.

"but even if he emerges healthy and effective he isn't guaranteed a closer role, which has to temper his price. That might make him a good target, at least until the uncertainty about his status is removed. If proved healthy and named as closer his price jumps to..."

Uh-uh. I'm not going to say.

If you're a subscriber you already know.

Signed a one-year deal with the Blue Jays for $8 million.

It's never a good thing when the EV is higher than the FBv but it was a small sample size.

In the American Dreams we have a high innings minimum. I'll be bidding for him.

Despite being one the team's "top offensive performers" at the alternate training site, Gorman slipped a few rungs (from No. 50) in this year's Top 100 Prospects from Baseball America.

His season at the alternate training site in Pawtucket and further work in the instructional league has moved him up from No. 65 in last year's Top 100. His preternatural hitting ability has some in the organization believing "he is sufficiently advanced to fast track to the majors by the end of the season," according to the scouting report.

BA, rolling out its Tope 100 Prospects in MLB...