Today at 4 pm is the signing deadline for draftees. The big story concerns #1 overall pick Brady Aiken, and can be read about here and here. Summary: Aiken has a smaller than normal UCL. The Astros are offering him the minimum amount required by the CBA to an injured draftee (40% of their original deal). Because the team hasn’t completed a deal …
Consensus Midseason Top 50 Prospects
Top 87, technically. It’s midseason prospect list time. With the release of Keith Law’s top 50 today, a majority of the mavens have now released their midseason updates. I took a look at as many of them as I could,* and combined them to produce a consensus list. *I omitted Bleacher Report, but if someone would like to go through …
Baez’s Futures Game BP and the Homerun Derby
The Homerun Derby starts tonight at 7 pm on ESPN. There are changes in the format this year, but I can’t explain them to you, since I have never payed close enough attention to know the way it used to be. That said, I am going to watch this year, mainly to see whether Giancarlo Stanton does anything amazing. Yoenis …
A Closer Look At Kyle Hendricks’s Debut
Kyle Hendricks was the “other” prospect in the Ryan Dempster trade behind Christian Villanueva. Ostensibly part of Theo’s “get an arm in every trade” mantra, scouts didn’t think that highly of him, but he showed good control in the minor leagues. Hendricks made his major league debut last Thursday for the Cubs. After a rough first-inning, he settled down and …
Aroldis Chapman vs. Mike Olt
Aroldis Chapman is not a popular figure among Cub fans at the moment. He buzzed Nate Schierholtz twice on Thursday, and nearly drove our hero to fisticuffs after staring down the Cubs dugout in the ninth. I’m pretty relieved that no punches were thrown, because the Reds strike me as the wrong team to mess with, to paraphrase Ryan Braun*. Chapman …
Fantasy Waiver Wire: Week 14
Trade season kicked off this week, so pour one out for all those unfortunate single-leaguers who lost Jeff Samardzija or Addison Russell. Jason Hammel owners get no sympathy from me, since they have been playing with house money. For mixed leaguers, the change in venues from this week’s trades didn’t really affect fantasy values much. Samardzija and Hammel move to …
Reflections on the Samardzija Trade
Last night, the Cubs traded Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel for Addison Russell, Billy McKinney, Dan Straily and a PTBNL. In following reactions around the Cub twitter-sphere, I was pretty surprised at how split the reactions were: fans who have bought in to what Thoyer is doing think this is on par with the Wedding at Cana, those who haven’t …
Fantasy Waiver Wire: Week 13
Mookie Betts The Red Sox pulled the trigger on Betts yesterday after struggling to find production in the outfield all year long. He will likely be better for them than your fantasy team, but he should help in batting average and steals. In approximately 2 full seasons worth of minor league plate appearances, he has stolen 88 bases, but only …
Yasmani Tomas Cuban Stats
Slugging outfielder Yasmani Tomas Bacallao has defected from Cuba. Tomas traveled to Haiti early last week and has since made his way to the Dominican Republic. The story was first reported two days ago by Ben Badler at Baseball America, and has been confirmed by Cuban officials. Tomas is 23, right-handed, and has played in parts of five seasons with Industriales …
Fantasy Waiver Wire: Week 12
The waiver wire is getting fairly thin. The Super-2 callups have mostly passed. Kris Bryant and Joey Gallo aren’t seeing any time in the majors this year. FWW favorites Corey Dickerson and Alex Wood are owned in most leagues. As a result, I’m skipping the position players this week, and some of the SP’s might be deeper than is typical. …