mvp 78

What should he be trying to do? Who really knows?

This is what was reported after his first bullpen on Tuesday: “It’s a work in progress, for sure,” Song said of the session watched by Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski and manager Rob Thomson. “It’s far from perfect, and I’m just hoping for an upward trajectory. Just trying to continue to get some improvement everyday.” “I feel like I’m trying to be a baseball player again, I guess,” Song said. “It’s hard when you’re around the competition level these guys are. I’m just trying to keep my head above water right now.” “He looked like he’s got a feel for all his pitches, but he’s still building up,” Thomson said. “So really, there’s no evaluation other than he’s healthy. Not commanding his pitches but just a feel for them, being able to throw strikes and spin the ball. He looks like he can do that.” “I think that it’s definitely just way too early to tell,” Song said. “There’s so much that needs to get done for me right that it’s not something I could really project.” If you see the video that was posted, he's not throwing 99 for sure.

@ChrisCotillo The Jorge Alfaro opt-out mystery has been solved. Per source, Alfaro has an upward mobility clause on 3/25. If a team wants to add him to its MLB roster, Red Sox must either let him go or add him themselves. With his k rate, I think he's just in camp in case someone gets injured. He's not even catching. Most likely just another guy we all forget at some point.

Yeah. He has no impact on the current state of the farm system.

Rubes.

24? Way to shoot for the stars there.

But if he was inserted into a Spring Training game today, he'd get outpitched by Ort and it wouldn't be close.

I'm hoping by the '23 trade deadline.

Being in shape and being in pitching shape aren't necessarily the same thing though. Maybe he can do more pushups and be in better conditioning, but that doesn't mean his velo is where it needs to be or that his pitching form hasn't deteriorated.

It's not even clear how much he was even throwing for the past 3.25 years!

Not really. He's 28 and in AAA. 2022 OPS by month: APR 1064! MAY 803 JUN 571 JUL 439 AUG 800 SEP 531 If he was consistently OPS'ing 800+, maybe he'd be interesting, but those bad stretches are absolutely brutal and dragged down his season OPS to 702. He had 10 HR through May and only 6 afterwards. 524 OPS vs LHP, 234 OBP.

Materiality only matters in real life, not on here!

It's definitely 3 years, but the argument was kind of amusing to me.

There's lots of games to play and the starters aren't ramped up yet. I don't see the issue.

My personal opinion is that they are somewhere 10-15. AAA - Aside from Bello, the pitchers that have made it to BOS haven't been very successful (Crawford, Winckowski). Mata has potential, but is probably just a reliever. Rafaela is most likely the only impact bat. I'm not sold on Duran, Hamilton or Abreu. AA - Lots of hitters to watch (Kavadas, Scott, Lugo, Abreu), but the only guy with a clear carrying MLB tool is Yorke. Unfortunately, he had a terrible season last year and has an injury history. The current projected pitchers for AA are rough. This is the 2020 draft class that was restricted to only 4 rounds for the Sox. Maybe it'd look better if there was a normal draft that year? IDK. A+/A - The strength of the organization with Bleis, Mayer, Hickey, Romero, Bonaci, Paulino, Blaze, Roman, Perales, ERC, Winkelman. Most of these guys are just years away. The only guy who could make a short term impact would be Mayer. I'm not sure anyone else would be in BOS before late 2025. FCL/DSL - These guys are really far away. Who knows? Includes Brannon, Coffey, Freili, Alcantara, Fraymi, Yoeilin. It is a very heavy, bat first organization. Is that a guiding principal for Chaim? We've seen lots of high ranked prospects go down with arm injuries recently. Some high drafted arms can't even get out of AA. There's just a lot of variance. Maybe it's just circumstance because other organizations have gone heavy with arms (Cleveland, Angels)? The Dodgers only drafted one pitcher in the first 10 rounds last year and they are one of the best organizations in baseball year in and year out (only 4 pitchers taken in all 20 rounds).

We've had some real dummies post on here in the past. As the Official TalkSox Historian, I can confidently say it's not even top 10.

Straws are bad. Don't use them. Just drink out of a cup.

We've had dumber.

Probably not. My guess is that the Phillies will have a good idea by Opening Day if he'd even be ready for a mid-April bullpen spot. The extra 15 days would just delay the inevitable.

I think it just shows that you can't just go by one expert. You need to take all of the available resources into account. Even ignoring Law's take on the Sox having a bad starting pitching pipeline would do a disservice to talking about the state of the farm system. Law is the outlier on the overall ranking, but his comments were justified.

I think we've all anticipated that he'd be the next guy DFA'd, but that hasn't been the case. We've seen Seabold, German, Barnes and others DFA'd before him.

That's affirmative. It's just funny because the note from SoxProspects is "questions around hit tool and defense." LOL. The guy can take a walk, but he really struggled after coming to POR, didn't hit in the AFL and hasn't looked great in ST. I'm not really high on either him or Valdez TBH. Both have struggled since leaving the HOU system and have weird profiles.

Most people see him as the last guy on the 40 man roster, so you're not alone on that. I think we all need to remember to ignore ST stats though.

They are just getting pitchers to throw and work on their pitches. The games don't count. It doesn't matter.

Unless he needs to sign someone today, there's no real reason to rush a move. Whether he puts Harper on the IL today or 3/29, IDK if it makes a difference. Like I said yesterday, a lot of the offseason roster rules are convoluted. Does Song also have a 15 day Military List period he can use where he doesn't have to be on the active roster?