If you go to page 288 of your Realistic Look at 2023 Part 1 thread, you'll see the initial reactions to the results of the Rule 5 Draft. Starting with notin saying "Poor job by Bloom" and going from there.
When we got Whitlock, he had pitched 2 innings above AA ball in his career, and hadn't pitched at all in nearly 2 seasons.
How'd that work out for us? Anybody remember?
Which means zero, frankly, moon. Most of us know jackshit about all the vagaries of roster rules. I didn't even know he needed to be protected.
It's Bloom's job to know all this stuff. And if it came as a big surprise to him that Song could pitch this year, that just means he got caught napping.
And if we did hold onto Song, and then found out he could pitch this year, I don't think the reaction would have been "Ah, who cares, the guy missed three years, he's toast." I think there would have been some excitement about it.
When the Sox took Whitlock, I'm pretty sure there weren't too many who thought he was going to pitch 73.1 innings with a 1.96 ERA and 2.9 bWAR...
When it comes to projecting young players, much of the time nobody knows s***.
He got rusty, that's for sure.
But we see guys come back from TJ surgery who haven't faced hitters for almost 2 whole seasons and do well. There are plenty of examples of guys doing well after long layoffs.
Song's case is different because he's never faced MLB hitters to begin with, I realize that. He's an unknown quantity.
But I would have preferred that we be the ones to find out what he's got.
You're right, I don't understand a lot of this Rule 5 stuff at all.
All I really know is that the Sox made it paid off handsomely with Whitlock, and I'm afeared the Nats and Phillies will do the same with Ward and Song. Yep, that about sums up my knowledge right there.
Sure seems like the Red Sox are doing what they can to make the Rule 5 draft a more interesting thing, with Whitlock, Ward and Song...
Get back to me on Monday on that.
From the moment Song was selected it was known that he might not be available for several years. I don't remember that being deemed as disastrous to him.
I mean, it's brutally obvious that the Sox are not all in on 2023. That just magnifies the strangeness of placing so much importance on retaining Ort, Brasier, Hamilton...
On the other hand, he's 25 years old, presumably healthy as a horse, and was once thought to have first round potential if it wasn't for his military commitments.
Now it's the Phillies who are going to find out what he's got instead of us. As Dombrowski said, they had virtually nothing to lose.
All so we could keep Kaleb Freakin' Ort.
Song is an unproven prospect. He's a suspect in Old Red vernacular.
But the argument about his hiatus being ruinous doesn't make a lot of sense when you really examine it.
Nor does the argument that he's going to hurt the Phillies' chances this year.
Unfortunately we're now in the position of hoping the kid fails.