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So for me I’m thinking Marcus Wilson as a young Brian Goodwin with Duran as a young Tommy Pham. Pham has certainly had the better career and is the better player, but Goodwin has spent his career largely as an underappreciated and unheralded player whose always done his job pretty well. Good or bad comps?

Hamilton has been worth 10.8 fWAR in 8 seasons. Sure his BSR was good when he actually got on base. Grady Sizemore, especially early Grady, feels a bit lofty of a goal to me. Think Duran can post 6 to 7 fWAR annually? I was thinking more like maybe a Tommy Pham, but without the stab wound…

I don’t get to see the tools, only the results. But I probably wouldn’t know what to look for anyway. I get that Duran puts the bat on the ball better, but we’ve also seen lots of players with “game impacting speed” who really had very little impact, with Billy Hamilton at or near the top of the list. So to put it into terms I can relate to, who would be a good MLB comp for Duran? With Wilson, Brian Goodwin seems to leap to mind. At least to me. Any thoughts?

Just making a point about early evaluations of players. Despite my repeated condemnation of Wilson, I’m starting to wonder if he isn’t at least as good as Duran. He’s been as good or better for a few years now. Both Wilson (BABIP) and Duran (Polar Park) have reasons to question their current seasons. So I’m just wondering why Duran is “the answer” while Wilson is considered a stopgap at best. The one thing in Duran’s corner is the professional evaluators like the folks at Baseball America (who, needless to say, are superior to me at this kind of stuff) clearly love Duran and largely ignore Wilson. But that still makes me wonder why…

Oh it wasn’t for long. But they drafted Grichuk first. It’s just the most famous of many examples of inferior players being drafted ahead of superior ones…

One reason is Wilson is already on the 40 man roster. Duran went to college while Wilson signed out of high school, but taking this a bit further, At age 22 in 2019, both players were in AA. Duran posted a .634 OPS. Wilson had a .749. After that season, both players were on Peoria in the AFL. Duran posted a .737 OPS. Wilson posted an .878. This season, Duran has a .972 OPS. Wilson has a .956. Wilson is about 3 weeks older. But for some reason, the feeling is Duran is some future All Star with nothing to prove in AAA, while Wilson is a future 4th outfielder whose primary purpose will be shagging flies during practice. I'm also struggling to buy into Duran. In all levels of A Ball, he never posted a BABIP under .400. Wilson was never that high in A ball. This year, in AAA, Duran's BABIP is actually very low and Wilson's is .400. Duran's home road splits are atrocious. Wilson's are actually remarkably equal. Duran strikes out less but also walks a lot less. Wilson plays better defense, but has the advantage of always being an outfielder while Duran only moved a couple seasons ago. There are a few pros and cons that make me think these players are closer to equal than we get when going by amount of press coverage each gets. I'm hesitant to call either of the ma future All Star right now But then I almost never label a minor leaguer that way...

EXCUSE ME, SIR! But are you possibly suggesting that Manfred might be a bit of a baboon-brained buffoon? If so, good day to you! Also, yeah he is…

Maybe Wilson is a bit underappreciated (guilty of it myself) and Duran is a little overhyped. Sometimes these early evaluations are a bit off. At one point, the Angels thought more of Randal Grichuk than they did of Mike Trout…

I have several I like, but the king is a place called Taco Burrito King. I think maybe they just got lucky naming it that way….

No, but now I want tacos…

Right now they’re just a pricier version of the Cincinnati Reds…

Rocker…

Actually Wilson might be the better option than Duran right now…

So the Sox took two out of 4 from Toronto, despite giving up, what, 25 home runs? It does make me wonder why Montoya keeps putting Rafael Dolis in against the Sox. It just doesn’t seem to work…

Fenway does have a pretty bad effect on BABIP, as balls hit 20 feet up the monster are considered balls in play, and obviously not going to result in a fly out. But the Sox E-F does bear out that the team defense is overall not helping anyone…

No, but they can make bigger offers to players who fall due to signability issues. Such as KC taking Hunter Dozier well above all projections and later taking Sean Manaea…

But as the word is out about Mayer’s willingness to sign for underslot, he does make a ton of sense as the first pick…

Sticking to my guns with 1. Leiter 2. Lawler 3. Davis 4. Rocker

So what’s the over/under date for Boone’s firing?

Chapman, Judge, Taillon and Green all have 1.5 years left until free agency and can therefore be dealt for a larger haul than a 2 month rental…

While true, failure to repeat the blunder followed by an immediate loss shall result in endless needling and goading. But no vexing…

I think we can easily agree Chris Lubanski and Josh Vitters were busts. What about Christian Colon?

There also may be something to the pitching “collapsing” coinciding with playing two of the best offenses in the league…

And yet no other team had such as issue, meaning what? The Sox are the only team to stop cheating?

And one could add Bryce Harper to that list. While he did technically go to junior college, he did so by dropping out of high school after his sophomore year, getting his GED and then attending a JuCo, all for the sole purpose of getting drafted a year earlier, and therefore would probably be the youngest player on this list at the time of the draft. Of course, I still wonder how many busts? Because the number of busts vs success stories determines your historical odds of success (which, on draft day, are meaningless)...