There are days when a trade comes across my desk and I immediately start writing. There are days when I spend an hour digging through statistics, contracts, scouting reports, and organizational trends trying to understand what just happened. And then there are days like today. The St. Louis Cardinals traded Luis Sojo to the Florida Marlins for Gary Disarcina. Seriously. What am I supposed to do with this? This...
The Cincinnati Reds are in unfamiliar territory. Not because they're drafting in the first round. They're always around. Not because they're bad. They're very much not. What's unusual is seeing Cincinnati picking this high after the type of season they just had. This is a franchise accustomed to competing. And honestly, they did plenty of that last season. Division winners. Top three in most offensive categories. Top three in most starting...
Oh look. The Seattle Pilots are back on the clock. Again. At this point, half the first round feels less like a draft and more like an extended Seattle team-building exercise. Somewhere around Pick #12 I started wondering if the Pilots were simply going to draft every player I like and leave the rest of the league to sort out the leftovers. To their credit, they've been remarkably committed to a philosophy. No half measures. No playing it safe....
MOCK DRAFT — PICK #15 Seattle Pilots The Seattle Pilots are back. Again. At this point, Seattle has accumulated so many premium assets that every few picks I expect them to wander back into the draft room carrying another first-round selection they found behind a couch somewhere. So far, the strategy has been remarkably consistent. Acquire talent. Ignore timelines. Embrace risk. Ask questions later. The Pilots entered the offseason with...
The league-operated Colorado Rockies are back on the clock, and after selecting Mike Lowell at Pick #7, they've got a chance to continue something they haven't really had in a while: A coherent long-term plan. That's admittedly a low bar, but we're working with what we've got. With no permanent owner yet in place, the Rockies continue to lean into the safest philosophy available: accumulate talent, don't overcomplicate things, and leave the...
Sometimes draft picks require pages of analysis. Sometimes there are multiple viable candidates. Sometimes front offices spend weeks agonizing over competing philosophies, positional value, organizational fit, and long-term projections. And sometimes the player who has been sitting at the very top of your board for weeks unexpectedly falls right into your lap. As soon as Seattle announces Paul Lo Duca at Pick #12, somewhere in St. Louis, owner...
Just when you thought the Seattle Pilots might settle down and make a sensible selection, they remind everyone that "sensible" appears nowhere in their organizational mission statement. This is already the franchise responsible for one of the biggest moves of the offseason, shipping away the first overall pick and walking away with Vladimir Guerrero. At the time, I described Seattle's strategy as a simple one: Best player available. Every pick....
The Cleveland Spiders are once again proving that consistency is overrated. They finished 80-82, which sounds disappointing until you realize the season unfolded exactly how everyone expected it to. The offense mashed. Runs were scored in bunches. Home runs flew out of ballparks. And every fifth day the pitching staff gathered together to see what new and creative ways they could stress the bullpen. In other words: a very Cleveland season. This...
Now we officially arrive at the part of the draft where things stop feeling inevitable and start feeling… negotiable. The San Diego Padres have been one of the more aggressive teams in recent memory, making splashy additions like Vinny Castilla and Mike Lieberthal to complement an already interesting core featuring Ismael Valdez and Manny Ramirez. It’s a roster that looks like it was built by someone alternating between long-term planning...