I think where I've got him ranked implies that I think he'll make more than enough contact, although I talk about it quite a bit in the player capsule. So without spoiling too much, I'll say I think he'll more a lot more than a Reynolds type - he's still really young, and he's a much more athletic kid than a lot of folks realize because he's so freaking big.

Well I would think jail was a sufficient deterrent, and I'm somewhat loath to start tagging the entire team for what may have been the acts of a single, rogue employee. (Of course, it's possible he wasn't acting alone, in which case, drop the hammer, Rob.)

Not a dumb question. You don't have to play a certain amount of time, and you can use it to attend any school, even one different from the one you left to play pro ball. It's why signing out of HS is the right move the vast majority of the time, no matter what some coach says on twitter about the "experience." In my life, I've discovered that you can buy a lot of great experiences with money.

I have not seen Alec Hansen yet so I can't really answer. I think the decision set should include Groome, Perez, presumably Hansen, and ... man, that ended quick. I've seen Puk a lot and don't think he's 1-1 on merit, although the Phils could also choose to do a deep discount there and overspend later on.

I'm not dead, so that's good. Fever is gone and while I don't still need the inhaler it's helping. I don't know what I had but I basically lost a week to it.

Stuff, health, bodies, mechanics, but not performance. This guy's throwing harder, this guy has a new pitch, this guy is missing 4 mph. This guy showed up fat, this guy showed up in the Best Shape of His Life, this guy isn't throwing like he used to. Spring training is the month of fake looks, so I try to keep it very simple to minimize the chance that I'll get fooled.

I always had him as a 2b going back to I think his sophomore year in college. He's absolutely agile and athletic enough. And yes, I think it'd play in RF, but that's a much less valuable outcome.

Any pitching record from before World War I is untouchable. If anything, those are going to become more distant as we stop asking pitchers to turn lineups over four times and increase the use of more relievers for longer stints.

you're telling me. I spent last Thursday on the couch trying to figure out what was real and what was a hallucination.

It matters and it doesn't. (!) Historically, yes, older HS players have worse probabilities, very young HS players have much better probabilities. We would think of a 19-year-old mashing in low-A very differently than a 21-year-old doing the same; why wouldn't we consider age the same way for amateur players? That said, there are some tools that are age-immune. Byron Buxton was past 18.5 on his draft day, but he was an 80 runner with an 80 arm, a probable 70 glove, bat speed, and the frame for power.

Top 15 for the Nationals? Yes. I really hope you weren't asking top 15 in baseball because no.

Both, I think. I saw EJM work out, which is not the same as seeing him play in actual games, but if that guy was now entering his third spring of college, assuming he had two years of even adequate performance behind him, we'd be talking about him near the top of this draft.

Think of it as a more comprehensive look at physical coordination. My wife and daughter love So You Think You Can Dance, and every year there are dancers who call their style "animation," where they seem to be manipulating individual muscles in robotic movements. That's 80 body control. And it's important in baseball because the more you can control your muscles, the better you can repeat your mechanics, and the less you're going to waste energy on inefficient movements.

I was surprised he didn't end up with two years somewhere, yes. It's a perfect one-year flier - if his stuff is just gone, you release him.

She never got into Barbie and we never encouraged it. She watched a couple of episodes of the new animated series and we had to ban it because it was so insulting to everyone's intelligence.

If we set Title IX aside for a moment, who cares about the other sports? Why is it the responsibility of football players to make sure the golf team still has putters? I get this argument all the time - "well, then say goodbye to non-revenue sports," to which I say, "Okay." Fund your own sports just like every other student club has to fund itself. Have a bake sale. But stop free-riding on the labors of other athletes.

I don't see them drafting for need like that - teams that do so nearly always regret it - but I agree with your second point about them potentially trading one of the young starters. It has to be in the back of Sandy's mind that any of those kids could blow out (again) at any time, and if the opportunity came up to trade, say, Matz, who is super talented but always hurt, for a durable asset like a high-end position player prospect, he has to at least consider whether that's the better long-term play.

Nats apparently offered a ton of deferred money so the Mets' offer was probably worth more. I'm surprised the market didn't give him more guaranteed money, yes.

This is a big year for him. Velocity backed up and has never really returned, and the loss of arm speed backed up the breaking ball too. Still a good athlete, hard worker, good frame, but the stuff is just not sufficient.

I feel like the shape I'm likely to report in would be trapezoid.

I believe he's now saying 2017. He's become very cagey about release dates lately. There's supposed to be a one-off adult novel from him this spring.

You're welcome. I'm thrilled to hear that it helped. That is the reason I wrote it.

Benintendi, possibly. Moncada, I highly doubt it.

I spoke to three scouts who saw him in San Cristobal last week. Not one said he was a "potential superstar" or even close to that.

He's also not fat. He's big, but not heavy or fat or out of shape or plump or adipose or any of that. Just a big guy.

I think he can recapture much of 2014, but no way would I say all of it given the velo drop.

So the top 100 and the org rankings (1 to 30) will still run Feb 8-9 or 9-10, as planned. We may push the team reports back to the following week because of the time I lost. I'm still not doing a lot of phone stuff because I have a bad cough, which is not helping.

He was the 11th pick in the draft and raked in the minors, so I don't think I'm high on him at all. I think he's going to hit for a very high average with some power and plus-plus defense at first. If he's going to get to more than just "some" power, he's going to have to start to pull the ball more.

Yes, I do. Ball really comes off his bat well - I wouldn't be surprised if he grew into hitting a handful of oppo homers every year too.

Breaking the Law. More intimidating, which clearly I need.

He's a Phillie now. Fifth starter type. Outstanding command of fringy stuff.

He can really hit, and there's going to be power there. As for him being too young ... I mean, there's no appropriate age to compare someone to Miguel Cabrera, right? I'm more concerned about the joke of a system that lets him be "locked up" by a team 18 months before the signing date.

August. Just a guess but they've handled him so carefully it's going to end up slowing his march to the majors.

I would actually say yes, although I know MGL had a big rant on Twitter a few weeks ago where he made a decent argument that the answer should be no.

Not at all. I don't see any reason to think he suddenly became a different player because he beat the crap out of some bad pitching at the ideal time last year. (Slight exaggeration there.)

Tools are not learned. Skills are learned, mechanics are learned, but tools are innate.

Money was fine, but don't like him to play CF there - that's a big park, with some flyball guys on staff - for the next three years. Thought they should have aimed for a better defender, even though I think the contract itself was probably just about right.

I love both of those and Some Buried Caesar.

I assume his question was prompted by Griffey's career, where he was a zero or worse from age 30 on. So, if you're a HoFer for 11 years - like, inner-circle good - and then just do some stat-padding that doesn't really help the team, are you a HoFer or not?

Agreed. Fifth starter. Nothing he ever did before indicates he can keep doing what he did.

Those deals are very, very rarely broken. The entire system is built on mutual trust. If you, as a trainer, renege on a deal with one club to take more money from another, teams will not commit money to your players the following year. Now that said, if I were GM of a team not under the penalty for 2016-17, I'd absolutely call Maitan's guy on July 1st right around midnight and offer him $8 million and just DARE him to turn it down. And when he did, I'd make sure it became public, so MLB has to change the system. It is horribly broken and Manfred has a great opportunity to scrap it and start over.

Neither. I will not watch Hannibal. That kind of pandering does not appeal to me.

I think that's my least favorite deal of the offseason, but the offseason isn't over yet.

Yes, looks like Wood and Warren and possibly Richard will all be longer relievers this year. I love it.

Oh, you can ask that now. Go ahead. He'll answer you as soon as he finishes dealing with the cash call from his investors.

These "other reports" are scouting the stat line, not the player. Anyone can sit home, read players' stats off Baseball-Reference, and pretend to rank prospects.

I believe because people saw a lack of power in a corner player. But if he's a 70 defender who never strikes out and hits .280 with a .360 OBP and 10 homers ... I mean, Bill Mueller wasn't even that good and he was a solid regular.

I'm thinking about a lot of things I'd like to do right now and can't because I'm like a walking corpse and still have to do the top 100. I finished The Caine Mutiny, The Mearseault Investigation, and The Vorrh in the last week and don't have time to write any of them up.

Yeah that is the worst possible thing they could do. Plus ownership clearly doesn't want to spend a ton on payroll, so why would Ryan spend it in the place where ROIs tend to be terrible?

I don't think teams really have "early lists" like that now when most players won't start playing for a month. I also don't think he's at all their kind of player, based on that group's draft history. He's a bat, but not an athlete.