"Thanksgiving Time" Free For All Mailbag, Part Two
Depending on how you look at things, owing either to my readers particularly-high level of curiosity, or my seemingly congenital inability to respond to any question with efficiency or alacrity, this month’s mailbag splashed over the guardrails and spilled into a second half. In part one, there was a lot of talk about money and finances, in a variety of different contexts. There was also a question about Roki Sasaki, so I should update my answer to note that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred seemed to confirm this week that Sasaki will be signing after the January 15 opening of the next IFA class. The Giants have most of their bonus pool committed to Joshuar de Jesus Gonzalez, and I’d expect them to honor that commitment, though they can trade for up to 60% of their total pool (around $5m) with other team.
This week we get into more old-fashioned player evaluation talk, as well as looking at value of a different sort.
Before we get to the questions, however, I want to amend something else I’ve said recently, and raise a caveat that we’ll need to keep in mind throughout the winter to come. I wrote, in my “state of the system” post last week, that, according to insider information used by Lance Brozdowski on one of his recent videos, that the Giants’ farm system graded out quite poorly against the rest of the league in Exit Velocity stats. According to the numbers Brozdowski used, Giants’ farmhands were 19th in MLB in 90th percentile EV (EV90), and even worse in average EV.
Ah, but Holy Plot Twist, Batman, just a few days later, Baseball America posted an article on minor league Statcast data, and according to their sources, the Giants’ organization had the fifth best EV90 in the game. That’s quite a discrepancy! Which is correct (if either)? Well, that’s the thing with non-transparent sources of information — there’s no way of knowing! And there’s all manner of ways that data can get dirtied up along the road to dissemination.
And it’s not the only one like that I’ve seen just this week. In BA’s Giants’ Top 10 (which rolled out this week), they noted that Marco Luciano (who is still in their prospect rankings, though he will not be in mine) had a solid in-zone whiff rate of just 18%, and yet, if I use the Baseball Savant minor league search function for that same information, it gives Luciano a 23% whiff rate in zone.
Let this serve as a general warning: any Statcast generated minor league data you come across in any publication has come from a single source inside some team’s organization, and may not be perfectly accurate. Every team dices info up in different ways and by different definitions (for instance, how they define “in zone.”). I try to get my hands on as much of this stuff as I can, either through other publications or my own inside sources (which sadly dried up on me the second half of this year), but even there, the potential that it’s dirty data is always on my mind. In short, more info is a good thing, but always keep a skeptical antenna up that numbers, especially those coming from private sources, may not be precise. Hopefully, they get us closer to the truth rather than steering us further away from it.
Now on with the show…
Alright, we’ll dive right back in where we left off. A lot of people want to know how this outfield situation is going to shake out — and if the kids on the farm are ever going to rise to the top of the charts. I’m guessing that Buster Posey, Zack Minasian, Jeremy Shelley, and Bob Melvin are among those folks wondering about this, to be honest!
How likely are Luis Matos and Wade Meckler to make the big club for 2025?
Going into next year, the Giants have three guys on the 40 who probably profile best as a left handed CF, in Jung Hoo Lee, Grant McCray and Meckler (unless you believe his end of season power surge was legit). Is rationalization required/desired? Having read GPT's excellent offseason plan, none of those three are really identified as being traded to another team, so would be very interested in your thoughts. I like each of them individually, but does it make sense from a roster perspective to carry all three??
Eric, I certainly don’t see a world in which they are both on the roster come Opening Day. One of them? That certainly seems possible.
But there’s an awful lot in play here. Do the Giants bring in another starter for a corner OF? Do they deal Mike Yastrzemski? Do they keep Yaz as a depth piece, while still bringing in a more powerful starting RF? This, along with the shortstop situation, would seem to be one of the key roster spots for the brain trust to tackle in the next couple of months. That effort might end up involving this group of young players (we’ll get to a question on likely trade chips later on), but if Matos, Meckler, and McCray show up to spring camp, their battle for a bench spot will be one of the last roster questions to be decided. One would imagine that most of Buster Posey & Co.’s focus over the next four months is going to be on upgrading the top half dozen or so spots on the roster, and here we’re talking about the 23-26 spots.
As is the case with David Villar (discussed in part one of the mailbag), the fact that neither Matos nor Meckler can really play in the center of the diamond effectively (which will be part of my answer to your question, Duncan) is going to weigh against them. This is especially true if the team does move Yaz, weakening their ability to lighten the load for Jung-Hoo Lee, who has now missed a considerable portion of his past two seasons. A Yaz-less roster might tilt things in the direction of Grant McCray as a 4th outfielder — despite the fact that he was rushed through the upper minors far sooner than he ought to have been, and still has significant work to do to be a playable offensive major leaguer. Or maybe it tilts things in the direction of bringing in a cheap outsider for defensive depth. I know the Giants had some level of discussion with the Yankees in July about acquiring Trent Grisham, and something of that sort might work again whilst the youngsters are polishing things up.
Certainly, both Matos and Meckler have work to do to improve their games to MLB-level. Matos has gotten slower over the past year, and if he doesn’t turn that trend around, he’s going to be strictly limited to a corner only — if he isn’t already — without the sort of power normally associated with that profile. There’s also much work to be done on his strike-zone discipline, his chase rate, and his opposite-field approach. Somewhat concerningly, a recent Baseball America study on swing decisions in the minor leagues listed Matos as having one of the worst combinations of high-chase rates with low in-zone swing rates in the minor leagues last year.
Meckler doesn’t have that issue — quite the contrary, he’s one of the system’s most disciplined swingers. But, despite his well above average speed, he’s not a great defender in the outfield, particularly going back on balls. And though he’s got tremendous contact skills, the quality of that contact needs to improve. Someone I was speaking with during my trip to the AFL said that a Max Exit Velocity somewhere around 106 or 107 was probably the minimum requirement for being a big leaguer in today’s game. The highest documented EV I’ve ever seen for Meckler as a pro has been 104 (and I’ll emphasize that I hardly have comprehensive knowledge of his career EV, especially at the lower levels). But, as listeners of my podcast might remember, Meckler vowed to upend all the negative parts of his scouting report, and nobody’s ever won money betting against his determinism, so we’ll see how things look come spring — for both of them.
To Duncan’s question, I don’t really think there’s a roster rationalization issue there because these are really very different roles on the 40-man. Lee was given $100 million dollars to be a starting position player and hopefully, a star. If he’s healthy, he’s in the lineup. Maybe McCray gets to that point someday, but for now, he needs to make substantial progress on his in-zone contact abilities just to be part of a roster. If he can manage that, he could make for a tremendous fourth outfielder — which usually puts a player in line for some 300 or more ABs. Meckler (and I suspect that Eric won’t like hearing this part), I think is viewed as more of an up and down depth piece for now. Though as the club continues talking about a more versatile club that could put pressure on other teams, Meckler could be in line to change those expectations. IF he can get his contact skills to translate to the big league environment (obviously something he struggled with in his first go round), he can put just about as much pressure on another team as anyone in the system. But he really needs to improve the defense to give himself all-around value. If you’re not going to mash, you need to do a lot of different things well. I do not believe Meckler will ever be a good choice in center, but being a valuable left fielder would help his case.
As for their all being left-handed, I would say that that’s more of a plus than a source of potential trouble. Everybody is always looking for lefties in this game!
If you’re asking me today which of these three I see as the most likely fit for a bench spot on Opening Day, I’d probably put the odds in this order: 1) Matos, 2) McCray, 3) Meckler. But, as always, betting the field makes a lot of sense! Who knows? Maybe Luciano grabs an outfield spot!
As noted by GPT and mentioned in a recent Fangraphs chat, some of the Giants guys in the DSL have been pretty "exciting." One name that was explicitly mentioned was Anthony Marquez I believe. Any info on the guys out there or any new developments?
Yes, I saw Eric Longenhagen mention Marquez in a recent chat. And let me just do a quick bit of teasing here — look for Eric to show up on a There R Giants podcast sometime after Thanksgiving. His Giants’ list should drop in the next couple of weeks, and he’s promised to come on and talk about it. I can’t wait to hear what turned him on so about Marquez.
Sadly, Joe, I can’t say too much about Marquez. He did catch my eye as a player that the extremely successful Giants Black team occasionally batted near the top of the order, between Level and the boppers, which means he was impressing his coaching staff plenty. Indeed, Manager Juan Ciriaco, as the club was facing elimination in the semi-final series, elevated Marquez from the #9 spot in the order to top of lineup, and he ended up playing a big role in extending the series out to an elimination game. Those three playoff games against the Angels were the video that Eric referenced watching in that chat, and Marquez did have a tremendous series, picking up six hits over the three games, including several important doubles. He is another really tiny guy, in the Jose Ramos mold of players, which limits his potential from a physicality perspective, barring some growth and maturation, but he plays with energy and seems to have some contact skills with a twitchy swing.
Anyway, I don’t want to step on Eric’s territory. I promise I’ll ask about Marquez in that podcast. Let me, instead, talk about some guys I have a little more insight on. I think we all know that Jhonny Level took a real step forward in his first year, and performed at maybe the level (no pun intended) of a bigger priced talent. What was especially noticeable about his debut was how much strength and muscularity he had added in the past year or so. A growth spurt from a height perspective would be nice (he’s still a bit under 6’), but he packed on the strength and it showed in his power. Now there’s a chance that, if he doesn’t grow a little more, he’s pretty maxed out physically at this point and won’t add more strength (there’s also some question as to whether the added muscle will ultimately move him off of short), but it was certainly a positive development in his first season.
Somewhat less on people’s radar is the real enthusiasm that is bubbling up in the organization over a couple of arms, Argenis Cayama and Jose Bello. I was recently talking with someone fairly high up in the Giants’ organization about a bunch of their young pitchers (as I work on putting together my Top 50), and when Bello’s name came up, the return text just said: “Bello is a Dude.” with an up arrow emoji attached. Wondering exactly how far I should be up-arrowing Bello up my rankings, I asked “More of a dude than Cayama?” and the response was “No! Cayama is a Stud!” These are two names I think you’ll be hearing more about in the coming year, as the Giants are super high on the potential of both.
Despite some real pressures from the 165-player maximum, they made the choice to move Bello up from the DSL in the final weekend of the official ACL season (thus having to add Bello to the domestic reserve list), so they could work with him in the August and September games going on at the complex in the unofficial “Bridge” league (or “ACL extended” season — not sure we’ve cohered around a single nomenclature yet for that activity). In Arizona, Bello’s work excited some others in the industry as well, and I have it on good authority that his name surfaced in trade talks during July. Bello grew taller and stronger last year, and his velocity started moving up from the 90-91 area to more 92-94. His whippy arm action creates a tremendous amount of tailing run on the pitch, and he also shows some real feel for spin as well. Best of all, for a young pitcher, he does a good job of pounding the zone with all his stuff.
While Bello is the super sneaky sleeper guy, Cayama came out of the DSL season as arguably the top pitching prospect in the league this year. Cayama was an outfielder on the international market, but had trouble enticing much interest for teams. So, about a year before the January signing period opened, he began showing his arm strength on the mound and immediately piqued the Giants’ interest. His velocity has hit as high as 97, though it was mostly sitting 93 during the season. The pitch has armside run and late life, and he, too, features a hard cutting slider. An illness in training camp cost Cayama some weight and strength — and slightly delayed the start of his season — but he ended things strong, and the Giants couldn’t be more thrilled with his potential. We’ll be seeing him in the States in the coming year, I’d guess.
Two other names worth stashing in your mind are outfielder Oliver Tejada and Santiago Camacho. Tejada is a strong, stocky hitter with present power and a corner outfielder profile, similar to that of Lisbel Diaz or Victor Bericoto. Like Level, he’s on the shorter side, and a growth spurt wouldn’t hurt things, to stretch that power frame out some. Camacho is a left-handed hitting catcher who showed a real feel for hitting and tremendous patience at the plate. He ended the year with an OBP over .500, but he wasn’t merely a walk artist against the lowest level pitching — there’s potential for real offensive upside there. One other name to mention is Yohendry Sanchez, who was a late commitment who ended up with the largest signing bonus in the class (though that had something to do with the logistics and timing of his connection to the Giants). Sadly, Sanchez, like many of the Giants’ recent top signings, had his season cut short by injury, playing just 12 games. He did make an impression in that time, however, especially with his prodigious physical strength for one so young.
These are all long-term projects, of course. The oven has to heat up a long time before these cookies are ready to serve.
Who do you think is the most likely of our young prospects to be traded this off-season? This includes guys who have already made their big league debut
Dave Flemming talked about this a little bit on my podcast this week — plug!!!
I think the young pitching makes the most sense as potential trade bait from both the supply and demand points of view. The Giants have shown that they have a lot of capable young arms right now — Kyle Harrison, Hayden Birdsong, and Landen Roupp might be in a heated spring battle for the final spot or two in the rotation, while guys like Keaton Winn, Tristan Beck, Mason Black, Sean Hjelle, and Trevor McDonald offer up a wealth of depth. And from the perspective of other teams, pitchers who have shown they can get big league hitters out — as nearly all of that group have done — instantly gain a newfound value above whatever their prospect status had previously been. Maybe Roupp was never the prospect that Carson Whisenhunt was, but, as of today, I wouldn’t be that surprised if many teams didn’t look at Roupp as the more valuable acquisition, based solely on his impressive 50 innings of work in MLB this year.
So, I’d keep an eye on that group of names, along with the prospects behind them — in particular, the three Carsons, Whisenhunt, Seymour, and Ragsdale — as the biggest bang for the buck. I keep mentally circling Roupp as the guy with maybe the most trade value whom the Giants would be most willing to part with. Though I do wonder if Harrison’s lack of impact last year might entice them to view him as a movable piece — which would certainly bring back real value. The other way to go would be to seize on Whisenhunt, the best pitching prospect in the system, as the real surplus and trade on his prospect value (perhaps packaged with a Winn or a Beck or even someone like Camilo Doval).
For the most part, the Giants’ position player group all have something left to show to be as enticing to prospect trade partners. While McCray’s speed and defense are certainly appealing, most scouts I talked to weren’t that high on his hit tool when he was in the minors, and certainly striking out 43% of the time in majors won’t have improved that opinion. Obviously, Casey Schmitt still has work to do on his approach at the plate, and, as discussed above, Matos, Meckler, and Luciano all have some big questions to answer, too.
That said, I can see the club choosing this moment to move either Matos or Luciano in a deal if another team still viewed them as real starters. As it becomes clearer that both are likely corner outfielders going forward, and neither has really shown the offensive value at the big league level that such a player needs to have — and with both moving into their final option year — I can see the Giants moving on from their former top prospects if there’s value to be had. The left field Depth Chart is suddenly pretty crowded.
Jambo Roger, from the Giants East African HQ. I am curious how FZ’s free agent signings in 2024 are going to impact the 2025 International Free Agent money pool? I’ve heard we are likely picking up one of the biggest fish in the pond. Have you heard of any others?
How valuable is a second-round pick? Has anyone published data on how likely a second pick is to make it to the big leagues or last more than two years? Maybe it’s my NFL perspective, but I hate giving up draft picks, especially for one-year contracts. Thank goodness Chapman is staying for six years which clearly justifies giving up a pick. But giving up a pick for a half season of Snell irks me. How should we value draft picks in MLB?
I packaged these two questions together because they both focus on the ramifications of the Giants’ signing two different free agent players with Qualifying Offers attached last year.
The answer to Jason’s question is relatively simple. The Giants sacrificed $500,000 in international bonus pools for each of the QO players they signed last year, so $1 million in total. I’m going to assume that Joshuar de Jesus Gonzalez will be somewhere close to $4 million in signing bonus, which will take up the vast majority of the Giants’ pool this year, minus the million. That’s not to say they won’t sign other players — I have a few names that I’m pretty certain we’ll see on January 15 — but other than Gonzalez, they’ll be low-level signings (of course, if Roki Sasaki gets into the mix, all bets are off!).
But let’s get into Chuck’s more theoretical question, which is a fascinating one to discuss, and which does get at the way modern front offices think and make decisions. How does one value a 2nd round pick? How do teams who are considering sacrificing said picks factor that risk into their decision-making? How do they determine if they did the right thing?
Well, first, Chuck, let’s look at this from the perspective of end-results. What is the historical outcome of a 2nd round pick? Well…put it this way…it’s better than all the rounds that come after it….but still not that great:
This chart comes from MLB’s invaluable data cruncher and coder, Tom Tango (who is behind a lot of Savant stuff), who took a look at the production history of prospects last winter.
In terms of total production produced from drafted players, half of all value comes from 1st round picks. The second round gets an honorable mention here, producing 10% of all value. And after the 2nd? It’s essentially pot luck. There’s no discernible difference between the results of the 3rd through 9th rounds, and virtually no difference at all from subsequent rounds (all of which occasionally hit a big winner). One thing to keep in mind about that graph above, it divides sharply between the 1st and 2nd rounds, however there are a bunch of picks in modern drafts between those two rounds (the supplementary picks that teams get for either losing premier free agents or “competitive balance”), and Tango did not, that I saw, define how he was dealing with those picks. Still, I think we can understand the general trend here. First round: good. Second round: not so good. All other rounds: shoulder shrug.
But that is looking at things from the wrong end of the telescope. This tells us how things work out in the end, but what about at the decision-making point. How does a team like the Giants determine whether it’s worthwhile to sacrifice a 2nd round pick for Matt Chapman, or, as would be the case this year, a 2nd and 5th rounder for Juan Soto or Willy Adames?
Chuck, to answer part of your question, yes there has been a LOT of study of this question. Now most of that study has been behind closed doors within the 30 MLB front offices, but this has also been a fairly well studied topic in the public realms, where writers like Sky Andrechuk, Victor Wang, Jeff Zimmerman, Craig Edwards, Matthew Murphy and others have all tackled the issue. All of those hyper-linked names go to the studies I’m speaking of, so if you really want to dive in deep, you can have quite a research field day.
But while I’m on the issue, I do want to give some props to Friend of the Site, GPT, who recently posted his hoped-for off-season plan for the Giants, and, as usual for Avi, it was a thoughtful, resourceful, and well-reasoned piece. And within that piece, he came across the exact same question Chuck is asking here, and he answered it with this ballpark thinking:
Pick #34 had a bonus pool of $2,700,000 and I consider draft pools to have 5x value to an organization, so $13.5M in value here.
(emphasis mine).
If you applied this logic to the pick the Giants surrendered this year for Chapman, you’d arrive at a value of approximately $8.8 million, as the slot value at that point in the 2nd round was $1.76m. GPT’s back-of-the-napkin valuation fits in fairly well with the piece that Craig Edwards did for Fangraphs about 5.5 years ago, referenced at the top, in which he pegged the value of pick #40 at $7.6 million and pick #50 at $5.9 million, using an expected WAR/$ conversion. Figuring a little inflation, it feels like we’re circling around the $8 million mark here. Converting that dollar mark back to productivity, we’re essentially saying that teams are expecting to get a Future Value of around a 45-grade prospect in the second round, or a big leaguer with expected production less than an average starting player (for instance, a platoon outfielder or a fifth starter in the rotation).
From this perspective, a front office would look at the Chapman signing as quite a bargain, as he cost the team $16 million in salary for 2024, plus $8.8m in lost draft value, and another $500,000 in the IFA bonus pool (that’s a more difficult calculation, as a much smaller percentage of IFA players ever make it to the majors, but if you wanted to use GPT’s calculus and just say 5x the bonus, we can do that here, too). Put all of those together and the cost to the organization was approximately $25-27 million. But according to Fangraphs’ value calculator, Chapman provided the team with over $43 million in value on the field, for a surplus value of more than $15 million. Snell’s deal doesn’t look quite so rosy — but that’s mostly because of his MIA first half. If you apply the same logic to the slot value of his pick (right about $750,000) and his contract, then his production ($24 million by Fangraphs’ calculations) falls slightly short of the ~$35 million they paid for him in salary and penalty. Not a disaster in the end, but a disappointment for sure.
One can quibble with the exact numbers there, and every front office has their own secret sauce and model calculations. But in essence, this is how modern front offices think about putting together salary proposals for free agents, extensions, and arbitration — and that sort of value equation extends to trade proposals for most front offices as well. Teams want to acquire as much value as they are sending away by the light of whatever proprietary internal models they are using. Or, in terms of salaries, they want to pay equivalently for whatever value their models tell them to expect to get from a player.
Kent Iverson
Hi Roger,
I just finished reading your "state of the system" piece, which is a great, though sobering read. One question came to mind regarding differences across MLB orgs: are there some organizations that maintain contact and involvement with their minor leaguers' development throughout the off-season? For example, by offering residency in their spring training facilities?
To the best of my knowledge, there are no residences at any of the spring training facilities, and no teams pay for residence done in the off-season. While there have been some incursions into this issue thanks to the formation of a minor league union (I believe clubs do have to provide a stipend for off-season mini-camps that they ask players to come to, for instance), most of the time between the end of the season and following spring is still a financial burden that falls on the player.
To that end, many players will try to arrange work at private facilities, but the high-end ones you’ve heard of (Driveline, Tread, Push, etc.) are extremely costly, and for guys who didn’t pocket a sizable signing bonus, it can be hard to make the ends meet. However, many players live in Arizona year-round, and for those with spring training/minor league facilities in the Valley of the Sun, they can take advantage of their team’s facilities and staff throughout the winter.
Which leads me by a backdoor route to your question. Yes! Virtually all teams have some sort of contact with their players in the off-season, whether it’s occasional check ins, or, as is becoming much more common, hands-on work at the team facilities. For foreign players who live offseason in the Dominican Republic, they can utilize those team facilities as well.
Every organization handles off-season somewhat differently, of course, and I doubt that any organization has exactly the same level of connection to all of their players (especially ones who return home to countries where the big league club has little presence, Venezuelans and Asians most obviously). But I can say that in the Giants’ organization, if you drop by Papago on any random day during the winter, you are going to see cars parked in the players’ lot and know that activity of some kind is going on inside the facility, whether it’s just hitting the weight room or getting in bullpen sessions or targeted swings with coaching staff and biomechanicists on hand.
If you get a chance, go back and listen to Tyler Fitzgerald’s appearance on the podcast a couple of years ago. He talked with me about the work he was doing with Giants’ staff during the off-season, as well as how active the facility was on any given day.
Damn You Wayne
Roger, honest question...why are the Giants sold on Kyle Haines? The farm system regularly ranks in the bottom third, it produces basically no stars, and it’s been this way for years. Isn't it time to maybe change direction?
I’ve made my way over to BlueSky recently, along with many others, and this question came to me there. So I thought I’d include it here. Branching out to new networks!
So Wayne (or Wayne hater I guess), let me start by saying, here’s a Twitter interaction I’ve been thinking a lot about lately:
Olney’s tweet, which was about the mass firings in Miami (that astonishingly went down even to the level of clubbies), ended with this: “He believed it was his job to help people in place get better. The Miami situation is ugly.”
So I think a hefty percentage of the answer to your question with regards to Haines, and also Scouting Director Michael Holmes and others in the organization, is based on a belief that the organization wasn’t set up to empower its employees to full effect previously. As I’ve suggested before, there was a lot of micro-managing and siloing under Farhan Zaidi that caused organizational inefficiencies in a lot of small and large ways. And, if you want to start thinking about exactly how such inefficiencies might have impacted Haines’ role, we might ponder the fact that Haines has given quotes like: “I personally think players are rushed too fast through the minor leagues,” as he recently did to The Athletic’s Andy Baggarly, and talked about having players “dominate” levels, which the Giants certainly got away from the last couple of years.
Posey I think, is going into this venture believing that allowing some of the Directors in place to really run their own shop, and working with them to improve performance indicators, is the right thing to do.
But beyond that, Haines is a person whom I’ve rarely heard a negative word about, and I’ve heard many, many rave reviews. He impresses people with his baseball mind and acumen, his dedication and passion, and his incredible work ethic (you do NOT want his work hours or travel schedule, I can tell you that). He has a very progressive mind (he’s told me that his short time in the Cleveland organization really impacted the way he thinks about the game and development), a collaborative spirit, and he really cares about every player under his purview. I know so many people in the organization who think the world of his abilities — that was true under Farhan Zaidi, and it’s true now under Buster Posey. At some point, results are the only thing that matters, but I think there are still plenty of reasons to be optimistic about Haines’ gifts as a Farm Director.
And I would argue with the idea that they’ve produced no stars. That’s a tricky word to define exactly — and I suppose everyone has their own implicit understanding of it. Perhaps you don’t think that Heliot Ramos or Doval are stars because of their appearance in the All-Star game, which is certainly fair. But I can’t imagine that Logan Webb doesn’t qualify as one of the game’s stars at this point, and Haines was the guy I remember insisting that Webb had as much potential as any Top 100 prospect in the game. So that should be a feather in his cap at least.
Do you think it would be possible to bring Brandon Crawford in as an infield coach?
Kristie, I think that all depends on Crawford and how he wants to deal with his retirement. The daily workload on big league coaches is pretty extreme, and the pay isn’t great. So a lot of players of Crawford’s stature, playing-day incomes, and large family that he seems to enjoy spending time with, might look for other ways to stay in the game that don’t come with quite the load of working hours that coaching does. Others, however, find they can’t keep away from the daily routine, and find their way into coaching for life (Matt Williams did alright financially as player as well!).
Given the strong ties between Crawford and Posey, I would imagine you can guarantee that Crawford will be around. I’d be surprised if we don’t see him as a regular at spring training, for instance, and maybe dropping in and hanging around the batting cages the same way that Barry Bonds does.
And, if he has a yen for something more permanent and daily, I’m sure the Giants are the first team he’d talk to about potential opportunities.
And with that, we close up the mailbag for this month. I’ll be back on Monday with the start of my “Way Too Early” roster previews for 2025. For those of you on the free subscriber rolls, let me wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving. Find something in your life to be grateful for. Enjoy your loved ones. Eat some fine food and get out for a walk in the lovely fall weather. I’ll be back to the post office to collect the next round of questions sometime in December.
Pavlovic said a few weeks ago in his offseason preview that Meckler started taking ground balls at second base in September, which would definitely help his profile. The top lefty-hitting middle infield free agent is ... Adam Frazier? Jorge Polanco? And the internal options are Wisely and (switch-hitter) Sergio Alcántara
Regarding the confusion around statistics, I am reminded of the great Mark Twain- “There are lies, damn lies and statistics.” So much of baseball is quantitative now and much of baseball coverage feels like a regurgitation of numbers. I like your work bc you incorporate analytics but you aren’t a slave to them. You see the bigger picture too. Bc numbers don’t tell the whole story. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what story they are even telling!