Still Quiet on the Minor-League Front
Shalom or Happy Sangria Day, depending on either your religion or the proximity of your family, iykwitm…
We haven’t gone dark. It’s just really, really, really slow.
I’m not sure why this has become the new normal. If you look at the URL string, you’ll see that this is the fourth time in the past four years it’s been so slow that I’ve had to run back-to-back posts that effectively say “I got nothing.”
Because of the timing of Christmas this year, I don’t expect anything to happen between now and Boxing Day, if not New Year’s Day. I hope I’m wrong – frequently posts “create” news to shake loose – but if not, you can expect one or two posts before I finalize the 2023 Watchlist.
Hey, we survived an entire year without minor league baseball, we can handle this.
Happy Hannakah for those celebrating!
Here’s a question of legit importance in the near future: has anyone seen anything about whether Elian Soto is still on track to sign with the Nats now that Juan has been traded? I seem to recall that Elian and Vaquero had become buds, so perhaps that will help maintain the connection. The Nats will have a truckload of international money this year, so it will be interesting to see what they can net with it.
Welp, the Mets should have negative international money now, so maybe they’re no longer bidders for Elian. But leave it to Cohen to game that system too . . .
Let’s remember that for many years the Lerners were the richest owners in baseball, they just never acted like it. The other owners liked it that way.
Nats claim another former “name” prospect, Jeter Downs, from Red Sox. He has two options still left and likely will need them. His stats are really confusing. After the trade from the Dodgers, it appears that the Bosox basically had him skip AA, presumably based on what he did at the alt site in 2020. Subsequently, he has hit .193 at AAA across two seasons and struck out 30% of the time.
Looking more at the stats, Downs had insanely bad BABIP “luck” at AAA in 2022 — .235. He has pop — 16 HRs and 11 doubles in 81 AAA games, a 95 wRC+ despite a .197 BA. Healthy 11% walk rate. Doesn’t look like he projects as a SS, so he’s not close to even Alu as a 2B/3B at this point.