General Sports Water Cooler

That alone should make you re-examine your thinking.

Unless you have inside information you don't know what they did, you're just trying to read in between the lines. They said they wanted Reynolds back too but given what he signed for that doesn't seem to be the case. No one knows what the Orioles offer was and trying to assess their true intentions while only knowing what was said in public is foolish in my opinion.

His rookie season, played at age 20, was heavy on both strong impressions (.445 slugging) and struggles (.294 OBP). Raw stats aside, Machado showed some impressive signs of maturity for such a young hitter.

A righty, he didn't expand his zone against fastballs often -- his chase rate against fastballs in the first four pitches of an at-bat would have been in the top 15 in baseball had he qualified -- and his chase rate on sliders (37 percent) was high but not abnormal for power hitters.

"I was very impressed with his patience," the AL evaluator said. "As a power guy, it's important to move his feet early in the count. You have to do that to change speeds, because he has good extension and plate coverage."

One issue for Machado in his rookie season was his propensity to miss fastballs in the zone. He missed 18 percent of them last season and fouled back mistakes instead of pounding them. Machado could have been getting a little long in his swing, or he could have been guessing in specific counts. Whatever the case, he's too talented to let pitchers get away with meaty fastballs in the zone for long. Oh, and he also switched off his natural position and was immediately above average at the hot corner. Naturally.

I'm shocked Parlay is treating Saunders like he's ol' grover alexander

Parlay wanted to re-sign Saunders so that Saunders/Steve Johnson could make Maddux/Glavine the 2nd-best pitching duo of the past 20 years.

I really do like mafias for players who are solid for stretches but otherwise not amazing. I love Parlay hyping up Steve Johnson. It makes me want Steve to do really well.

As Faust mafia boss, I know the feeling of seeing flashes of brilliance in an otherwise average player.

So Steve Johnson 2013!

That's just how the baseball draft works. It's a crapshoot no matter where you pick. I think this thread overrates losing the draft pick a bit.

Also, I had no idea that the reason the Angels have Mike Trout is because they received the 25th pick that year as compensation for the Yankees signing Mark Teixeira. That's tremendous. I feel like I need to remind some Yankee fans of that over the course of this year, and the next 4 as Teix continues to steal money from them

Glad someone gets it.

Agree but if we gave up a 19th pick for lohse, I'd be pissed. After all, we might miss out on a kid like Hader.

Bourn is a different story

I know I'm in the minority but I'd rather Saunders at his price than lohse at his + a #1