MLBTR mock expansion draft

This thing went down.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/06/mlb-mock-expansion-draft.html

My cursory glance reveals the Braves lost Ynoa and Luke Jackson...so...yawn. I suppose I severely overvalued the Braves assets.

Their poll had Riley, Newk, Smith, Camargo, Touki, and Wilson as the 6 we protected. Apparently Byrne is buying Jackson as a Closer since he took him that high. Maybe he figures if he gives him the job and he runs with it (and signs a reasonable extension) he turns into a decent trade chip. At that point you have to figure they both agreed we'd have pulled the next 3 highest in the poll back - Ender, d'Arnaud, and Martin. Would've only left Dayton, Duvall, A-Jax, Minter, Sobotka, Walker, Webb, Weigel, and Ynoa.

If you still hold out hope that either Weigel or Ynoa can become a starter, picking either of them out of that group makes at least some sense.
 
Charlotte would be a small market, struggling team without much of a fan base like its other two franchises.

Cue someone telling me how much its AAA affiliate draws, like that matters.


I mostly agree. If Charlotte was the choice, they would absolutely need an already established franchise like the Rays to make it work. Building a team in that market from the ground up doesn't seem like a plan that will work.

I think moving one of the Florida teams to Jacksonville (the largest city in Florida) is much a better option for those franchises.
 
It's a strange list for sure. I mean, I don't even recognize most of the names on those lists, and if you didn't follow the other teams like we do the Braves, you wouldn't know them either. There has to be more valuable players available if everyone keeps just 18 each.
 
It's a strange list for sure. I mean, I don't even recognize most of the names on those lists, and if you didn't follow the other teams like we do the Braves, you wouldn't know them either. There has to be more valuable players available if everyone keeps just 18 each.

Yeah, I didn't see any real strategy. I mean, if the Dodgers left Price unprotected, which happened in this scenario, would a team not draft him then market him to other teams offering to pay down some of the cost. For instance, Price is owed $64M over the last two years of his contract. Would it be possible for the expansion team to get a couple of top 100 guys for him if they paid down half his number ($32M) or take back some dead salary from the other team? Maybe. Teams pay posting fees all the time for international FA (Japan, Korea, Cuba) to get young controllable talent. An expansion team is not going to be competitive right away, no matter what. In fact, it's against there best interests not to be as bad as possible early in their existence, given how new talent (non FA) acquisition is set up for MLB.

For example, Could they draft Price and trade him plus $10M for Happ, Severino, Jasson Dominguez and Luis Gil? Severino just had TJ, and is in his second year of a 4/40. They looked to trade Happ in the offseason and his $17M for 20 and vesting $17M for 21. Dominguez is supposed to be a top prospect but has yet to play an inning of minor league ball. Gil is a high ceiling guy with control issues. Then the expansion GM keeps Severino to be your future staff anchor, trades Happ for best available and brings along Dominguez and Gil slowly.

That's just a thought experiment or what if. You could apply the same logic to any number of guys (Inciarte, Smith, d'Arnaud, etc.)

The concept is simple in that you are using a trade to buy prospects by paying down the cost to the ML guy. It's the opposite of what the Braves did with Kimbrel.
 
Yeah, I didn't see any real strategy. I mean, if the Dodgers left Price unprotected, which happened in this scenario, would a team not draft him then market him to other teams offering to pay down some of the cost. For instance, Price is owed $64M over the last two years of his contract. Would it be possible for the expansion team to get a couple of top 100 guys for him if they paid down half his number ($32M) or take back some dead salary from the other team? Maybe. Teams pay posting fees all the time for international FA (Japan, Korea, Cuba) to get young controllable talent. An expansion team is not going to be competitive right away, no matter what. In fact, it's against there best interests not to be as bad as possible early in their existence, given how new talent (non FA) acquisition is set up for MLB.

For example, Could they draft Price and trade him plus $10M for Happ, Severino, Jasson Dominguez and Luis Gil? Severino just had TJ, and is in his second year of a 4/40. They looked to trade Happ in the offseason and his $17M for 20 and vesting $17M for 21. Dominguez is supposed to be a top prospect but has yet to play an inning of minor league ball. Gil is a high ceiling guy with control issues. Then the expansion GM keeps Severino to be your future staff anchor, trades Happ for best available and brings along Dominguez and Gil slowly.

That's just a thought experiment or what if. You could apply the same logic to any number of guys (Inciarte, Smith, d'Arnaud, etc.)

The concept is simple in that you are using a trade to buy prospects by paying down the cost to the ML guy. It's the opposite of what the Braves did with Kimbrel.

I think the bigger point is you can field a team containing plenty of valuable players with the players who were left off the protected list. Ender is still a starting caliber CFer. little D likely stands to be by far the best overall catcher in this group. These guys are certainly older than you'd ideally like, but the other names available on this list aren't likely to be any better.
 
Yeah, it definitely seems like the 2 guys drafting this thing were more concerned about their minor league system than the MLB level talent.
 
I think the bigger point is you can field a team containing plenty of valuable players with the players who were left off the protected list. Ender is still a starting caliber CFer. little D likely stands to be by far the best overall catcher in this group. These guys are certainly older than you'd ideally like, but the other names available on this list aren't likely to be any better.

Yes, you can field a team with valuable players, but they still won't be good. Building a team that only loses 100 games instead of 110 games is really irrelevant. The idea is to build a foundation where you can get good and stay good for a while. To me, that would me drafting valuable players who are ML guys, but only to trade them for young talent that could be part of a future wave of success.
 
I think the bigger point is you can field a team containing plenty of valuable players with the players who were left off the protected list. Ender is still a starting caliber CFer. little D likely stands to be by far the best overall catcher in this group. These guys are certainly older than you'd ideally like, but the other names available on this list aren't likely to be any better.

This draft was about long term assets vs winning in year 1.

I suppose that's defensible considering an expansion team would draw well the first 2-3 years even with a poor MLB team.
 
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