Official Offseason Thread

AA has hinted Riley will start 2020 in AAA.

It's an interesting decision to make. Trade him now or try and let him develop. Past history with players of his skillset seem to point to the fact that he likely won't be a star. If you can get a haul for him from a team who over values him, sell high.
 
The Marlins were dumb enough to fall for the same type of player in Alfaro and took him as a main piece in the JTR trade. Dumb teams are out there, AA just has to find them and take advantage of their stupidity.

However, you may be right and the best use for Riley is to keep him and hope he improves. He’s young and it’s certainly possible.
 
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The Marlins were dumb enough to fall for the same type of player in Alfaro and took him as a main piece in the JTR trade. Dumb teams are out there, AA just has to find them and take advantage of their stupidity.

However, you may be right and the best use for Riley is to keep him and hope he improves. He’s young and it’s certainly possible.

I like the idea of going back to the Marlins and trying to get Brian Anderson
 
The Marlins were dumb enough to fall for the same type of player in Alfaro and took him as a main piece in the JTR trade. Dumb teams are out there, AA just has to find them and take advantage of their stupidity.

However, you may be right and the best use for Riley is to keep him and hope he improves. He’s young and it’s certainly possible.

I remember you previously posting examples of players with a K rate and BB rate in his range never really showing improvement enough to be very valuable. Seemed pretty convincing.
 
I remember you previously posting examples of players with a K rate and BB rate in his range never really showing improvement enough to be very valuable. Seemed pretty convincing.

While true, I’m guessing most/all of them were older than Riley. He was only playing his age 22 season last year, so it would be foolish to write him off after half a season.

If a team values him as a budding masher, the Braves should probably cash him in now. If teams only value him as a potential Jake Lamb with hit tool questions, then the Braves should probably hold onto him.
 
While true, I’m guessing most/all of them were older than Riley. He was only playing his age 22 season last year, so it would be foolish to write him off after half a season.

If a team values him as a budding masher, the Braves should probably cash him in now. If teams only value him as a potential Jake Lamb with hit tool questions, then the Braves should probably hold onto him.

We should do what the people from Omelas did. Lock Riley in an underground room and let him wallow around in his own filth for all eternity so the gods will bless the rest of us with a World Series title. I think that would get the absolute maximum surplus value out of him.
 
Every person in Cleveland would suicide themselves. Not only would they lose their three biggest players for a terrible package, but they would still be in Cleveland. Too much to bear.

Agree. I thought the sarcasm was clear. Then I added it wouldn’t happen.

I just think the website is funny. Takes future value and doesn’t think about reality
 
It's an interesting decision to make. Trade him now or try and let him develop. Past history with players of his skillset seem to point to the fact that he likely won't be a star. If you can get a haul for him from a team who over values him, sell high.

I think Riley will develop into a solid 2-3 WAR regular. He can play a decent left. A player doesnt have to be a star to be valuable.
 
I think Riley will develop into a solid 2-3 WAR regular. He can play a decent left. A player doesnt have to be a star to be valuable.

I would say at this point he could either become that 2-3 WAR regular, or he could become the post-'07 negative WAR Francoeur.
 
I think Riley will develop into a solid 2-3 WAR regular. He can play a decent left. A player doesnt have to be a star to be valuable.

I guess. I mean he did show massive improvement in AAA between 2018-2019 while being much younger than the league. Is be curious to see if he can show further improvement with BB and K rate at major league level.
 
I guess. I mean he did show massive improvement in AAA between 2018-2019 while being much younger than the league. Is be curious to see if he can show further improvement with BB and K rate at major league level.

His BB and K rate numbers in the majors are significantly worse than the major league equivalents of his BB and K rate numbers in AAA. We all saw his struggles with our own eyes. But the data suggest maybe they are overstated. Plus as you note he is young and still has plenty of time to figure some things out.
 
genuinely curious, what data?
i ask because he swung and missed in the zone at an insane rate. his overall contact% was pretty bad too.

the crazy divergence between his AA k rate (20%) and major league K rate (36%) last season

it bears noting that in 2018 his AAA k rate was 29%.

None of the above come from a big sample. So we kind of have to put all three observations together and try to figure out what he was last year. My guess is the true underlying Riley in 2019 was a player who would strike out around 27% in AAA and around 30% in the majors.

That's not quite good enough. But if the true Riley can spend half of 2020 in AAA and become a player who strikes out around 24% in AAA and 27% in the majors that would be significant progress.
 
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genuinely curious, what data?
i ask because he swung and missed in the zone at an insane rate. his overall contact% was pretty bad too.

I was going to say his injury in August might have further sabotaged his already poor contact rates, but looking at this K rate and BB rate from Sept/Oct, they are exactly the same from his July numbers. I mean Exactly. The. Same. How friggin crazy is that?
 
Rosenthal kicking all sorts of stuff around this morning on Hot Stove - mentioned Boston potentially packaging Benintendi with Price to get money off the books. Quite sure he came up with it on his own - doesn't sound like something they'd leak this early other than to show that they're open to all sorts of ideas.

Don't see it happening, but would be interesting to see how much cash they'd have to kick in to get the type of return they'd hope to in that type of deal.
 
I was going to say his injury in August might have further sabotaged his already poor contact rates, but looking at this K rate and BB rate from Sept/Oct, they are exactly the same from his July numbers. I mean Exactly. The. Same. How friggin crazy is that?

Not crazy at all considering he was swinging through strikes and swinging at bad pitches at the same horrid rates from day 1, even when he was riding insane luck early. The only silver lining is that he’s still young. If he stays like Alfaro with less power he’s a below average hitter that can’t play catcher.

Folks love to talk about Riley’s power, but the fact of the matter is his power is merely above average, and isn’t nearly good enough to cover up the issues with the hit tool. We don’t have access to contact stats for MiLB, but we can be sure the Braves do. Hopefully those are the stats they will be watching as Riley works on things in AAA.
 
Not crazy at all considering he was swinging through strikes and swinging at bad pitches at the same horrid rates from day 1, even when he was riding insane luck early. The only silver lining is that he’s still young. If he stays like Alfaro with less power he’s a below average hitter that can’t play catcher.

Folks love to talk about Riley’s power, but the fact of the matter is his power is merely above average, and isn’t nearly good enough to cover up the issues with the hit tool. We don’t have access to contact stats for MiLB, but we can be sure the Braves do. Hopefully those are the stats they will be watching as Riley works on things in AAA.

I was commenting more about the random occurrence that data sets in both months are completely different, yet the rates are exactly the same down to the last decimal place.
 
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