Brock Beauchamp

Agreed on Peterson, would give Hiura a lower grade due to the strikeouts, his reverse splits making him less valuable to the team than one would expect, and the fact he doesn't play any position even adequately.

I just don’t see how this makes sense for New York given their odds of facing the Jays in the second round. And besides, how badly do the Yankees really need another bat?

Honestly, it doesn’t matter if we have multiple threads on the same person. Descriptive titles work better and old threads tend to turn to wallpaper within just a few weeks. People want to talk about this stuff, as evidenced by the number of replies in just a few hours. As for Benintendi, I agree he’s not a perfect fit but his offensive profile looks really good on this team, even if his defensive profile isn’t a great fit. The Brewers could fit him into a lineup easier than they could another first baseman.

I don't think Stearns would hesitate to "clog" centerfield but I think the price of doing so is probably more than the Brewers are willing to pay, particularly from the A's given the rumors of what they were asking for Montas in the offseason (and I was personally quite satisfied how badly that bit them in the ass).

One thing to keep in mind about grades is "objective vs subjective". Yelich and Tellez are great examples of the differences between those two values. Objectively, Yelich is the better player and it's not particularly close. He's a pretty good MLB starter in LF. Tellez is just a hair above replacement level. Subjectively, it's a wildly different story. Yelich is paid a boatload of money and has the expectations that go along with that paycheck. Inversely, my expectations of Tellez were quite low; the mere fact he is treading water as an every day first baseman is a pleasant surprise and might warrant a B- grade under a subjective system. So how do you want to grade each of these players, objectively or subjectively? Neither is wrong depending on perspective.

I wish I knew more about Benintendi in CF. He hasn't played there in quite some time but if he's even playable there, I'd pursue him pretty aggressively. I don't think I'll like the iron price the A's ask for Laureano.

He doesn’t have a lot of power but this lineup doesn’t need power. What it needs is Benintendi’s near-.400 OBP.

He bats lefty so he could replace Renfroe and/or McCutchen regularly.

This is my thinking as well. Benintendi isn't a perfect option because he's not a natural centerfielder but his bat plays into almost exactly what the Brewers need right now.

Heyman reports the Crew is interested in Benintendi, which makes all the sense in the world. The Brewers (and other NL teams) have a big leg up on acquiring Benintendi from the Royals, as he is unvaccinated. That basically excludes any AL team from aggressively pursuing him, as any matchup with Toronto takes Benintendi off the roster. It's hard to see an AL team that expects a postseason berth to pay for a guy who might write himself off the roster in the first or second round of the postseason. Benintendi is a free agent at the end of the season and has a 127 wRC+. And maybe most importantly, an OPS approaching .400. He'd be a huge addition to a Brewers lineup that is plenty deep with power but often struggles to drive in more than one runner at a time with that power. View full trade rumor

Yep, hard to argue with these grades, though I may have given Severino an F- purely out of spite.

This piece does a really nice job of giving off the “what the ****” vibe that is the Colorado Rockies.

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Personally, I'd knock half a grade off each guy except Renfroe, who has been a pleasant surprise. I worried about him - probably unfairly - before the season but he has been just fine with the bat and pretty good with the glove.

For sure, it's going to be extremely hard for a lumbering first baseman to be valuable if his OPS is under .800, even in this depressed offensive game.

Byron Buxton has an OPS under .300. He's also the fourth most valuable CF in baseball according to FanGraphs.

This is a good point. When talking about the way modern rosters are constructed, ten players is kinda the positional bare minimum but I would probably argue to grade a full 12 players (1 UTIL, 4th OF, 2nd C). Given the flexibility of modern lineup construction and the plethora of injuries in the modern game, a team could have a very good starting "nine" but still be pretty crappy due to the back-end of the roster being atrocious while consuming up to 20% of team PAs.

I didn't realize Wong had been that brutal defensively. I knew he wasn't playing well but... ouch.

I don't know, this is a tough decision. Baseball has probably become a little too homogenized nowadays and outliers can succeed but some swings simply won't translate to major league velocity and movement. I don't know enough about swing mechanics to even venture a suggestion and will defer to the trained professionals in the development pipeline.

Baseball itself is somewhat at fault for this perception, as it's a very common problem with highly-paid players, particularly players in small to mid-markets. MLB and the MLBPA need to adjust how free agency is reached and how much players are paid before they reach unrestricted free agency. If Yelich had already made $80m before reaching FA and/or reached FA earlier than he did, we'd likely see considerable scaling back of these 8-10 year deals with massive dollar amounts for players we KNOW aren't going to be worth that money through at least half the contract.

This is how I've come to view baseball more over the years. While I don't do it as much this year due to general busyness, I'm the type of person that tunes into a Pirates/Marlins game if that's the day game happening. There are obviously teams I'm more interested in than others but I'll watch almost any MLB game if that's what is available to me in the moment.

As a fan of both teams, I've never understood the (mostly manufactured) hatred. I lived in WI for a long time. I've lived in MN for a long time. Then again, the teams I actually "hate" are few and far between. That's just not how I really form a fan experience; I want a certain team to win, I'm not particularly interested in a certain team losing. Obviously, there are divisional rivalries where one team winning means a competitor loses and that's doubly beneficial to the team I want to see win. But outside the division, the only team I come close to "hating" is the Yankees because everybody not from NY should hate the Yankees.