It’s May 19th and the Seattle Mariners
- Thread starter missouridawg
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They're also 1 game under .500 and generally considered a playoff contender. Not sure what it is now, but a few days ago overall MLB batting average was .232 .
I don't enjoy the current MLB approach to batting very much, but it looks here to stay for a while.
Which is the exact reason why a guy like Jake Mangum has a pretty low bar to hit to be an every day MLB player. Even with non-elite speed and defense and no power, he will still play every day for 10+ years if he can just hit .300 against LH and RH pitching.
ETA on Mangum - he’s not exactly off to a hot start in A+ ball (5 for 29 to start the year). But 2 of his 5 hits are HR’s. Interesting.
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I agree with part of this. I don't think it will stay for a while. The game/strategies go in cycles.
I would agree with you on Mangum if he was doing something different than everyone else, but he's not. He lacks plate discipline, doesn't take a walk, and tries to pull everything. He needs to make the adjustment that Adam Frazier made if he ever wants to get out of AA.
Generally agree - for now teams heavy into analytics and "3 true outcomes" are doing well, but as soon as somebody has success putting the ball in play and moving runners over it'll evolve again.
Would make a bet with anyone now he never makes the show. Would make a bigger bet that if he makes the show it'll be nothing more than a cup of coffee. Would bet my life savings he doesn't have a 10 year career.
nothing against the guy, great college player, but the hits he got at the college level aren't hits at the next level. There is a reason why he stayed 4 years in college, he loved MSU sure, but no one thought enough of him to draft him high enough to leave. Even his senior year being drafted in the early rounds, he got 30th round money.
and exit velocity. Metrics are ruining the game. Hitters don't shorten swings when down in the count, rarely hit behind the runner, and the sacrifice bunt and stolen base are things of the past. It's now acceptable to hit 0.210 if the OPS is ~0.800. It pisses me off.
Yeah, balls on the ground in mlb are outs, and if you swing at everything, you'll see nothing
Should teams adopt strategies that make them less likely to win just to appease people who don't like "metrics" ?
Of course not, but in my opinion it makes baseball (even more) boring. If MLB keeps losing eyeballs, I hope they choose to adapt versus becoming a niche sport.
Everything you are saying about him is the college version from 2 years ago. Players make so many adjustments in the minors that they are almost unrecognizable if you ever see them play again. Papelbon for example completely redid his entire delivery and added 5 mph to his fastball in the process. Why would you just assume Mangum can’t / won’t make those same changes as literally EVERY minor league player has to make on some level just to stay at the same level competitively, let alone move up to the bigs? That’s literally the purpose of minor league ball, honing your craft and making adjustments to close the gap on where you are fundamentally to where you need to be.
Frazier is a fantastic comparison because they are both primarily contact hitters with limited power. No MSU fan of the past 10 years would put Frazier any where near Mangum’s level as a college hitter (nor is Frazier a switch hitter), but Frazier worked at improving and is a career .277 hitter in the majors and is an every day player. If he can get there, so can Jake. I really don’t get the hate and dire predictions for his career….it’s like people want him to fail for some reason.
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Lowering the mound and requiring 2 infielders on each side of 2b would increase scoring
I hate metrics too but to ignore them is silly, and a lot of it was born out of necessity, as mstate7 says below. Ground balls are generally outs and pitching is so good (at the expense of tearing up a lot of arms).
Full on fail across the board. No **** he got 30th round money, he was a senior. Seniors that get drafted anywhere always get late round bonus money because what are they going to do, not sign? He was still a 4th round pick, which means the Mets liked him better than about 90% of the other guys in the draft and 100% more that were available at that point in the draft. Nobody and I mean nobody blows a 3rd round pick on a player they don’t think has a very high % chance of making it to the show, no matter how cheap they are.
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I'll never watch baseball again if they do that. That would be 1000 times worse than the terrible man-on-second-in-extras rule. Teams have been shifting for over a century, and players have adjusted accordingly.
Ted Williams didn't need a special rule change to deal with the shift.
I'll never watch baseball again if they do that. That would be 1000 times worse than the terrible man-on-second-in-extras rule. Teams have been shifting for over a century, and players have adjusted accordingly.
Ted Williams didn't need a special rule change to deal with the shift.
From that moment on, teams more or less shifted on Williams throughout the rest of his career. They did it so much that he once estimated it lopped about 15 points off of his lifetime batting average, and Williams’s intuition wasn’t far off: his career splits before and after that season showed a difference of 16 points. (Though other factors also surely contributed to that gap.) On paper, beating the shift sounded as easy as hitting the ball the opposite way, to left field, but Williams didn’t want to sacrifice his power stroke to right, nor did he want to alter the swing he’d honed since his youth. And he was reluctant to drop down a bunt. From 1946 onward, the shift was something Williams simply learned to live with, the price of his greatness.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...r-old-strategy-designed-to-stop-ted-williams/
This is the problem: our fans are incapable of being objective when it comes to a guy like Jake. Anytime someone offers an honest assessment, they're accused of "hate" or "wanting him to fail."
Every Mississippi State fan wants Jake Mangum to succeed. He's one of the most revered players we've ever had. I watch him as closely as possible and have seen many of his at bats this year and Jake is still the same guy he was in college approach-wise. And if he continues to be that, he's never getting out of AA. That's not hate, and that's not wanting him to fail. That's an honest assessment of where he is. His approach as currently constructed is not good, and he's behind guys like Duplantis on the organizational depth chart, plus he's going to be passed up by a hotshot first round pick out of high school (Pete Crow-Armtrong) who's a plus defender (although that kid just got injured so that buys Jake a little time). He's older than everybody, so time is not on his side. He doesn't have one thing you can point to that differentiates him from anyone else. He is not a burner on the bases, he's not a plus defender, and he doesn't get on base the way he needs to. He doesn't really have a path to the show in the Mets organization.
Maybe he makes the same adjustments Adam made. But time is not on his side, and he's probably in the wrong organization.
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Yeah, that's the article where I got the picture.
Everything you described is good. Williams and other teams both made strategic decisions in how to approach his at bats. There was no need for any rule change, nothing was broken about the way the game was.
Everything you described is good. Williams and other teams both made strategic decisions in how to approach his at bats. There was no need for any rule change, nothing was broken about the way the game was.
Mets had to make up for going $2.5M over slot money on their 2nd and 3rd round picks. 4th - 10th round got a total of $62,000 (Jake got $20,000 in the 4th). I know HuntDawg's opinion isn't popular, but he'll probably win that bet.
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| Rnd | Player | Signing Bonus | Pool Allotment | Difference | Official? |
| 1 | Brett Baty | $3,900,000 | $4,366,400 | $466,400 - Under | Yes |
| 2 | Josh Wolf | $2,150,000 | $1,370,400 | $779,600 - Over | Yes |
| 3 | Matt Allan | $2,500,000 | $667,900 | $1,832,100 - Over | Yes |
| 4 | Jake Mangum | $20,000 | $487,900 | $467,900 - Under | Yes |
| 5 | Nathan Jones | $10,000 | $364,400 | $354,400 - Under | Yes |
| 6 | Zach Ashford | $10,000 | $277,100 | $267,100 - Under | Yes |
| 7 | Luke Ritter | $10,000 | $216,600 | $206,600 - Under | Yes |
| 8 | Connor Wollersheim | $1,000 | $174,000 | $173,000 - Under | Yes |
| 9 | Joe Gonard | $10,000 | $154,600 | $144,600 - Under | Yes |
| 10 | Scott Ota | $1,000 | $145,300 | $144,300 - Under | Yes |
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</tbody>
Well to be fair, he'd probably win that 10-year bet on half or more 1st rounders this year. Making it and staying in mlb is hard as hell
Well, it doesn't really address what Teddy thought of it, and it was clearly detrimental to him. I'm not clamoring for a rule reform on the shift, but I'd also be fine if it happened. Same with lowering the mound. It's not like baseball rules were given to Moses from on high - it's fine for them to evolve.
2/3 of first round picks play in the Majors. Slightly under half play 3+ years.
https://sabr.org/journal/article/th...aking-the-major-leagues-a-quantitative-study/
The mets went over the top to sign their first round pick. Way over slot value. Which means they had to make up money elsewhere to make it work. Yes they drafted Magnum high, yes no one wants any of their draft picks to fail, but he was drafted there because they knew they could get him cheap and they knew they wouldn't waste a 3rd round pick on someone that would go to college.
Again people to adapt and make adjustments. People that get drafted in the 50th round have long successful careers. 1st rounders bust. Baseball is far from a perfect science.
That being said. Someone with no power. No patiences at the plate. Whose numbers looked a lot better than they were because people pay attention to batting average and not much else. I wouldn't bet my money on as someone that will have a long prosperous MLB career.
Rowdy Jordan who most don't think is near the player Mangum is/was here at MSU, is a much better professional prospect and someone who has a much better chance at making a MLB roster one day in my opinion. The fact that hes likely to get drafted high enough after this year to leave and pursue that, tells me most MLB teams agree with that assessment.
Also not to beat the dead horse here in your prediction of a 10 year career. But Jake was "redshirted" at JP. He was suppose to be a freshman in college while he played his senior year. He then stayed 4 years in college.
He's 25 years old and playing class A baseball. He's 2 years older than the average age of players at that level. I realize that COVID has messed up minor league systems a little bit. But he's got 2 more levels to get through to even show worthy of being a big leaguer. Saying he progresses a level a year, which is the norm, your looking at him being 28 years old playing AAA ball. Even if he skips a level its 27.
He, and many other minor leaguers, got dealt a tough hand with COVID. But he's not on track to make it to the big leagues at this point. Hence why I'm willing to make the bets I stated in the orginial post
His approach is probably the same because a grand total of like one month experience in minor league baseball since being drafted. It probably does still need refining…no question. I would be curious to know if you’re literally watching actual A-ball games live or just following stats to know if his approach has changed, the latter of which wouldn’t really tell you much.
But overall, you aren’t sharing anything earth shattering. He’s a talented player that still has to work on some things to get above AA….that’s true about 99.9% of college players and high school players that ever get drafted (including Frazier, Duplantis, etc.). And there’s certainly no guarantee that he gets there. But I’d put his chances as being at least just as good as anyone else who was drafted around the same time over the past few years (which is still probably less than 50%). There is a middle ground between being a Mangum truther and the opposite, where you can objectively look at a 4th round pick and say he has a decent shot at making it if he works through some gaps, bad habits, etc.
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True. But I think any honest assessment would be that his chances are a good bit lower than a typical 4th round pick, which is only 23% (10% for a 3-year career) for a college position player in that round anyway. One of the greatest players we've ever had at MSU and the best leader we've ever had. But doesn't project as a major league player. If anyone can prove me wrong, it would be him though.
The bonus money could have been $1.00, and he’d still have to sign. You can’t use bonus money as any sort of gauge on talent or team opinion of a college senior draft pick. None of them ever get anything, even in the first round.
The 10-year career was not a prediction. It was a statement of fact as to what would happen for him IF he became a .300 hitter (or perhaps even .285-.290). I did not say that would happen. And of course he’s not “on track to make it at this point”, his tenure playing professional ball for less than half the time that Joe Biden has been president. He is still in the first semester of his freshmen year of professional baseball education, so he’s not on track to pass or fail at this point. It’s too damn early to know anything.
As to your bet, I mean there’s a good chance you’ll win honestly. Only 21.2% of FIRST Round position players ever make it. But that doesn’t mean Mangum’s chances are any worse than anyone else’s in his tier. The popular sentiment seems to be the implication that the Mets made a mistake in drafting him so high, their evaluation way overvalued him, or they only drafted him that high because he was cheap. None of that is true.
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Guess we do differ there. The bets likely burnt up their 1-15 if not 1-20 round money by over reaching with their top 3 draft choices. Facts are most of the 3-4-5, even 10th round, talent at that point would likely ask for money that the Mets simply could not afford to give. So the Mets took some guys that were cheap flyers. The mets had to take 20th round talent (or whatever number you want to call it, but certainly not 3rd round talent) to be sure they got guys into their system. I mean take this team now for example, would Allen/Jordan/Sims sign in the 3rd round for 20K. That type of talent was available in the 3rd round in the Magnum draft, but the mets were smart enough to not draft people that would want a big bonus. As you can see by whom they drafted rounds 4-10.
Look no farther than the Moneyball, Billy Bean draft. They had 3 first round picks. Knew they couldn't afford them all. So they signed 3 guys that would all sign for 200-300K. To be sure they could sign them all and not risk losing a first round pick on someone they couldn't afford to sign. I don't think any of the 3 were projected 5th round picks let alone first round picks, thus the billy beane legend began.
But it happens all the time, and we'll never know, but I'd again be willing to bet that had the mets had a "normal draft" magnum would not have been drafted that high at all. Probably 15th-20th round.
Jake Mangum isn't the only minor league player who only got a month of experience prior to covid. But you are way too hung up on the round he was drafted. The Mets have virtually nothing invested in Mangum, so they have no motivation to keep him around much longer as a guy 25+ in the lower half of their minors organization. They only took him as essentially a lottery pick, hoping that he would be able to quickly adjust and that his experience hitting SEC pitching would translate. They did the same thing with Duplantis, and Duplantis has been the better player so far.
Meanwhile the Mets just called up two guys to the majors that play his position (Vargas, 26 and Lee, 22). One key difference between Frazier and Mangum is that Frazier was a glove-first infielder and his defense allowed him to advance faster. Mangum is a CF with a bunch of guys ahead of him that profile better defensively.
I don't know why this is difficult for you to understand: Mangum doesn't do anything that a scout would call "plus". He's not a plus fielder. He's not a plus runner. He's not a plus barrel guy. He's not a plus power guy. He's not a plus OBP guy. You gotta be a plus *something* to progress through an organization, especially when you're already two years older than everyone else. Mangum isn't even listed among the top 30 prospects in the organization.
https://www.mlb.com/prospects/mets/
It brings me no joy to say that Mangum will never play above AA, at least not in the Mets organization. I hope I'm wrong. But I'm likely not.
I never said he was the only one. I’ll make it a blanket statement and say its way to early to know anything about anyone in the 2019 or 2020 draft classes.
Not a plus anything? I’d definitely call him plus (but not elite) in running, fielding, and barrell. He wasn’t just some groundball machine at MSU, he hit an absolute **** ton of line drives. A lot of confusing revisionist history on that one. And the Mets certainly have something invested in him….a 4th round pick which is a lot of draft capital. Nobody that gets drafted that high doesn’t have at least a few things in the toolbox that scouts think they can work with.
The whole thing reeks of Coach34 - Hunter Renfroe syndrome (and we all saw how that turned out) where the mad rush to get on the hot take bandwagon just leads to people trying to will things into existence one way or the other. No room anymore to say, “we don’t have nearly enough data yet to make an honest assessment”.
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Of course he would have had to sign. That's the point. The Mets knew they had to take guys they could sign cheap in rounds 4-10 to make up for what they knew they'd have to spend on Wolf and Allan. If they had $487,900 to spend on that round, they'd have drafted someone else.
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