I’d rather have the extra money to sign the international players who are not part of the draft.
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I know a team that he would fit into perfectly, but I won’t say….I don’t want to get cussed out. LOL
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The Giants have been heavily linked to Jackson Flora if he’s there. I think they’d love Emerson or Cholowsky but that ain’t happening. This move now makes Lackey more of a need and now there seems to be some Lombard smoke. I wonder if they play a bit of money ball if they’re not dead set on a guy at 4. If they can squeeze another 1.5m out of pick 4 then they’ll be able to go up to 5.5m at pick 29. Most High Schooler studs that fall to 29 can then be in play. That same logic holds true for St. Louis. And yes it is an interesting draft system.
Pages Herrera Crooks Bernal Rainel.
Dingler Liranzo Briceño Valencia Oliverto
Cards and Tigs gonna be trading some catcher prospects soon
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I agree with this 100%. The international players seem to get overlooked by some fans but they are at least as equally important as the drafted players imo.
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The Redbirds have to call up Crooks soon. He has really good defense and the last I checked he had 11 HRs and an OPS over 1000.. He would be the ideal platoon with Herrera. Then Herrera can DH and have the short side of the platoon. I know they really like Pages but I think they need to move him. They still have Pozo for an emergency so they can leave Bernal at AAA another year.
So who needs a catcher?
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The Cardinals just need to draft a bunch of high upside pitchers like throwing spaghetti against the wall. They will never be able to compete for Skeines or Skubal. Their position players are all young and under team control with more on the way. They need pitchers. They need to hurry up and trade Dustin May as well before he breaks again.
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Pages has caught more runners trying to steal than any catcher in MLB this year. So they aren’t looking to just give him away.
He is a nice #2 that was overplayed in 25 due to the Herrera injury. Good guy for Tampa, Sacto, Toronto to grab. Crooks is ready
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I’m not sure if I told you this but my Grandpa really really liked Rainer. He told me that Rainer would be the best all around player that we had in the minors. Including McG.
I hope that his prediction comes true. Every time you post something about Rainer I think of my grandpa and it makes me feel good.
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Yea, we talked about Rainer a few times, he loved every article I posted on him and couldn’t wait to see him….. 
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The pitcher there Quinn Mathews 2 years ago led all of MILB in Ks and was a top prospect coming out of AA. Now he can’t get out of AAA. I thought he was going to be our ace. He was our best pitching prospect since Flaherty.
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Detroit Tigers take high school hitters in latest round of mock drafts
Baseball America has the Tigers taking Trevor Condon, an outfielder from Woodstock (Georgia) Etowah.
“… Condon has had a strong spring,” Baseball America’s Carlos Collazo writes, “and teams seem to have a lot of comfort in his track record, contact skills, center field profile and plus speed. Detroit is generally linked to tons of high school hitters.”
Perhaps Aiden Ruiz, a shortstop from The Stony Brook School in New York, is one of them. He’s Pipeline’s pick for the Tigers in the first round, in its “first official” mock draft unveiled Friday.
“Ruiz is the best defender in the Draft,” Pipeline’s Jim Callis writes. "He pushed (presumptive top-two overall pick Grady) Emerson to third base on the U.S. 18-and-under national team at the World Cup — and also offers bat-to-ball skills from both sides of the plate, albeit with questionable power.
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A high school hitter would follow a recent trend by the Tigers, who have taken high school prospects with their last three top picks — and four of the last five — including Florida shortstop Jordan Yost, who was selected No. 24 overall last summer. Righthander Jackson Jobe (2021), outfielder Max Clark (2023), and shortstop Bryce Rainer (2024) have been the other selections.
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The Tigers, however, do appear to have a shortage of pitching among their top prospects, with hitters dominating evaluators’ lists. In Baseball America’s list of top 30 Tigers prospects, hitters hold the top 10 spots. In MLB Pipeline’s top 30 Tigers prospects, hitters occupy the first eight slots, following McGonigle’s recent graduation from prospect status.
A recent “staff draft” last month had the Tigers taking pitchers with two of their top three picks, including a high school arm at No. 22.
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Toledo won 19-1 yesterday led by Max Anderson who had 5 hits including a homer. Through 7 games at Toledo he is hitting .448
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Giants may have a whopper on their hands. #1 international free agent last year (excluding the pros) for a reason.
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# Tigers prospect Ben Jacobs lands spot on MLB Pipeline’s early all-breakout team
Jacobs, a third-round selection in last summer’s MLB Draft out of Arizona State, has made three starts for the Whitecaps, covering 10 innings, with a 4.50 ERA and 1.20 WHIP after a promotion from low Single-A Lakeland, where he had a 1.08 ERA and 0.84 WHIP in 16.2 innings.
In those 26.2 innings spanning the two levels, the 21-year-old Jacobs has fanned 41, with 10 walks.
“… Jacobs has seen a … velo bump in pro ball, going from 92-94 (mph) in school to 93-95, and the fastball plays nicely with a flat approach angle as he gets down the mound,” Pipeline’s Sam Dykstra writes. "It sets up his low-80s slider, upper-70s curveball and low-80s changeup nicely. The cambio especially shows good velocity separation and drop compared to the heater, helping Jacobs achieve near-even splits at Lakeland and West Michigan.
“Jacobs will be challenged more at High-A (and eventually Double-A), but his 38.7 K% in seven outings is a strong place to start.”
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Baseball America’s rankings, updated this week, moving up from No. 19 to No. 6. He is the only pitcher in the that top 10.
The 6-foot-1, 195-pound Jacobs is No. 16 among Pipleline’s top Tigers prospects, in which the top eight prospects — and 10 of the top 12 — are hitters.
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# Why Tigers prospect Max Clark is sounding more like a big leaguer
full article at link.
While fans might clamor to move up prospects, especially when the MLB offense is struggling like it has, Clark has had the benefit of struggling and coming out of it on a smaller stage, not in the bright lights.
“I’m definitely glad I’m doing it here,” he said. “I’ll be honest, that’d be a really tough first assignment at the big leagues. So you know, you figure it out here and then take it with you.”
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Clark, the No. 8 prospect in baseball according to MLB Pipeline, started off the season on a tremendous hot streak, hitting .421 in his first 10 games with a .500 on base percentage.
“I started on top of the earth,” he said. “Just scorching. It was the best start of my career ever to start a year.”
Everything came easy to him.
But then, it all disappeared.
“I went ice cold,” he said. “I lost it a little bit.”
His batting average started to drop. Then he started chasing, and his average fell even worse. In his last 10 games in April, he went 5-for-38.
“I got cold, then I started chasing the result, and you can’t chase the result because you can’t control it,” he said. “When you try to control things, you just plummet.”
The crazy thing: He didn’t exactly know what was going wrong.
“The league figures you out,” he said. “I started hot, then the league figured me out. I couldn’t figure out what they knew about me, so I had to find it myself."
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he feels fortunate that he did that in the minor leagues. “That’s only gonna be larger in the big leagues,” he said. "They’re only gonna be better at it.”
Clark loves to do damage on pitches that are on the inner rail of the strike zone. As odd as it sounds, that’s where teams started to attack him − not exactly on the inner rail, but close enough to tempt him to swing yet not good enough for him to do any damage.
“They figure out this one weakness that you have, this minute weakness that they exploited in me,” he said. “I was chasing heaters on the inner edge and cutters in off the plate. Then I just get jammed.”
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So, he had to change something. Adjusting to their adjustments. Still swinging at inside pitches. But not too far in.
“Just trying to find where the end range is, where I can still do damage and get the head out,” he said.
Of course, that was just the start.
There were other adjustments.
To start at-bats, pitchers went away from the fastball and started to throw him breaking balls or change ups on the first pitch.
“I wanted to ambush those, and I wasn’t very good at that,” he said. “I had to learn how to do that.”
All the while, he was growing. Maturing.
“You learn so much about yourself, what kind of hitter you are, what you need to do to have success, what you need to sit on,” he said.
He has also learned not to worry about results. He’s more focused on process and approach, something that Riley Greene talks about constantly.
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He has been experimenting, trying to figure out how far he can take a lead off first base.
And yes, sometimes, that’s dangerous, trying to test the limits.
“I’ve actually gotten picked off a couple times because I’m getting too far off the base, which in my book, and most books, is a good thing ,” he said. “I’d rather be over aggressive here. I’m just trying to find out the middle ground between running and being stupid. Find the middle ground, and I feel like I’ve done a lot of that.
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Toledo played a series in Omaha, Neb., and Clark had an average exit velocity of 94 mph for the entire week.
“The highest mark of my career,” he said.
To Clark, that’s progress.
“The process has been really good the last two weeks because there was a time prior to that where I’d lost a little bit,” he said.
See that?
Now, he’s focusing on hard hit balls instead of hits. Process over stats. Approach over everything else. Not worrying about things he can’t control. That’s how MLB players talk − the successful ones, at least.
“These last three weeks have been on the uptrend, for sure,” he said. “Hitting lefties better this year, hitting hard, not necessarily slugging them yet, but the exit velos are way up, which is nice.”
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