I don't see Whitley on the 40 man. Unless they changed the rules, a player has to be on the 40 man or 60 day DL on 08/31 to be eligible for the playoffs.
There is a work around and has been at least since KRod came up in 2002. All you have to do is disable anyone on your current roster and then you can replace them with literally anyone in the organization since 8/31/19. FROM MLB: A player who doesn't meet said criteria for postseason eligibility can still be added to a team's roster in the postseason via petition to the Commissioner's Office if the player was in the organization on Aug. 31 and is replacing someone who is on the injured list and has served the minimum amount of time required for activation. (For example, a player on the 10-day injured list who has been on it for at least 10 days, or a player who has been on the 60-day injured list for at least 60 days.) Players who are acquired in September or after are ineligible
Interesting. I was unaware of that rule. So basically Whitely could replace Sanchez who was a post season eligible player.
Holy poopers! It's an initial proposal, but as PBA negotiations heat up between MLB and MiLB, the initial MLB proposal would lead to a massive restructuring of MiLB. From my reporting, it is hard for me to imagine that Minor League Baseball as we know it will not be significantly different in 2021. Lot to unpack here. A) MiLB players are likely going to be getting raises soon. B) There will likely be less affiliated MiLB players soon. One way I had this described to me was billionaire owners of MLB clubs are tired of being leveraged (in PDC negotiations) by millionaire owners of MiLB clubs.
wow. I am for the reduction in the number of teams and geographical realignment. Makes sense why Houston did away with Greeneville now. Bye bye Tri-City Valleycats. I am definitely for the increase in player pay; makes sense to me that MLB should pay them a living wage during offseason, with the minor league clubs paying them a living wage during the season. No reason these kids should make less than $30k/yr. I don’t like reducing the number of draft rounds (I think it should be 50 rounds but include international players). But I do like the idea of a Dream League. It would be dope if 3 of Houstons 4 full season minor leagues were in Corpus, Round Rock, and Sugarland.
I think this change would probably benefit the Astros, at least initially, since they've already reduced the number of affiliates, and seem to be comfortable deciding which prospects are worth keeping with less statistical performance than most teams. I could also see them mining the dream league for trackman darlings, though I think teams have more or less caught up to the Astros in that regard.
One question. Wouldn't the new draft date screw over colleges even more? Or would it force players to choose to enroll at college and sign a letter of intent to play and then be ineligible for the August draft?
BA released their draft report card for the Astros today as well. It's kind of interesting that some of it differs from their reports predraft, for instance, Brewer was described previously as a 70 runner with swing and miss concerns, but was listed under best hitter but not fastest runner where Barefoot (above average runner) and Nix (good speed) were lauded.
FWIW, they've updated the article to say the draft would be moved to after the CWS, not August, so it shouldn't make much of a difference. Even if they did move it to August, the MLB gets to decide what criteria makes a player eligible, so signing a NLI shouldn't have any impact on eligiblity for the draft. Getting rid of short season A ball and advanced rookie leagues and shortening the draft would probably push more high schoolers and college soph/juniors to school, so that would probably improve the quality and parity of college baseball.
Don’t the majority of HSers get drafted in the first ten rounds? I realize that now there are HSers drafted in the last ten rounds, but very few of them sign, preferring to increase their chances of a bigger pay day by going to college.
As I understand things (according to our friend who is the parent of a possible HS draftee in the last draft), her son would have signed if drafted. He had a full ride to TCU. According to her, since he had the scholarship, teams would have covered the cost of his college tuition should he have flamed out and gone back to school. So fringe players may decide to sign and spend all of their energy in the minors to see if they have what it takes.
Shortening the draft may not have a huge effect on HS signing, but if you take away some of the HS signed on the second day, as well as add another 100 (random guess) or so juco and SOs/JRs who would have signed otherwise to the next years crop of college talent, it would have an impact, I think. The elimination of rookie and SS leagues probably have a bigger impact on high school draftees, though. Each team would only have ~30 roster spots for stateside players who aren't ready for full season ball so they would likely avoid the less advanced high schoolers who might need a few years of development prior to making it to full season ball.
https://www.milb.com/milb/news/kyle...headline-houston-astros-all-stars/c-311332470 Article on some Astros prospects with comments from coaches and coordinators. Not much of note, as most of the comments are throw-away generics. My 2019 Astros minor league all-stars: C: Nathan Perry 1B: Taylor Jones 2B: Jack Mayfield SS: Jeremy Pena 3B: Abraham Toro RF: Kyle Tucker CF: Collin Barber LF: Yordan Alvarez P: Cristian Javier, Bryan Abreu, Shawn Dubin, Jose Urquidy, Tyler IveY, Luis Garcia, Valente Bellozo, Brett Conine